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corpse of Kenley, tiny scorched skeletons singing the songs of the old gods with their chittering voices, laughing at him because he hadn’t known the words.
    It repulsed him more than frightened or informed him.
    Whatever lesson he was supposed to learn from it, if any, was lost in the revulsion. Children should not be used for such things, let alone dead children. It was wrong in ways that bent decency.
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    Carole Cummings
    And why Kenley? Dallin had certainly seen worse, so why could he not get the dead of that one tiny hamlet out of his head? Perhaps murder was relatively rare in Putnam, but he’d surely seen his share of violence within its limits. And he had, after all, served in the Army for eight long years. Kenley wasn’t by any means the first burnt village he’d seen, and its corpses not the worst.
    Still… it was the children. The lost potential. The budding promises severed so brutally and decisively.
    Unjustly.
    Unfairly.
    And those men thought they had the right .
    Dallin ran a hand roughly through his hair, rubbed at the back of his neck.
    Perhaps that was why Wil’s story hit him so hard, why he couldn’t stop being amazed at how Wil had made himself into someone who could at least pass for normal, despite what he must have seen in his years. And what was so brilliant about ‘normal’, anyway? The change in Wil, just in the few days they’d been traveling—the humor and eager embrace of anything new or different, the potential Dallin could see in each new facet Wil artlessly showed him—it kept reminding him of what Wil might have been.
    He had the enthusiasm of a puppy, balanced with a depth of thought Dallin never would have given him credit for a few days ago. The heart of a cold killer juxtaposed to an eye for beauty in the smallest things that would pass beneath the notice of any other. He was like several different unfinished people, all rolled into one man who took what he needed from each facet and used it as he saw fit, when he saw fit.
    He was… fascinating .
    Not ‘normal’ by the definitions Dallin had been using all his life, and by no means predictable. But Dallin had been relatively normal his whole life, had made himself 61

    The Aisling Book Two Dream
    as normal as someone who looked like him could, and he was predictable even to himself, and where that that got him? If this newest dream was to be believed, it had got him roped into a task that had apparently been meant for at least two others before him, men who’d trained all their lives for it, and had still ended in violent, lonely failure. And now, here he was, taking up a Calling for which he was obviously not prepared, in order to protect someone who only wanted that protection on his own terms, and who was sought by men more dangerous than any Dallin had had the misfortune to come up against before.
    He shook his head, listening to Wil’s soft footfalls in the damp undergrowth, walking his watch. It was funny—
    two days ago, Dallin wouldn’t have even considered allowing Wil out of his sight, let alone stand guard over him while he slept; now, he wasn’t even surprised that Wil hadn’t taken the opportunity to skive off. Relieved, yes, but not really surprised. It wasn’t trust… at least not the sort of trust with which Dallin was familiar. It was…
    something else. Mutual need, perhaps. After all, Dallin had no illusions that Wil would stick around if Dallin proved to be other than an asset in keeping them alive.
    Wil wasn’t traveling with him because of his dazzling personality, Dallin was sure.
    The horses gave a few sleepy nickers, hoofs shifting quietly. Dallin smirked a little when he heard Wil stop to speak a few soft words to them then gruff a grumbling curse when one of them blew on him. His affection for them was grudging but real and growing. And Dallin hadn’t missed the fact that most of Wil’s precious apples were serving as treats for them every night. For someone who’d looked like he