"Despite the fact that you ran away from Baron Loghlan's camp, Ollie chased after you when you met with danger," the woman said, and Cerys felt Cynwrig's hand find hers, his grip warm and firm around her cold fingers. "He was afraid for you and for your son, too."
"When he found you, you were dying," Ashlynn continued bluntly. "Your skull was cracked, your body was broken, and you were bleeding into the frozen ground with your son screaming beside you."
Cerys closed her eyes. She remembered almost nothing of the fall itself, just the sudden, terrible certainty that the horse was going down beneath her and the desperate instinct to pull Dalwyn against her chest before the world turned to darkness and pain. Everything after that was fragments. Cold air on her skin. The smell of earth and blood. A voice that wasn't Cynwrig's offering to help… and her own stubborn refusal to be helped by a 'demon' or a witch.
