Moonspear As if you knew who I am, as if you knew my name

The immediate change in her demeanor told him much of what he wanted to know. The fire within her extinguished, and the absence of flame may as well sucked the oxygen with it; the ire wound in her frame followed it. The unavoidable, no matter how gently the information was offered, and it seemed it truly was not the answer she had sought.

He charged to beat Lyra to the punch this time.

"No," he told her; he may have been lying, for he didn't know in full. Only snippets, smatterings that came from one mouth to ear. "My stern-mouthed counterpart here tended to him, but there was little we could do." Infection itself was a terrible beast, not that any of them needed to be told.

He cleared his throat then, moving on to more pressing matters.

"Did you come here alone? The woods beyond here as of late are rife with misfortune. If not for Dacio's efforts, the fiends of that wilderness may have claimed my son in our hunting grounds. They hunt their own for sport."