Does It Matter?

Chapter 14

Maric squeezed Dara's wrist, hoping to detect some hint of a pulse, but it was impossible to feel anything now that the wagon was moving. It was a pointless hope, anyway. He had a hole all the way through his chest, puncturing his heart. He didn't have a pulse. Maric knew that.

He'd lost so much blood, too. His clothes were wet with it and he'd left a puddle of it behind to soak into the dirt road. Dara wasn't a large man. Even if he'd had a functioning heart, the blood loss would have been too much. There were some things not even magic could fix.

He should have sent Dara back to Paige. He would have still been without him, but at least he would have had the hope of maybe visiting him again someday, at least Dara would have been safe and hopefully happy. Now when he woke up alone each morning he would have to lay with the knowledge that it was because he had been careless with the one person he had ever truly connected with.

The sun was beginning to set by the time they arrived at the damn inn. It took less than a minute for news of their arrival to spread through the staff and patrons and for people to start crowding out of the inn to come and gawk at them. A little girl no more than five years old approached the back of the wagon and stared up at Dara's bloody, slack face.

Brayan grabbed her by the back of her shirt and spun her around, facing her back towards the inn. "Get the children out of here! Get everyone back inside!"

Brayan had the kind of voice people obeyed even without knowing his status, and in less than a minute the crowd had vanished again.

No one seemed to know what to do after that. Maric certainly didn't. He knew he ought to let go of Dara, both physically and emotionally. He knew he should go inside and get cleaned up and be a prince. But he just... didn't. He couldn't.

Garrod was the first one to approach the back of the wagon. "He was a sweet boy."

Maric clutched Dara tighter against his chest. "He was more than that."

"Mm." Garrod nodded seriously. "Do you know anything about his religious beliefs? What he would have wanted done?"

"No. I hardly knew anything about him." Maric shut his eyes. "Fuck."

"He was born in Ticia, wasn't he? They burn their dead."

"Is it the same for the Eth, though?" Brayan asked. "They have their own language, their own culture."

"Thank you," Maric told them. He had been worried that nobody would understand why he was so upset over a bed slave, but that wasn't what Dara was anymore. He was just a person who had died. A person who Maric had cared about deeply.

Mathers approached the back of the wagon and gave Maric a sympathetic pat on the leg, then slowly retracted his hand and pressed his lips together like he wasn't quite sure he should have done that.

Maric didn't care. A deep sorrow had drowned out all other emotions. Mathers could have slapped him and he still wouldn't have cared.

"Please let me take a look at that cut on your chest," Mathers said. "The arrow went through him and cut into you, didn't it?"

Maric couldn't even feel the sting of it anymore. "I don't care."

"I know you don't, but please let us care for you until you can care about yourself again," Mathers said. "Can you imagine dying to infection because you wouldn't let me clean out some trivial wound?"

"Please, Maric," Brayan encouraged when Maric didn't move. "You don't have to decide anything about Dara yet. Nobody will touch him. Just climb out of the wagon and let Mathers tend to you."