The battle was the most dangerous they'd faced yet.

Everything was smoke and death and chaos, and Lyn could not make head or tails of it, even with the experience she'd earned throughout the campaign. Tension charged the air. The roar of fire remained steady, the sound of a building's weak timbers finally giving way to flame's persistent teeth crashing in the background. Somewhere, a wyvern let out a triumphant roar. Hooves thundered over cobbled streets and horses whinnied in panic. The clash of steel on steel still rang out in the night, as someone, somewhere, kept fighting, even with the enemy general lying dead on the streets, his black warhorse hobbling away on a broken leg, his blood slithering through the cracks in the paving-stones and soaking the earth a dark red.

Lyn used her sword as a prop to keep from falling as well. It was inglorious and ill-fitting for the noble weapon, but her leg could not hold her weight and she would not condescend herself to cowering on the ground and waiting for someone to rescue her. She wished desperately that she could join the others as they crushed the last pocket of resistance. Were it not for the ballista bolt stuck in her calf, she would have been among them at that very moment.

The enemies were getting smarter, it seemed—they were using ballistae, which Lyn had previously thought she could easily avoid. The one-man weapon was dangerous, she realized, dangerous as the army was, even without their general. Dangerous enough that she could be killed by the morph that rode out in front of her, spotting the defenseless swordswoman and leveling its spear for a charge.

She attempted to bring her sword to bear, but that damnable leg refused to cooperate even then. A burst of pain shot through it, before she dropped to one knee, trying vainly to still protect herself from the cavalryman that cantered forward as if in slow motion. One, the rear-right leg was on the ground, two, the rear-left and fore-right hit, three, the fore-left rang out on the ground, all other legs in the air, a beautiful, fluid movement. One, the rider breathed in, two, it adjusted its grip on the lance, three, it breathed out, in perfect synch with its mount. One, it was by the door to a burning building, two, it was under the window, three, it passed it, coming closer, closer, closer. Lyn grit her teeth and set herself against the charge as best she could, even as she realized it was a futile effort.

A huge, dark shape swooped overhead, snatching the morph off the ground and carrying it into the air with powerful talons, the horse bolting as the wyvern winged past. The wyrm arrowed into the smoke-and ash-filled sky, before releasing its prey. The morph did not scream as its ragdoll-body tumbled to the ground, spinning over and over with its limbs akimbo, like a pinwheel in a hurricane. It crashed through the roof of a fire-eaten building, tossing up cinders and splinters and dust.

That was that. Death averted in a second, handled neatly as Heath spun his wyvern around in a tight circle over her, scouting for more enemies and showing the whole sky his supremacy. She waved her thanks, unseen as he already swooped back down to attack another, navigating the turbulent pockets of air around a wildfire with expert precision.

Lyn couldn't help but wish that Kent was there. Kent wouldn't have even let that morph get close to her. Kent wouldn't have left her side, not if she needed his aid. She remembered with clarity sharp enough to put her blade to shame when they had been fighting against the White Wolf. She remembered when the tactician ordered Kent to shore up defenses on the western side of the mountain range, and how Kent had disobeyed, a thing that could have cost him his knighthood.

A thing that would have cost Lyn her life if he hadn't.

She wasn't as defenseless then as she was now. Then, she could stand, could hold a blade and hold her own in combat. Then, she had only minor scratches, things that didn't terribly slow her or bother her now. Something—his combat reflexes, maybe, or just a warrior's battlefield sense—urged him to disobey, to charge to her rescue. It was a rescue she'd been about to reprimand him for until he threw a javelin through the shoulder of a sniper that had been taking aim at her, a sniper she hadn't even seen through the thick fog.

Kent had suffered because of it. His reckless move (cavalier, Sain had called it, laughing at his own joke when no one else was) earned him a tongue-lashing from Mark and a pair of cracked ribs when his horse stumbled and threw him. But he said he'd do it a thousand times over for her.

"For me…" she breathed. It was his always-answer, lurking underneath such pretty words as "honor" and "justice". For her. For her, he'd try to gather up the four corners of the sky, if only to give her a night-blue blanket of stars to keep her warm in the icy mountains of Bern. For her, he would not have let that morph attack, would not have relied on Heath to save her, would have carried her off the battlefield on his red roan and not let anything she said persuade him otherwise. For her, Kent would have doggedly insisted on her health first and foremost, running back and forth on the ground to play both vanguard and rearguard. For her, he would have done anything if he were there.

But he wasn't.

She didn't know what had happened to him. No one did. He had vanished last battle without a trace, and for all that she and Sain and Wil and Wallace had plead with the others to search just a little bit longer, in their hearts they had to acknowledge that wherever he had gone, he wasn't coming back. Lyn could not believe that he was dead, though. She would not believe it until she saw his body, and even then, she would not rest until he was avenged! Nor could she believe Kent would ever desert them. Not as long as he was loyal to Caelin. Not as long as he was still citing honor and justice ( "for her") and always working on training their soldiers during off-time on the slightest chance that he could help someone.

