Chapter 58
Chapter
Fifty-Eight
EVIE
“ W hat happened after the arrow hit?” I asked urgently as I followed the six warriors carrying Zandyr’s body inside his room.
I limped more than walked, everything inside me sapped. But I was upright, I was thinking, and I wasn’t giving up.
Not once did I let go of that calm, warm glimmer of him at the end of that faded bond. But the tighter I held on, the more I felt my body cave. No, not my body.
My heart.
My spirit.
“You jumped and embraced him,” Owyn said, walking beside me. Not Adara. Why? “Then a great big blue glow erupted from you in a boom. I couldn’t see anything after that. I managed to shield my eyes just in time.”
The warriors laid his body onto the bed, heads still bowed. Even in this half-living state, Zandyr managed to look regal, lying there like a statue in a mausoleum.
Some of the warriors were still chanting under their breaths. I finally recognized the rhythm.
It was a funeral chant.
“Stop it right now,” I commanded. I turned my attention back to Owyn, but my eyes never strayed from Zandyr’s face. “Just in time?”
Owyn hesitated. “Adara was running toward you, looking straight ahead and…”
I snapped my head toward her. She was walking slowly, still blinking too much, the tips of her feet hesitant, feeling the floor.
My shattered heart sunk further.
“Adara?” I breathed out.
“It’s fine,” she said, sounding more annoyed that I attracted attention to her than anything else. “It’s my own damn fault. I saw what you did to those elders in the temple, I shouldn’t have been looking straight at you.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I can already make out shapes, I’ll be fine in no time. If for nothing else than to spite those who wanted to murder us.” Adara scoffed, even as her hip hit the corner of a table. “Damn Frostfall Reach, couldn’t they have built softer furniture?”
I struggled past the guilt. “What did you see?”
“The two of you hitting the pavement in a kind of a blue cocoon. You made a crater and the light exploded.”
I frowned. How could we have done that? My memories were still foggy, coated in a feral shade of red, where I only saw Zandyr’s face, desperate to feel his pulse.
After the jump, I didn’t sense anything else before I began hearing voices and–“Who did I bite?”
“That would be me.” Goose raised his arm, as if being called upon at school, an angry red mark on his skin. He held a piece of gauze in his palm. “I tried to patch up your wound. I think you were afraid I was attacking him.”
My throat parched even further. “I am so sorry, Goose. I didn’t–I don’t know why I did that.”
“You weren’t yourself.”
“That is no excuse. I didn’t mean to hurt you or Adara.”
The warriors exchanged a quick, surprised glance between them, and I pretended not to notice. I might have threatened to forsake one of them, if my hazy thoughts were to be believed.
“We know,” Adara said. “This is the last thing you need to worry about right now.”
“You do need to let me patch you up,” Goose said. With my nod, he approached without hesitation and began tying the fabric around the wound, tsking at the smeared blood.
I didn’t deserve his kindness. I’d bitten him. Blinded Adara. Threatened a warrior.
This was not me. Some ancient, deranged side of me had ruptured to the surface, and I didn’t like her. She was vicious and uncaring.
Fated mates meant sacrificing yourself for your intended, not harming others, willingly or not.
My gaze traveled up Zandyr’s body.
Gods, he was so still.
“What happened to the assassins?” my voice lashed out.
“Dead.” Adara grinned. “Their eyes shined blue and then poof. Ash. Some of them fell from above the dome before turning to dust, arrows still strapped to their backs.”
My frown deepened. That didn’t make any sense. They’d been stubbornly immune to Zandyr’s powers.
“One of our warriors is also dead.” Myron reverently placed Zandyr’s sword on the floor next to the bed, as if the prince would rise and reach for it any moment now. “Whatever enchantment you used weeded out the traitor.”
My gaze lashed out over the warriors. The ruddy-haired one who knew too much about the blonde girl was missing.
I spit on the floor, in lieu of his grave. He wouldn’t get a funeral. When I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, the skin was smeared with a green sludge, like the one that had gushed from Zandyr’s neck.
Has I been poisoned? Impossible.
I was standing.
Breathing.
Freaking out.
“You tried to suck the poison from The Dragon’s neck and didn’t let anyone stop you,” Kylian said. “Good thing you didn’t swallow any–”
I ran to the closest vase and retched right into it, stomach in knots even after I emptied it. Luckily, no green sludge, only the plums I’d grabbed from a tree on the road.
They all watched and pretended nothing strange happened.
Leesa approached me slowly and handed me a cloth. She was still sniffling, the gash on her head now patched up and tied securely with a gauze; I could recognize Goose’s knots out of a million.
“I’ll mix some tonic for you, wash that bad taste out of your mouth,” she said gingerly, not meeting my eyes.
“Thank you,” I croaked as I righted myself, a task made infinitely more difficult by the call of the abyss crooning from inside. I wiped my mouth clean, but the bitter taste still lingered. It would probably haunt me for the rest of my days.
Zandyr was lying there, poisoned, and I was no closer to a solution than when I’d begun searching for answers.
