"Some fates are chosen. Others are forced upon you. And the cruelest ones are disguised as blessings."
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The words came easily enough, but privately she wrestled with doubt. Had she sent those boys to their deaths? The wanderer was likely dying already, if Tarkun's reputation for brutality was any indication. The Urartu lord took pleasure in breaking things, and a king's blessed warrior would represent the ultimate prize for his sadistic appetites.
She moved away from the window, pacing the small room like a caged wolf. The logical part of her mind, the calculating innkeeper who had survived decades of frontier politics, whispered that this rescue attempt was foolish. One battered warrior, even a blessed one, wasn't worth the lives of good townspeople. Better to let him die and avoid Tarkun's wrath entirely.
But the mysterious stranger's reaction haunted her thoughts. The moment she'd mentioned the king's blessed, his entire demeanor had changed. Fear, recognition, and something else, guilt, perhaps? had flickered across those pale features before he'd fled into the night. Whatever connection existed between the wanderer and that robed figure, it suggested currents running far deeper than Baelur's petty feuds.
The medical supplies were ready, such as they were. Miren had boiled water, prepared clean cloth for bandages, and retrieved what few healing herbs grew in her small garden. It wasn't much, but frontier folk learned to make do with little. Nisheena had seen enough violence in her years running the inn to know basic field medicine. Stab wounds, broken bones, fever, the common currencies of a hard life.
But she'd never treated a king's blessed before. The stories claimed they were more than human, enhanced by divine magic and royal blood. Did they heal faster than ordinary men? Were they more resistant to pain, to poison, to the infections that claimed so many who survived their initial injuries? The books she'd read spoke of supernatural endurance and strength, but they were frustratingly vague on practical details.
A sound from outside made her freeze, footsteps on the dirt path leading to the house. Multiple sets, moving with urgent purpose but trying to stay quiet. Miren looked up from her mending, needle suspended in mid-stitch.
"Is that them?" she whispered.
Nisheena pressed her face to the window, straining to see through the perpetual twilight that shrouded Baelur. Shapes moved in the darkness, three figures supporting a fourth between them. Even at this distance, she could see that the supported figure hung limp and lifeless.
"They're here," she said, stepping back from the window. "Prepare yourself. He's going to be in bad shape."
The door burst open with a crash that shattered the tense silence. Kael stumbled in backward, supporting one end of a human-shaped burden that looked more corpse than man. Behind him, young Torim, a baker's son who'd volunteered for this madness, struggled with the other end. Between them hung the wanderer, and Nisheena's heart sank at the sight of him.
Blood. That was her first impression: blood everywhere, soaking through torn clothes and dripping onto Miren's clean wooden floor. His face was a map of bruises and cuts, swollen almost beyond recognition. One eye was sealed shut by puffy flesh, and his breathing came in shallow, rattling gasps that spoke of internal damage.
"Is he alive?" she asked, though the question felt almost rhetorical.
"He's breathing," Kael panted, sweat beading on his forehead despite the night's chill. "But he's bleeding a lot. Lost consciousness on the way here."
Miren rose from her chair, maternal instincts overriding her fear. "Are you boys hurt? Did anyone see you?"
"We're fine, Mother," Kael said, but his eyes never left the wanderer's battered form. "Please, bring the water and medicine. Quickly."
They carried him to the small sleeping chamber, where Miren had prepared a simple straw mattress with clean sheets. As they laid him down, the wanderer's head lolled to one side, and fresh blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Nisheena knelt beside the bed, her trained eye cataloguing the damage.
"Help me get his clothes off," she told Kael, her voice taking on the crisp authority of someone accustomed to crisis management. "I need to see how bad this is."
The tunic came away in tatters, revealing a torso that looked like a battlefield. Purple bruises covered his ribs, some so dark they appeared black in the flickering candlelight. Shallow cuts crisscrossed his chest and arms, precise wounds that spoke of deliberate torture rather than combat injury. But it was the mark on his chest that made Nisheena pause in recognition.
There, just above his heart, a symbol had been burned into his flesh years ago, not recently, but when he was young, the royal seal, marking him as one of the king's blessed. The scar tissue had faded to pale pink, but the design remained clear: a crown surrounded by stylized flames, the ancient mark of divine favor.