He looked down at Morgan, who was spitting curses from the floor. "It's over." Luke said. He turned and walked toward the doors. The crowd parted for him this time. They didn't cheer.
They didn't pat him on the back. They stared at him with a mixture of fear and grudging respect. He was still the outsider. He was still the man who had chosen the other side, but he was the man who had told the truth. Luke pushed the doors open and stumbled out into the blinding sunlight.
The street was empty. The dust was settling. He walked toward the alley where he had left the horse. His vision was swimming slightly. The heat, the blood loss, the adrenaline crash, it was all hitting him at once.
He turned the corner into the shade of the alley. Ayanna was there. She had ridden down the moment she saw the commotion spill out onto the street. She was standing by Roan, her face pale, her eyes wide with terror. She saw the blood on his shirt.
"Luke!" She rushed to him. She didn't care who saw. She didn't care about the laws of the town. She threw her arms around him, her hands trembling as they touched his face, his chest, searching for the wound. "I'm all right." Luke gasped, leaning his weight against the wall.
"Just a scratch. Morgan is a bad shot." Ayanna pulled his shirt up, checking the graze. Her fingers were gentle, cool against his burning skin. She let out a sob of relief, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. "He is arrested?" she asked, her voice muffled against his coat.
"He is finished." Luke said. "The judge suspended the claims. The army is standing down." Ayanna pulled back. She looked into his eyes. She saw the exhaustion there, but she also saw the victory.
"We did it." she whispered. "Survival." Luke said, echoing her father's words. "Bought at a price, but we kept the valley." In the dusty alley, amid the smell of gunpowder and horse manure, they clung to each other. It wasn't a romantic embrace of storybooks. It was the desperate clutching of two soldiers who had survived the war.
Luke smoothed her hair, his hand shaking. Ayanna held him up, her strength becoming his. "Let's go home." she said. The weeks that followed were a time of healing, both for the flesh and for the land. The tribe moved north, past the Sleeping Rock, into the high valley that was now recognized, on paper at least, as theirs.