Page 83 of Rune’s Solace

The hand disappeared.

I hit the floor coughing, dragging air into a throat that didn’t want to work, and my father got maybe half a word out before Rune reached him.

Hands were on me. Not Rune’s, someone else, someone big and fast and gentle, Horse, it was Horse, down on his knees pulling me up and turning me away from the middle of the room, putting his own body between me and it, saying “I got you, darlin’, I got you, don’t look, come on now, up we go, don’t look,” and he got me up and moved me toward the blown-open door, and I let him.

I heard a loud crash and then another.

Then the noise inside the house stopped.

Horse went still beside me.

I looked at the broken doorway.

A few seconds later, Rune came out.

* * *

He came out with blood on him that wasn’t his.

For a second he didn’t see me. His chest was heaving, his hands were red, and he looked across the yard so fast that I knew exactly what he was looking for.

Three feet away.

His hands came up a little and stayed there, open at his sides, and that was when I saw they were shaking.

He looked at me, then at Horse’s arm around me, then back at my face, and he waited. After everything he’d just done to get through that door, after finding my father’s hand around my throat, after whatever had happened in that room once Horse took me out, Rune stood three feet away from me and would not touch me until he knew I wanted him to.

Maybe he thought I was afraid of him now.

Maybe he thought I’d seen too much.

I looked at the blood on his hands and knew exactly what those hands had just done.

They were also the hands that worked dirt out of roots without breaking them. The hands that made tea for Brenda and took my boots off when my feet were swollen. The hands that had stopped the second I pushed against his chest and waited for me to put them back on my body myself.

I knew those hands. I knew him. So I stepped away from Horse.

Rune still didn’t move.

I crossed the three feet.

The second I put my arms around him, he broke. There’s no other word for it. His arms came around me, careful at first and then tighter when I held on, and his face went down into my hair while this awful shaking went through him.

“Amy.”

“I’m here.”

He pulled me closer. “I’ve got you.” His voice broke against my hair. “I’ve got you. Jesus Christ, I’ve got you.”

I pressed my face into his chest and held on. “I know.” His hand came up to the back of my head, and even then, with blood drying on his knuckles and both of us barely standing, he touched me gently. “I know you do,” I whispered. “You always did.”

He made a sound against my hair and held me harder.

I don’t know how long we stood there. Long enough for my breathing to slow. Long enough for the shaking in his arms to ease. Long enough for me to realize I was outside that house and I was never going back inside it.

The sun was up. Sawyer was safe. Horse was beside us. Somewhere behind me were a dozen men who had come when they knew I needed them.

And Rune had come.