Whatever I’d done in my wild state hadn’t drawn out all of the poison.
He wasn’t moving.
My Zandyr wasn’t moving.
“We have no healers with us,” I muttered out of sheer desperation to hear something, anything in the deafening silence.
“Healers won’t help,” Adara said. “Nobody’s discovered what that poison is, let alone a cure for it.”
But that girl, Elyssia, was getting closer, Zandyr had said so once. My head snapped toward Myron and Kylian. “The Viper. You know where she is?”
They nodded in tandem.
“How fast can you get her here?” My heart began galloping with the barest thread of hope.
“Two days if we ride all day and night,” Kylian said.
“Then go. Take Madrya and Zorin and ride like this wind on the mountains around us. Tell no one.”
Kylian and Myron snapped their heels together and placed their hands above their hearts. A warrior salute, meant for a warrior leader. They did the same movement toward Zandyr, clenching their jaws, before they thundered out of the room.
The silence turned uglier as I approached the bed, shaking from my tousled hair down to my bloodied, ashy boots.
We’ll save you , I blasted through the bond, hoping he’d hear. We’ll bring you back.
We had to.
“The Viper hasn’t found a cure yet,” Adara said.
“She saved Dara’s fiance,” I said.
“He only had a knick on his leg. The Dragon was struck in his neck. If the poison hasn’t reached his heart yet it would be a miracle.”
“Then we’ll have a miracle,” I hissed. “If I have to fight the gods themselves to keep him here, I will.”
I sounded insane. I didn’t care.
The silence stretched.
Finally, Adara sighed. “Then we need to plan in case a miracle doesn’t come and Xamor wins that particular fight.”
A new growl vibrated through my chest. “Adara–”
“Evie,” she said, using my name for the first time. That halted every vengeful word I wanted to throw out into this world that wanted to take him away from me. “Zandyr is dying –”
Her breath caught on that last word. That small waver ripped the air out of my own lungs. Adara didn’t fret. She was my pessimistic, stoic rock.
She cleared her throat with a low, muttered curse, then went on, “If The Dragon falls, we all do, and they win . What do we do?”
She was right. I knew she was right, but every part of me rebelled against the idea.
I gently touched the back of Zandyr’s hand, as if he could slip me a secret letter with the solution.
He was so cold.
I trembled and swallowed my sob.
“Since everyone in this room is alive, we have no traitors among us.” I slipped my fingers between his, silently begging him to ground me against making a huge mistake. “Zandyr’s state can’t be revealed.”
“That was enough noise to attract attention,” Owyn said. He winced as he tried to cross his arms. Only then did I notice the huge slash on his forearm and the forming bruise on his face, eyelid swollen and droopy.
“Did anybody come?” I asked.
“No. Not even the guards.”
Especially not the fucking guards.
“People will talk,” Owyn said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Adara nodding; she was doing it facing the wall, but she still looked as fierce as ever. She’d earned the right to hide the tears I knew were coating her cheeks. “The three of you were supposed to hold a ceremony tomorrow. The prince’s absence will sow chaos in the Clan.”
We’d had enough chaos to last us an eternity.
I squeezed Zandyr’s fingers, almost screaming in despair when he didn’t move. The abyss’ call grew louder and my legs were two breaths away from caving.
I took a deep, centering breath, and stood tall.
“We’ll let Frostfall Reach know there was an attack,” I said. “Tell them I was hurt and Zandyr refuses to leave my side.”
Romantic tales would be written about this trick, of a prince standing next to his beloved as she took her last breath.
An easy lie. An even easier explanation for our absence.
“Kaya?” I asked.
She yelped in reply, taken aback. She’d been standing next to Vexa, hair a wild mess, robe torn, still holding a fire poker.
“I need you to put on your best dress and charm everyone at that ceremony tomorrow,” I said. “I want you to appear as happy as possible at the thought of me dying.”
That lie might become reality soon if this darkness seeped further into me.
Kaya sniffled and raised her head high. “I’ll be the best Jewel of the Blood Brotherhood this Clan has ever seen.”
“Good.” I licked my lips. “Leesa and Goose, infiltrate the crowd and spread the news of my imminent demise.”
Nods surrounded me.
“ Nobody needs to know about the prince's true condition. Not the civilians, not the healers, and definitely not his parents.”
That would have been the fastest way for Banu and Valuta to find out.
Nobody contradicted me.
“As soon as The Viper arrives, bring her in.” My knees began to tremble. “Let no outsider in and bring me every pelt and blanket this house has. And pray like your own lives depend on it.”
Because we truly needed a miracle.
One by one, they filtered out of the room, but their gloom lingered. When I sensed nobody but Adara remained, I finally allowed myself to collapse on the bed, right next to Zandyr.
“Adara,” I muttered, struggling to reposition myself so that my body was glued to his, trying to give him all my warmth, like he’d given me his air in the dream. “I need you to promise me something.”
“Anything,” she said without hesitation.
“If I die,” I began and she didn’t contradict me. She was the only one who realized how close to death I would be if Zandyr did fall. “No heroics. No revenge. You take everyone and run .”