Like A Thundercloud

This probably isn't the worst possible way to die, Adair thought.

She crouched above him on all fours, straddling him, her mouth locked on his flesh, sucking hard enough to leave a bruise. The stars blazed in a cloudless night sky, so bright one scarcely needed a lantern. The earth was soft beneath him, the perfume of loam and the lush undergrowth of late spring filling his nostrils. A dreamy, dull heaviness filled his limbs.

He chuckled, and tasted blood. "You know, Reynhild, you shouldn't do that. The poison the bastards use absorbs through skin; it's likely to kill us both."

She lifted her face from the crossbow bolt wound on his chest, bare where she'd sliced his jerkin in two, and spat a mouthful of his blood into the grass. Bright, the blood was. Arterial. Her face was smeared with it. Her expression was unlike any he'd ever seen on her face before. The woman was cold granite like the temple steps on midwinter morning. Even at her husband's funeral, she'd barely shown a hint of emotion. But now her face was frantic, crumpled in anger and terror and powerlessness, tears streaking down her cheeks.

"Stay with me, Adair! Gods damn it! STAY WITH ME!"

The ambush had gone poorly. The Ghosts had tracked the Duenes' caravan guards down the game trail they'd detoured onto. One of the younger Ghosts had stepped on a dead branch, and it had snapped with the sound of a whip cracking, and Nyrion's raiders let fly with a volley of bolts. This particular one would have likely taken Reynhild's throat, but Adair had lunged in its path instead. And now he was so cold, and the heaviness in his limbs was creeping inward, and her agonized face beneath that shock of russet hair was fading in and out of his vision...

"Stay with me!" she grated. "I'm not losing anyone else I care about to these gods-forsaken sons of bitches! We need you! I need you!"

"It's going to be alright, Reynhild. We got the bastards, and the Ghosts'll hound their comrades all the way back to Seamist. Cathal and Finn will beat the Duenes, I'm certain of it. Just... just do one small favour for me..."

"I'm not doing anything for you, you son of a bitch, because you're coming back to the Keep with m--"

"No, Reyn, please." He coughed, and tasted blood again. "Listen. I... My younger sister. The one you've never met; the one who left Wilder's Gorge long before you arrived. I need you to send her my signet ring. She's with the Temple of Cuiraecen. Tell her I love her. Tell her we're all proud of her, no matter what my elder sister says..." Dark specks were fading in and out of his peripheral vision. "I can't wait for you to meet her. She's... cocky. Smart mouth. Unstoppable. She's like a thundercloud. She drove my parents mad... I hope life in the Temple hasn't changed her..."

Was it Reynhild, shaking him, weeping, alternately begging and commanding him to cling to life? Or was it another face, one that he hadn't seen in almost a decade... cheeks still cherubic despite the onset of adolescence, belying the steel in her gaze...

Adair thought he heard a roll of thunder somewhere in the distance, thought he smelled ozone... But how could that be? It was cloudless a moment ago... 

Then all was dark.