The moments were marching slowly over her bowed head and prostrate form. The clamor of lives being saved and lost in a horrible game of chance filled her senses. Despair rose in her throat, attempting to smother her. What did her decisions matter, now in this instant of loss?

Quietly, garnering the strength of will left her, she rose to her knees. Kneeling in the flaming darkness, she clung to her answer with shaky resolve. He saw the reply in the Lady's face; cheeks smudged with tears, her eyes were gleaming with fierce nobility.

With a shriek of rage, he tightened his grasp on her child, tightening grasp on his blade for a death stroke. She cried out in abrupt maternal distress, reaching out to pull her son from the fate to which she had just condemned him.

Then the boy, with the all the anger of a righteous prince, closed his teeth on the hand of his captor. Startled, the heinous betrayer dropped the child.

The child tumbled on the ground, all his strength spent in the act of defiance. His mother, in the silence born of excruciating joy, caught him in her arms. She knew full well that her son might be permanently taken from her embrace soon.

Glowering in fury and growing terror, her cousin lifted his sword over mother and child, when a shout brought him whirling around. Standing in the haze at the far end of the battlement, wrath written in every line of his silhouette, stood her husband, with his wife's sword grasped in his hand.