“You would rather see your friends tortured to death?” he scoffed.
“I would rather die saving my people,” she answered. “Please . . . you must let me go. You must choose it, before it is too late.”
He gave her a firm and angry scowl and shook his head. “You will feel differently later. I will not give you up so easily.” He gestured to her wounded arm and said gruffly, “Let me treat those cuts. It will not take long.”
She knelt again, her heart wringing with worry and compassion. She felt the Medium’s disapproval. It brooded above her like a storm cloud. She knelt and watched the sun sink into the sky as he tended her. His head bent close to the wounds, his movements efficient and skilled. The wounds gave a dull ache and itched terribly. She let him heal her, for there was nothing else she could do. He would not willingly let her go. He never would.
As she stared at the crown of his head, bent over her, the idea whispered in her mind. She could kiss him. She had no weapons. She would not use her kystrel again. But her lips were a weapon. With one kiss, she could incapacitate him with sickness.
No, she pleaded in her heart, staring up at the sky. Please do not make me!
A kiss of betrayal. A kiss that would end his life.
As if he heard her thoughts, his head suddenly jerked up. His face was so near, his look wary and concerned. How easy it would be to dip forward and do it. It almost seemed as if he longed for it. As if he might kiss her himself—to rid his heart of misery.
Please! Not like this. I do not want to kill him.
Then she heard the noise. He heard it as well. It was the sound of a twig snapping, or a small branch crackling. Someone was coming toward them from down the hill. Maia turned to look at the woods as the kishion rose into a crouch, his healing hands wrapped around two knives.
“Someone is here,” the kishion whispered. He gestured toward one of the fruit trees. “Hide.”
Maia slipped away, keeping low, and quickly stole between the laden branches of an apple tree.
The kishion vaulted over the short wall and landed in a crouch behind a shaggy oak tree.
There was a whistle of metal, and a throwing axe embedded in the tree bark near the kishion’s head. Maia had heard that sound before.
Jon Tayt lumbered into view. His face was sweating, his beard full of brambles, and he was dressed in his hunting leathers and bracers. The look in his eyes was frightening.
He pulled another throwing axe from his belt hook.
The two men stared at each other warily.
“I suppose we must get this over with,” Jon Tayt growled.
The kishion said nothing. Maia stared at the hunter, her heart overflowing with joy and hope. In her mind, Maia thought, Jon Tayt Evnissyen . . . I Gift you with speed. I Gift you with cunning. I Gift you with strength . . .
Then, like a snake striking, the kishion leaped around the other side of the tree and hurled one of his daggers at Jon Tayt’s head. The hunter dived to the side, the blade just missing his ear, rolled back to his feet like a boulder tumbling, and loosed another axe at the kishion.
Maia covered her mouth, staring at the two hunters who had become the hunted. Though it terrified her to see them in such danger, something told her this reckoning had been fated from the start.
The men rushed each other. Jon Tayt blocked the kishion’s overhand thrust and kneed him in the stomach. Then the two men hammered into each other, and Maia felt true panic since the kishion was the faster of the two. Jon Tayt’s head rocked back from a strike with the other man’s elbow, but the canny hunter stomped on the kishion’s foot and tackled him into a tree. Fragments of wood exploded from the impact, and both men clawed and grappled with each other. There was no room for weapons now—they fought with arms, fingers, heads, and hips. Jon Tayt slammed the kishion into the tree a second time, and Maia saw his grimace of pain from the blow.
The kishion flipped Jon Tayt over his back, making the hunter crash hard against the fallen branches and rocks. The man grunted in pain, but he managed to hook the kishion’s boot with his own and yank him down as well. Scrabbling up quickly, both men tried tackling each other, grunting and hissing as they sought to shift leverage, gripping anything they could seize, and Jon Tayt managed to lift the kishion off his feet and slam him down on the rocks.