Beyden took his turn cuddling the newest member of the family before he slowly made his way outside. He was sweating and panting by the time he made his way to the bench seat in the garden at the rear of the house. As soon as he was alone, he allowed his façade to fall, dropping his head into his hands. He was trying so hard not to fall into the black pit of depression he could see right in front of him. One little push would be all it took. So far, visions of the state Ryker was in had been enough to keep Beyden clinging stubbornly to the edge instead of tumbling in headfirst. The birth of baby Maxwell had brought some much-needed joy to the household and he could see the light coming back into the eyes of his fellow knights.
Beyden felt warmth brush his fingers and peered through his hands to see Zombie sitting in front of him. “What? Everyone else can wallow in self-pity but I’m not allowed?” he asked the dog.
Zombie yipped at him and Beyden sighed, scrubbing his palms over the dog’s soft fur. Zombie whined a little and leant into his touch. Beyden knew he was missing Max just as much as the rest of them were. It was like there was a gaping void in the house without her. He looked at his coat of arms, running his hand over it roughly, but the stupid thing didn’t move, and his druid symbol didn’t glow. It was almost like a normal tattoo now. Beyden knew it was because it no longer held any power. It was no longer needed as a conduit because Max was gone.
And Max wasn’t the only one. Beyden could barely comprehend the loss of life that had occurred in under thirty minutes. Hundreds of paladins, chadens, and wardens had lost their lives, including many who had been good friends to him, like Fawn. He knew he wasn’t the only one hurting, he saw evidence of that daily when visitor after visitor arrived at the house. Beyden was helping as much as he could, but what he really wanted was just permission to grieve. He wanted to grieve for his family, for his friends, for his liege, and also for himself, he thought, looking down at his bandaged leg.
The useless thing chose that moment to start aching and he felt sharp pain shoot up his entire leg from toes to thigh. He gritted his teeth against the onslaught, knowing he wasn’t allowed any pain medication for another hour. The human doctor was extremely strict with the drugs and medical advice she doled out. Beyden found the woman – Jasminka, or Jazz as she asked to be called – a curiosity. As a paladin, he had never had any need for a medical professional before. Under normal circumstances, paladins healed very quickly. Apparently having an infected chade burrow into your flesh down to the bone, were not normal circumstances.
He winced and tried to massage the muscles as Jasminka had showed him. The circular motions were supposed to calm the raging nerves and help relieve the pain. But it was pretty much bullshit, Beyden thought. There was no taking away the pain of knowing he was now crippled for life. After all, what good was a crippled soldier? It took everything in him not to rage out loud at the loss.
The pain he had felt when that chade had ripped into his calf and ankle had been unlike anything he had ever felt before, and he had known without even looking that the wound wasn’t an ordinary one. But his brain still hadn’t been able to compute what it saw when he had looked down. The entire thing was a ragged mass of torn flesh and exposed muscle. With no Max to magically heal him, he had been rushed into surgery by the good doctor, who had no doubt saved his leg. He may not understand human medicine, but he was darn grateful for it. As bad as his long-term prognosis was, he knew it would have been far worse if Jasminka had been forced to amputate.
The doctor was tall for a human woman and had dark, chocolate-coloured skin. She had long black hair, practically down to her butt, and almond-shaped eyes that matched the colour of her skin perfectly. She had barely any breasts to speak of, and wore purple-framed glasses perched on her nose most of the time. Beyden had yet to see her in anything but dresses or skirts, and she seemed to favour highly feminine, floral patterns. The overall effect? She was stunningly beautiful.
Zombie’s ears pricked up and a small growl left his lips. Bey automatically reached for his weapon, cursing when it wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t there. He would probably never wield the weapon of the paladins ever again. But he still had the instincts of a knight and he quickly manoeuvred the cumbersome crutches under his arms. He wished he could call his Order telepathically but the link was no longer there. It had severed the moment Max had winked out of existence.
He followed the sound of snapping twigs, expecting to see a warden or a paladin. There had been a steady stream of them over the weeks. Most came seeking answers or aid. But some came to fight some more – pissed off and terrified over the loss of their world as they knew it. Beyden couldn’t even blame them. He knew the others felt the same for they rarely gave them the arse-whipping some of them needed. They disabused them of their surly ways and sent them off with warnings not to return in anger again.
He was pretty sure the unexpected visitor wouldn’t be a chade because Max seemed to have wiped every single one off the face of the planet. Even those who weren’t on the battlefield and were countries away, were all reported to have vanished in a bright, blazing light. But not the ones who had stubbornly and bravely clung to their souls. Those chades had all been healed. As a result, there were now hundreds of new wardens – or chadens, rather – trying to reassimilate into a society who cast them out.
Balance had been returned to their world.
But it would be a long time before order was restored. Their community was a real mess and Beyden didn’t envy the remaining members of the IDC and the local councils. He had no idea how their society was going to get back on track.
Finally making his way around the garden and into the open – crutches were hard to use when you were Beyden’s size – he got his first glimpse of the intruder. But what he saw wasn’t a lost paladin or a bitter warden. It was a woman. A woman with dark red hair that fell in thick, chaotic tumbles around her shoulders. A woman with golden skin and full lips. A woman who stood only a couple of inches above five-feet.
It was a woman with clear turquoise eyes and a playful smile tilting her lips.
“Max?” he croaked.
THE END