He'd been kidnapped, then, she told herself and anyone who would listen. He would show up any day, she said. A messenger would ride to their camp and demand that they surrender, then she could follow the tracks back to the Black Fang's fortress and she could rescue her knight-in-shining armor. It would be a laughable inversion of the princess tales from the children's books that Sain could still quote with pinpoint precision, but then they could all laugh over it. They'd sit around the campfire and Sain would crack poor jokes, and Kent would roll his eyes and grin, and Wil would regale them with some story of his own childhood, and even Florina would timidly join in. Then they'd be up until dawn talking, just like old times. They'd move on.

Lyn couldn't move on until that happened. Kent had been by her side since…since forever, it seemed, although she knew it had only been a little over a year since she had met him. Perhaps it was because of how often she saw him—most of each day on the march was spent with his horse plodding along beside her and the barest hint of a smile on his usually serious face. Kent wasn't one to fill the air with empty chatter, and she, in turn, simply enjoyed his presence. When they set camp, he took first-shift sentry duty almost every night, and everything felt just a little bit safer with the knowledge that his sword arm protected them. No, Kent was a constant in her life, stolid, unchanging Kent…then things had to go and change.

The clattering of a horse's hooves on the paving-stones snapped Lyn out of her daydreaming. She gripped the hilt of her sword, head snapping up, only to let out a sigh of relief as she recognized the dark bay and its rider. Sain raised his hand in a salute, his lance held at the ready.

"Ho, Lady Lyndis! What dastardly knave dared harm such a beauteous maiden as yourself?"

Lyn half-smiled at Sain's choice of words—he always did find a way to lighten the situation, even if by just a little.

"Someone with a ballista. I think Heath took care of him, though," she replied, grimacing a little as her leg throbbed with pain. Sain frowned, dismounting his horse.

"And he did not offer you aid? Why, were he in our ranks, I would—"

"Peace, Sain, peace," she interrupted.

"Pardon me, milady," Sain murmured, scooping her off of the ground as if she weighed no more than a small child.

"The lovely Sister Serra will have you as good as new in no time," he added as he carefully mounted his horse, setting her sidesaddle in front of him and taking hold of the reins. Sain clicked his tongue, urging the horse into a trot.

His horse whinnied and tossed her head in surprise as a shadow fell over them. Heath called out from the back of his trusted wyvern, Hyperion, the reptile's wingbeats kicking up embers from the blackened skeletons of what used to be peoples' homes. Sain patted his mare's neck soothingly, focusing on guiding the beast around the buildings that still burned steadily, around the bloody bodies of citizens and enemies alike, and around the deadly caltrops that were scattered in the streets to cripple mount and man alike.

"Are all of our soldiers accounted for?" Lyn asked as they stepped over a half-eaten corpse. A small red wyvern screeched from the roof of a stone shop. Blood dripped from its jaws, a scrap of cloth that matched the color of the mangled body's tunic stuck between two daggerlike teeth. Hyperion landed ponderously on the roof before it, opening his huge maw and letting out a thunderous roar. The red wyvern lowered its head, eyes glaring from under bony brows, before turning tail and flying elsewhere.

"Fret not, milady—that was no one we knew," Sain promised as Heath resumed his vigilant aerial guard. "The battle is finished, anyway. Most of the others are out fighting fires with the remaining citizens or slaying the blood-maddened wyverns. Lord Eliwood ordered me to find you—we were all worried, milady."

His horse halted as they arrived at the cluster of mismatched tents and tied-up mounts that was their base camp. The cooking fire was burning merrily, as if to downplay the horrific destruction caused by flaming arrows and Elfire tomes. Lowen waved to them as he peeled potatoes, his freckled face smudged with ash and dirt. Lyn attempted to dismount, but Sain would have nothing of it, and she knew she could not walk on her own anyway. The swordswoman reluctantly consented, and for the second time in under an hour, she found herself being picked up off of the ground.

Lyn realized she must have blacked out, because the next thing she knew, she was groggily staring at the canvas ceiling of the medical tent. A brief glance to her leg confirmed that it had been bandaged, and a poultice was securely applied with the efficiency of practiced healers. She moved to sit up, but Serra shot her a look that just dared her to try it. Grumbling, Lyn subsided, privately thinking unkind thoughts about standard medical procedure.

Instead, she looked around to see who else had been wounded. They were short on supplies at that stage in their campaign; it was no wonder so many soldiers had to resort to bed rest and bandages to heal injuries that would have previously been patched up by a single wave of a Heal staff.

Lyn heard Farina before she saw her. The pegasus knight was swearing vehemently, putting voice to many of the thoughts that Lyn had kept silent. Between complaints about being fine and threats towards Serra for washing out her wounds, Lyn was pretty sure Farina was not seriously injured. Still, if the shouts for a pay raise were any indication, she was going to have a nice, long talk with Hector when this was all over. Grinning to herself, Lyn looked to the cot next to her. Matthew was slumbering undisturbed…at least at first glance. Noticing Lyn looking at him, he cracked his eyes open. The thief smirked, winked, and went back to feigning sleep—he was probably trying to keep Serra from striking up a conversation with him. His left arm was in a sling, held protectively close to his body, but he, too, looked to be all right.

