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Then something fell against my cheek. The touch made me raise my head. A single pink rose petal slid onto the man’s chest. The Goddess was with me. I would not fail.

I raised my eyes and found the face under the uniform. It was the wizard Dawson, with his pale hair and paler face. So terribly pale among the darkened trees. He looked like his own ghost.

I touched his face with my good hand. He was icy to the touch. I checked for the big pulse in the neck. My chest tightened, because there was nothing. Then…a tenuous, hesitating pulse. He was near death, but not dead.

I whispered, “Goddess, help me help him.”

The pink petal blew or rolled onto his lips. His eyes flew wide, and he grabbed my injured arm. The pain took my vision, filled the world with white starbursts and nausea.

My vision cleared, and someone was holding me in their arms. It was Dawson, sitting up, looking down at me. “Princess Meredith, are you all right?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He’d been the one who was almost dead, and he wanted to know if I was all right. His hand hovered above my shoulders and arm where the nails were still embedded. He held up a bloody hand, and showed me a nail.

“I woke up with you and this on me. I was dying. I know I was dying. You saved me. How?”

I had no idea how to explain. I opened my mouth to say “I have no idea,” but what came out was, “Remember when you felt the call of my touch?”

“Yes.”

“I followed your call.”

“But you’re hurt.”

“But you’re not,” I said. “Help me up.”

He did what I asked, no arguing. Maybe it was shock, or maybe he couldn’t refuse me. I neither knew nor cared. There was more need out there in the dark. I could feel it.

Dawson kept a steadying hand on my good arm, and let me lead us through the trees. The fighting was a distant sound of guns, the flashing of lightning, and green fire. The fire meant that Doyle was still alive. I wanted to go to him, but another single pink petal fell onto the front of my coat. In that moment, more than any other before it, I trusted in the Goddess. I trusted that she would not have me save the soldiers and lose the men I loved. I prayed for courage enough not to falter or question. My reward was another body on the ground.

The man lay on his back. Dark eyes stared up at the sky. His mouth opened and shut as if he couldn’t figure out how to breathe. The front of his uniform was torn away from one side of his chest. It had been peeled away as if by something stronger than human hands. His chest steamed in the winter air. I’d never seen a wound steam in the cold, never thought, “The warmth of life is floating away.”

Dawson helped me kneel. He said, “Brennan, this is Princess Meredith. She’ll help you.”

Brennan’s mouth opened, but no words came out, only a trickle of blood that was too dark, too thick. I laid the pink petal on his face, but there was no miraculous waking. He was awake, and the terror in his eyes said that he knew he was dying. I did not know how I had healed Dawson, so I did not know how to repeat it.

I prayed, “Goddess, help me help him.”

Brennan shuddered, his body convulsing, and there was a sound in his chest as he tried to breathe. Dawson said, “Help him, please.”

I laid my hand on his wound and prayed, and then there was pain. Pain that stole the world, and then I found myself waking, collapsed across the soldier’s chest.

A hand was stroking my hair. I opened my eyes to Brennan staring down at me. Dawson cradled Brennan’s head in his arms, and they both looked at me. They looked at me as if I were the most wonderful thing in the world. They looked at me as if I’d walked on water. The thought filled me with no comfort, only a vague anxiety. I had never wanted any human being to look at me like that.

Brennan held a bloody nail up so I could see it.

Dawson said, “It fell out, just like mine did. Blood and the nail, and then he was healed.”

I nodded as if that made sense to me. This time I had a solider on each arm, but when Brennan took my injured arm, it didn’t hurt quite as much. I think I was healing each