Chapter 57
Chapter
Fifty-Seven
EVIE
I was growling.
An acrid, bitter substance coated my tongue and dripped from my lips.
My vision was grey and hazy.
My fingers grabbed tightly onto something and wouldn’t let go.
Someone , my mind whispered through the feral state I was in.
A chant vibrated in the back of my sore throat, but I couldn’t make sense of the words.
Breathe. Please, breathe.
I was breathing. I growled once more.
Not you , my own thoughts replied. Him.
I shook my head, nostrils flaring. That didn’t make any sense.
I curled myself tighter with a rumble, like a dragon guarding its eggs. I’d turned into a primal, ferocious being, guided by instincts I didn’t understand.
I had to release heat, as much of it as my body could give, and I wouldn’t move even if the entire world cracked around me.
He needed me.
Through the daze, I sensed someone drawing near.
My leg kicked out and I bared my teeth. Unseeing, I snapped my jaws menacingly.
I jerked my head, nose rising high in the air.
I was surrounded.
Enemies.
No. Friends.
“Stay back,” someone said fearfully. “She might bite you, too.”
Bite? Too?
I’d only bitten myself, I–
Everything came crashing back into my mind.
The assassins.
My blood.
The shrieks.
Zandyr falling.
I blinked through the haze, panic taking over. Shapes slowly began to take form.
Owyn crouched above me somehow, brows furrowed in concern.
Warriors stood behind him, eyes red and heads bowed, chanting grimly.
Goose had tears down his cheeks and a bloodied arm wrapped around Leesa, who’d hidden her face in his chest, sobs wracking her body.
Adara blinking down at me fast. Too fast.
With suffocating dread, I looked down. I was lying in a crater, half of my body draped over Zandyr.
He wasn’t moving.
A scream I hadn’t known I was capable of ripped from my throat, searing everything inside of me.
“No, no, no, NO!” I begged gods new and forgotten and gently cupped his cheeks. He was so cold. His lips were still twisted in a grin. The gash on his neck was smeared green. No blood or poison gushed out.
The great Dragon of the Blood Brotherhood laid there, breaking my heart and spirit with each breath he didn’t take.
“At least the Blue Queen survived,” I heard a haggard mutter.
“We need to announce the prince’s demise–”
“HE IS NOT DEAD!” I roared, that same primal instinct bursting out of me. “Say that again and I’ll forsake you.”
I shouldn’t have said that.
Right now, I didn’t care.
A bottomless hopelessness clawed at me even as my frantic palms pressed on his chest, desperate for a pulse. A shudder. Anything.
“Evie,” Kaya said between sobs. “He’s not breathing–”
“Stop saying that. He’s not dead.” Nobody, not even Xamor himself, could convince me otherwise. A part of me screamed that I was lying. “He can’t be.”
“How do you know?” Adara said, trying to soothe me. I heard the doubt in her voice and I hated it.
I hated everyone, most of all me.
“Because I’m not dead, am I?” I barked. “I would have followed him to the other side.”
I barely heard Adara mutter something about fated mates to the others.
I didn’t care what Zandyr thought, what the Oracle had said, or what everyone around me cried over.
The only truth that mattered now was mine.
I was living, breathing, and screaming, so some part of Zandyr was still tethered to this world.
I delved into the part of me where the bond usually pulsed.
Cold, so cold.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I kept searching and found nothing , only emptiness and despair.
It couldn’t be.
Sobs began to shake my body as I kept seeking.
Further.
Faster.
Desperate.
He couldn’t be dead, I kept chanting in my mind, even as I felt a dark abyss opening up inside me, tempting me to follow it.
It sounded so sweet. A relief, nothing more, nothing less.
Death was beckoning.
No.
He couldn’t leave me alone in this world and pass into the beyond without me. If I had to fight the gods themselves to prevent that, I would. I–
There.
A sobbed cry of joy ruptured from me as I sensed it. The smallest, faintest tremble of life on his end of the bond. A small trickle of warmth in a sea of ice.
I latched on to it so viciously, I almost blacked out again.
“He’s not dead,” I announced, the tears now relieved.
Not dead, but not quite alive, either.
Only sighs met my delirious declaration. Everyone around me thought I was losing my mind.
I didn’t blame them.
“Let’s say he’s alive for now.” Adara spoke up, the only one with the guts to do it. “He won’t be for long. He’s been poisoned.”
That reality rattled me back to reality.
Time was our new enemy.
I had to become the leader Zandyr needed me to be right now.
I needed to make some very hard decisions, very fast, and hope none would be a mistake.
He was alive…for now. That poison wouldn’t take him away from me.
I ignored the call from the abyss and sat up on my shaking knees.
Gods, he looked so peaceful, even as my entire spirit shook.
“Carry him inside. Gently,” I commanded, barely recognizing my own voice. I sounded unflinching. “Nobody can know. The secret doesn’t leave this courtyard.”
He saved me.
It was my turn to save him.