Rainbow Snippets: Trying to do the right thing

_{^{Rainbow Snippets is a Facebook group for LGBTQ+ authors, readers, and bloggers to gather once a week and share six sentences from a work of fiction–a WIP or a finished work or even a 6-sentence book recommendation.}}

I’m sharing snippets from In Pain and Blood for a while. The prologue is part of the new additions and stars Tracker. The rewrite is a little light on the romance side and a touch darker in other parts.

This week’s snippet follows on from last week’s where Tracker found the spellster that the bandits attacked.

Wrapping her remains in his cloak, he hauled her from the wagon. It would take hours for him to bury all of these people on his own, time he couldn’t spare. He was meant to burn spellster remains to ash, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that either.
The ground was hard, baked by the summer heat. Still, he beat at the earth, chopping it up with a bandit’s sword, before his search amongst their weapons brought up a metal buckler. He used the small shield as a shovel, piling the dirt high on either side. The hole didn’t have to be big—the girl had been a typical elven child, short and slight—but he needed the hole to be deep to keep the wildlife from digging her up.
He had tried to do the right thing, even abandoning the code every King’s Hound was raised to follow. The girl had left the tower unleashed, that should’ve meant her death. But she’d been barely ten years old and following at her guardian’s heels, just as she likely had done since she could walk.

Tracker will be back next week with more from In Pain and Blood. In the meantime, check out these other snippets.