A Glint of Steel and Roses: An MM+ Monster Romance (Flame and Shadow Book 2) by L Eveland

Author:L Eveland [Eveland, L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grim Cat Press
Published: 2023-12-24T16:00:00+00:00

I assisted the healers until I couldn’t stand. Healing had never been a skill I possessed, not even in a non-magical sense. I couldn’t set bones, treat burns, or amputate limbs, but I could bring water. I could sit with the dying and hold their hands, listen to their last rattling breaths.

When they were gone and free from their pain, I could carry them to the pit where they would later burn in a mass pyre.

As the light came up and color crept back into the world, my knees finally gave out. I had to be carried to the makeshift medic tent, where someone finally convinced me to let them look at my wounds.

The worst was the cut on my back, but it was still nothing compared to what I had seen Nisang do to his own wings.

I sat on the cot, scars exposed for all to see while they cleaned and bandaged my wounds. Thorn lay across my lap, naked and dull. It would never again sing.

I asked about Nisang. Asked the healers, asked the Skaags and the Nightmares coming into the makeshift infirmary. Anyone who could talk to me, I asked if they had seen him, but no one had, nor had anyone found his body. I knew I had seen him go into the river. Maybe his body had gone downstream.

“Sometimes soldiers just go missing,” said the medic, working on my back. “Sometimes, they’re never accounted for.”

Missing, presumed dead. That was the only thing he could be. Not taken. Not a prisoner of war. He would have died first.

After I let them apply some bandages, I meandered through the space of injured Nightmares and Skaags. Everywhere I went, murmurs followed. The looks ranged from fear to reverence. Some even put a fist to their chests and bowed their heads as I came by, murmuring, “Maelstrom,” which had apparently become my new nickname.

I should have been happy, or proud. Instead, I was numb. My head felt separate from my body, my limbs too heavy and misshapen.

A Spook brought me to a curtained off section of the infirmary tent where Morlash sat with his cot pulled up next to a large flat rock. He had drawn a rudimentary map on it with some chalk, or tried to. With one arm and one leg in a cast, he couldn’t do much moving.

“Of course you’re alive,” he said as I entered. “They tell me Nisang is missing.”

“He’s dead,” I said, and closed my fists around Thorn’s hilt.

Morlash spat a curse. “Him and nine hundred others. We lost nearly half our force and the other half is shot to hell. Hear you gave that dragon a good fight, though. My men are calling you The Maelstrom Mage. Almost has a good ring to it, Navahn the Maelstrom Mage, hero of the Battle of Lach Ban-Lenon.” He gave me a wary look up and down, assessing. “They say you conjured lightning.”

I wrapped an arm around myself and shrugged. “I didn’t kill the dragon. We lost.

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