Gazel's bent axe split the arm's joint before its claws turned on Didi, and Brand light kept it open.
"Royal resonance in a borrowed soul, whose blood gave you permission to tune yourself like that?" The Collector tilted its head at his cracking face.
"Ask my King when you find the courage," Gazel replied dryly, ripping the edge free toward its shoulder, "he's more patient with impertinence than I am."
"Loyal mouth, burning body, let's see which lasts longer."
An upper claw clamped around the blade before it could bite again.
He shoved that claw away from her rapier with his shoulder and bared bloodied teeth, "Come closer, you bastard, I've got room for another wound."
Didi pinned frost around his rear heel, but the Collector's older cuts kept knitting shut.
'He covers every step I want, and every step I ask for costs him more.'
"Hold it there," she urged, eyes narrowed on the seam, "I can hit the opening if you make it turn."
"Stay behind me, damn it, your chest goes exactly where I need to swing!" He shouldered across her path without lowering the axe.
"Then give me room, I can strike from here without crawling under your elbow."
"Keep breathing first, Your Highness," he said, glancing back with a tired, crooked smile, "every other order waits until you promise."
The squire's shield lay nearby, strap snapped beside a hand that never reached for it.
The Collector stopped smiling when its struck shoulder failed to rise.
Its lower claw raked his shoulder as his axe reached ribs, scattering light through broken armor.
'He took that claw and kept cutting, how much of him is even left?'
He chopped beneath its knee and rose along the opened chest, and she sent three frost lances into the seam.
Steam hissed as two lances melted, but the third jammed its next step toward him.
Gazel severed the wrist swinging at his temple, then vaulted its flank and buried his axe behind its neck.
The hand fell beside the captain's halberd while the neck closed around his blade and the stump sealed shut.
"Better, keep spending yourself, I'd hate to collect a vessel that saved its best breath for the road home."
It flexed the stump and grinned at the light leaking from his collar.
Gazel advanced in grim silence, four Shards circling his arm and no fifth coming, blood running past his lips.
His edge smashed its ankle into the road, and the Collector dropped onto one knee.
'Four Shards, and everything past them is him paying, so don't waste this.'
"Now, before it stands!" She thrust at a lower hand, frost gathering past her point.
He hoisted the axe over the lowered head, armor straining around the light, "Back to the pit that spat you out!"
The Collector caught the edge between upper claw and lower palm, an inch above its skull.
"The stroke you saved for victory," it taunted, glancing past the blade at her useless point, "and now what, when I refuse to fall?"
Gazel tore the weapon loose and struck chest, throat, then eye, reopening the throat seam before fingers trapped the third.
Didi's frost hit the free lower wrist and found no path through its armor.
It twisted its hands apart, the haft snapped between his palms, and the axe head dropped.
'No edge, just a stick of wood, and that other claw is free.'
The lower claw punched under his chest before her rapier crossed the gap, bursting armor and lifting him.
His hand opened, and the surviving haft clattered beside the broken head, light fading along both.
"Put him down, put him down before I tear that hand off!" Her voice tore raw as she hacked at the arm, never reaching the limb.
It dropped Gazel beside the ruined weapon, breastplate pieces scattering across the melting frost.
Didi fell to her knees and pressed her free hand against the blood pouring through his armor.
"Titles, land, take anything I own, just tell me what brings you back."
'Land won't close his chest, and I keep making offers like a fool.'
"Stay with me, tell me what you want and I'll bring it, I swear."
The smell of blood dragged her back to rooms where nobody needed shields.
Gazel bound her first practice hilt while a pouting seven-year-old Didi insisted she deserved a proper blade.
He wrapped his coat around her on the ramparts whenever wind after frost lessons made both her hands shake badly. He carried her from the library when she fell asleep over pages, then answered every nightmare from outside her door.
She laid the rapier beside her knee and pressed both hands into his chest, "You came when I called, every time..."
"So I'm calling still."
"Get up, that's an order, stand up!" She packed frost around the wound, voice cracking.
The Collector stepped over the axe head and watched her palms slip in the blood.
It lowered its face, keeping its throat clear of her abandoned blade, "He can't obey that one, little princess, his soul spends itself on a quieter duty."
"Shut your damn mouth and let me keep him breathing!" She snarled it, shoving the cold deeper without looking up.
"One servant falls and the royal prize forgets her weapon, cheaper than I expected."
It touched its healed throat and nodded at the rapier lying by her knee.
Her fingers clenched until broken armor cut her palm, and three Shards flared around frost that already failed everyone here. Something deeper shifted when the Collector reduced Gazel to a nameless servant, pressing beneath anything she knew how to shape.
'He bound my blade, carried me home, answered every nightmare, and that thing calls him servant.'
She lifted her tear-streaked face toward it, both hands still on his chest, "He has a name, Gazel, and you'll remember it when nothing else here answers you."
"Names rarely survive my work," it murmured, kneeling beyond her reach and pressing a claw to the Brand's edge, "but tuned vessels interest me, especially ones a crown keeps burning."
'Slowing the blood isn't enough, so make the frost hold him here.'
---
Gazel heard the taunt through a ringing that pushed words farther away than the pain.
Her tears dripped onto his collar while the Collector loomed behind her, and his chest refused to rise.
'Nothing left in this body to cover her, and she kneels where that hand can reach.'
The Brand still held some of the life he fed it, a reserve and never a promise of recovery.
He pushed sound through the blood, the ghost of a dry smile on his torn lips, "Still on duty, Your Highness, now move your hands."
"Save duty for tomorrow, stay breathing now, I won't lose you on this road!"
She shook her head hard and bent closer, cold still packed against the wound.
The Collector raised its claw above her shoulder and angled it toward his throat, "How tender, I can reunite the household if you both stay put."
'Take the remnant, give her room, I didn't stay on duty to watch that claw fall.'
He ignored the hand that refused to rise and poured every scrap of what remained into the Brand for her. The claw fell before the reserve finished entering the mark, then light broke from his chest and slammed it aside.
A circle of radiance opened around Didi without closing his chest, and the price reached past flesh into the oath.
The light was eating his soul while his hand crawled toward the surviving haft, keeping her above the darkness.
She picked up her rapier as the flare kept the next claw away from his throat.