Her eyes wandered to the other side of the tent. Jaffar lay complacently on his cot, seemingly unaffected by the wound that had completely taken off his ear. His eyes darted warily to her, revealing a slash across his nose and cheek that would surely scar. He dismissed her in an instant and returned to contemplating whatever it was that went on in the Angel of Death's unreadable mind.

On the other side of him, the blankets had been pulled up over a lump that looked sickeningly human.

"Serra? Who—?"

"Priscilla," the cleric murmured, and for the first time Lyn noticed how red her eyes were. "It was a sniper...on the rooftops. No one saw him..."

For the first time that Lyn could remember, Jaffar spoke up, "It was an arrow to the heart. She died quickly, painlessly."

She nodded slowly. So…another of their band had fallen. They would hold a funeral later, of course, but…it would never make up for their friend. Lyn murmured a quiet prayer, shutting her eyes against the smoky light of the cooking fire—or maybe it was the last vestiges of fire from the sacked town—and the sorrow of another's death.

The minutes stretched on in near-silence, only broken by Matthew's soft snoring that sounded all too real to be faked.

"Wake up," a voice softly said.

Lyn's eyes snapped open, her breath catching in her chest. No…she had to be imagining…

Because that was Kent's voice, and that was Kent standing over her.

He was pale as death, a weak smile on his lips, but it was Kent's serious, square-jawed face, Kent's no-nonsense haircut, Kent's almond-shaped eyes. Lyn couldn't help herself; tears suddenly pricked at her eyes, and she threw her arms around him. He didn't stiffen as he usually did, instead patting her lightly on the back. It took every ounce of her self-control not to bombard him with a dozen questions and a thousand little comments.

"Kent…" she breathed, overcome with emotion.

"Would you care to go for a walk?" he asked.

He offered her his arm for support, and Lyn felt the familiar warmth spread through her, her heart beating quicker, her face flushing. Serra, bent over Jaffar's wounds, hadn't noticed that her patient had gotten up. Grinning to Kent, Lyn leaned heavily on his arm and limped out. He patiently kept his strides short and his pace slow, letting her keep up.

"What happened to you…?" she asked, eyeing his face worriedly. Outside of the flickering light, his paleness was even more apparent; images of dungeons and torture rose unbidden to her mind.

"I…would rather save talk of it for when the lords are present. It is not something I would like to say more than once."

Lyn paused at that. Since when would Kent decline speaking to her? He had never done such a thing before…but then again, Lyn reasoned, he had never been through something like this before. Perhaps it was so painful to speak of that he couldn't bring himself to say it more than the one time.

"I just can't believe you're back, Kent. You have no idea how much I missed you…"

"I missed you, too, Lyn."

Lyn? She thought, stopping in her tracks. Kent has never in his life called me that…Why would he now?

She stared at him, frowning. The knight paused, cocking his head to the side.

"Is something the matter?" he asked. "Should we not make haste to the lords?"

The firelight glinted off of his eyes, the chocolate-brown eyes Lyn had always admired. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light, but his seemed lighter than that…more golden than brown, like the wheat-colored grass back on the Sacae Plains.

"No…It's nothing," she said, as much to herself as to him. "I think Eliwood and Hector are still busy…Maybe we should go talk to Sain while we wait for them to come back?"

"Sain? Perhaps later. He won't mind if he's kept waiting a little while."

I thought Sain would be the first person he talked to…No matter how upset I was, I would still wish to tell Florina that I was all right again. Would Kent not do the same—!

Golden eyes, Lyn thought as the pieces suddenly came together in her mind. Unnaturally pale skin…A repeated insistence upon seeing the lords…ignoring his friend…forgetting the title Kent always calls me…

Tears sliding down her face, Lyn drew her sword. With one quick motion, she ran the knight through the exposed spot on his belly. His face remained blank, as if not even acknowledging his wound, before she jerked the blood-soaked blade out of his body.

She stared down at the pile of dust where Kent's—no, the morph's—body had been. Lyn dropped to one knee, partly because of her wound and mostly because of what it meant. Her head dipped to her chest, she sobbed, sobbed until she couldn't cry anymore and she was hiccupping pitifully, throat sore and raspy.

The sound of someone running over broke the trancelike state that seemed to have lasted forever, and yet for nothing longer than the blink of an eye, because she had known all along the truth that she hadn't even admitted to herself.

"Thank goodness I found you! Who was that, milady?" Sain asked breathlessly. "Serra said you left the tent with someone."

She was silent for a long while, listening to the howling of the wind and the pop and crackle of the fires, her eyes fixed on the small pile of dust and tears.

"No one," Lyn murmured at last. "No one at all."