Atissa did her best to ignore the sounds of battle waged up on the walls and—it seemed—all around her. There was only the circle, and the wounded lined up beside it that two older men, perhaps unfit for fighting duty, kept carrying in and out.
Mindful of the advice she’d received about the limits of pacts, she did as little as possible to keep the wounded men and women alive. The disappointment on their faces when they realized they still would be in pain and recovering for weeks to come haunted her, but after her second wounded guard and with her pact magic already stretched thin, she considered it a better choice than completely healing one person and letting dozens of others die.
A screech way too close for comfort pulled her back to reality. Her first instinct was to raise a barrier
