The eclipse scene From Watch Your Six

Pietas has been gravely injured, and carried to the flat top of a memorial to the fallen. His eyes have been covered because the act of saving him requires fast action, and those helping him want to protect his eyes. Imagine the two people this moment fixes on. Erryq is a tiny woman, under five feet tall. Pietas is a tall, lanky seven feet. In Forged in Fire, when he was in critical condition for a different reason, she held her king's head on her lap as well. Catch up with Last week's excerpt here. He isn't prepared for the sight above him: a total eclipse of the sun.

The Eclipse

Someone moved him a little. Hands slid beneath his shoulders and eased him higher. Less contact with the cold steel of the memorial, careful of the torn places, careful of the way his body refused to help. The pressure changed. Less pull on his chest. His breathing came easier.

Then another presence—lighter, smaller—hesitated close. He felt her presence before he recognized her. The familiar weight settling near his head, tentative, as if she were asking permission without words.

Erryq.

She didn’t touch him at first. He felt her uncertainty like a held breath. Then she slid closer and someone helped ease his head onto her lap. With other hands cupping him, she slid one behind his neck.

Her warm palm steadied him.

The cloth over his eyes shifted.

“Not yet.” Joss spoke not to him, but to her. “Shield his face for a moment more. All right. There.”

Cool air drifted over his lashes. Erryq leaned over him, her flame red hair blocking the sky as the fabric loosened. Came off clean. No sting. No heat.

She stayed where she was, her body between him and whatever light still remained, one hand firm beneath his neck, the other braced protectively over his brow.

Then the world dimmed.

Not gradually this time. Completely.

Erryq tossed back her hair.

The sky above him was no longer a sky.

A ring of pale fire hung where the sun should have been, delicate and impossible, a crown etched in silver against a darkness too deep to be night. The light did not burn. It hovered. Thin. Fragile. As if it could be torn by a breath. Eclipse.

Around it, stars. The unwinking pinpoint of a planet. As he focused, its rings came into view, faint, but there. Scattered beyond, galaxies. On a world this dark, the heavens blazed at night.

Changing light drew his attention. A sight cut through the haze in his mind with sudden, startling clarity.

Totality.

He had seen an eclipse before. Studied them. Catalogued them.

Never experienced an eclipse like this. He took stock, defining the moment, lying atop the memorial, unable to move. No doubt whenever someone in the future said “eclipse” this moment would surface, tenuous and delicate.

Erryq slid her fingers through his hair, grounding him. Keeping his head steady.

Around him, the world made no sense. Sound became distant, muffled, as if the air itself were holding still. He could not see the flames he knew were there. Only hear the quiet, pulsing roar of them. The acrid stench of greasy flesh burning.

The quiet halo above blotted out all else, cold and perfect and wrong.

For a moment—a single moment—pain did not exist.

Neither did urgency.

Only the weight of Erryq’s hands, and the strange mercy of a sky stripped bare.