Moaning, Malina said, ‘Please, stay here. You need a Healer. I will fetch someone . . .’
But Imalwain summoned her last reserves of strength, and was gone.
As Birin rode slowly back towards the settlement, he considered Imalwain’s words. I had risked everything. But what did she have to risk? True, she might have become pregnant, but she hadn’t. She had no family. No possessions. No property. She could always find another to share her affections.
What, then, had happened to so utterly blight her life?
‘Birin!’ He was jarred suddenly out of his reverie. It was Malina. She was standing before him in the middle of the path, and from her tone he suspected that she had some knowledge of his encounter with Imalwain.
Reining in his horse, he stopped and dismounted. Every line of Malina’s small form expressed suffused rage, something he was completely unused to seeing in a Pixie.
He raised his hand in an attempt to forestall anything she might say. To his astonishment, at his gesture, she spat an obscenity. Furious, trying not to weep, she cried, ‘You bloody, bloody, heartless bastard! You have killed her! She gave up everything for you. Everything!’
Trying to make sense of Malina’s anger, he said, ‘What do mean, “I’ve killed her?”’