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Oh fuck-
Nuala barely heard her brother’s uncharacteristic outburst before their bond filled with radiating agony. She stilled, half stifling a gasp, and struggled to pull on her blandest polite smile against curious looks.
Nuada’s words spilled into a much longer, creative string of profanity and improbable violence.
Nuala brought one slightly shaky hand up to the fiery stabbing pain in her arm. She couldn’t feel much below that; a faint tingle in her forearm and even less below. Her fingertips brushed over her skirt as she tried to hold her arm close, she could see the contact, but there was no sensation of the rough silk.
What happened? Nuala wondered, but tried to keep it to herself - she had learned, painfully and with heavy guilt, how dangerous distracting Nuada could be in battle; he should not be in danger, here, but. . .
A mistake, Nuada answered, thick with pain.
Nuala restrained a frown. Nuada made mistakes rarely; ones so severe as this one must be only more so.
Someone brushed past Nuala and she barely restrained a flinch. The pain was her brother’s first, it wouldn’t be worsened by contact, but instinct was difficult to master.
Nuala flashed concern and curiosity to her brother even as she turned to answer a polite call of her name. She smiled faintly - her best was weak, at the moment, but all that was expected regardless - responding smoothly with long-ingrained manners, though she doubted she would remember anything she had said later. It wasn’t important; likely no one else would either.
The dance of politics.
Tiresome, Nuada agreed, and Nuala flickered a nudge through their bond. He flashed back an image; one of the new recruits - Nuala knew them better, perhaps, than most might expect; this one Nuada had been concerned over - looking horrified, his usually bright green complexion edging chalkier.
Not Nuada’s mistake, Nuala realised, her only surprise wondering how-
Another image, followed by several more flashing through her mind as she delicately extracted herself from the hall, left arm close against her side - a strike that went wide, a panicked recruit putting too much force behind it, Nuada moving to intercept-
Nuada’s arm, bent sharply and in the wrong place, raggedly broken bone torn through his skin, blood flowing down to drip from his knuckles.
Nuala swallowed thickly.
No wonder I cannot feel my fingers, Nuala fought a surge of nausea. Blood and injury did not usually take her so, but the sight combined poorly with their pain. You are going to the healers now?
A flutter of amusement from Nuada, no words, and another image; a healer rising from where he had been tending one of Nuada’s recruits first - no doubt at Nuada’s insistence. It faded into apology and warmth, curled around Nuala.
Nuala returned it with her own. We have been through worse, she soothed dismissively; it was only their responsibility to see to their people first, as it was to protect them . . . she expected nothing less of her brother.