Chapter Thirty-Four
Ronan
Icradle Sylvie to me as I wait for Quinn to return. I feel the slightest stir of her shoulder against my body. Please, Sylvie. Please be alright.
My beautiful, darling Sylvie. I’m not going to lose her. I’m not. Not again. I can’t lose her.
The panic shifts to anger. What was Zara doing to her? What was she doing to the shadow-born, and why?
Was it all to get to me? Is Sylvie in this state because of me?
Sylvie knows something, I realize. She’s trying to tell me something with her feelings, but I can’t understand it.
“Just rest,” I tell her. “We’ll figure it out when you’re better.”
The pain in my ankle makes itself known as my heart rate returns to normal. I reach out and touch it, trying my magic once more.
It’s working, a little. It’s slower than ordinary, but something is happening at last.
“Finally.” I stop what I’m doing and focus on Sylvie, sending a light into the room so I can see her clearly.
I do what I can for the wound on her leg; she’ll need a nature-born to prevent it from scarring, but it shouldn’t cause her much pain.
Then I remove the tube from her arm—at least most of the blood from the bag went back in—and I heal the small hole it leaves behind.
Only then do I return to my own ankle. Thankfully, the flesh there is thin, so although the wound is deep, it’s accessible to my light. I’d feel better if I had an elixir, though.
Zara would have made one for me. Fuck, I’d been so blind.
She had done so much of my care the past couple of years, refusing to let the other alchemists do it.
And I’d let her. I’d appreciated the personal attention of the Guild Mistress.
I’d appreciated the presence of someone light-born, the only one I’d met after my father died. It blinded me to her true intentions.
But it does validate what I’ve long suspected about the nature of light magic.
I feel multiple people coming through the halls we traveled to get here before I can hear them. Stella and my guards.
“In here,” I call. I stand up, lifting Sylvie into my arms once more.
“Sir?” Stella freezes inside the door at the bloody scene, torch in hand.
“Help Quinn and Taran down the hall.”
They rush through the room, pushing Zara’s body to the side as they vanish into the darkened corridor. They return only minutes later, trailing behind Quinn, who shoves an alchemist into the room. “Heal her, and maybe I won’t kill you.”
The alchemist examines Sylvie as others trail into the small room.
He lifts her limbs and examines the movement of her eyes as I hold her.
“Tincture of hemlock,” he says, his voice trembling.
“One of the Guild Mistress’s. There’s no antidote, but from her movements, the Guild Mistress didn’t use enough to kill her.
It will wear off on its own in a few hours. ”
She could have died. Gods, she could have died.
Why didn’t she die? What was the purpose of keeping her alive? “Why didn’t Zara kill her?”
“We need them alive for the alchemy, sir. Forgive me, your majesty,” he says, cowering before me. “I didn’t know—”
“Enough,” I say. They were using the blood of the shadow-born for the fucking alchemy.
I should have known. The rage rises in me as he sputters, trying to justify himself.
If he doesn’t get away from me this moment, I’m going to kill him.
And I might need him alive to help Sylvie and the shadow-born. “Get him out of my sight.”
Stella rushes forward and takes the man away into the hallway. It’s a sorry scene in the little room and the hallway beyond. My guards are either restraining alchemists or holding up one of a group of people in decaying rags that looks like they haven’t had a proper meal in weeks.
I look over the shadow-born, trying to find Vesper, but I don’t see her there among them.
Damn. Sylvie nearly died tonight, and I was too late to save Vesper.
This is my fault. They were in this mess because of me. I did this.
And then I notice a woman with reddish brown hair.
“Vesper?” I ask. Her hair is so filthy I can barely tell, but it looks like it might have been Vesper’s vibrant red once. And there are holes in her ears that once held earrings. She’s unrecognizable otherwise. Her face is gaunt, and her skin is sallow. She looks days away from death.
Fucking hell, what did they do to her? She’s only nineteen. She was just meant to track Cyrus when he left the palace. It’s my fault she ended up here.
It’s my fault Sylvie ended up here.
“Your majesty?” she asks weakly. Of course. She doesn’t know who I am without Soren’s mask.
“Someone has been looking for you,” I say. I feel Sylvie urge me to let her see. “We found her,” I whisper as I hold her up.
There are eight shadow-born in all. The three we knew were missing, and another five that we didn’t. And gods know what else we’ll find here and in the Guild when we return.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I say as Taran hobbles in, clutching at his side. I heal him quickly; the wound is shallow. He tries to carry Sylvie for me, but I won’t let him.
We make our way back through the narrow halls and into an awaiting carriage in the alley. Sylvie lifts her head slightly as we approach it, and I sigh in immense relief at her movement.
“I’ve got you,” I tell her. “I’ll never let anything happen to you.”
But I don’t know if I can really promise her that. I’m the reason she was here tonight. Zara came after her to get to me. She must have been watching, waiting for this opportunity to strike.
And she’s far from my only enemy.
“Ronan,” she groans out, her voice barely more than a whisper. I feel her fear. She must have sensed my feelings about endangering her. She’s worried that I’m going to leave her.
I should. I should at least consider it, consider what’s best for her.
She is screaming at me with her feelings. The feeling is so strong, I can almost hear her voice in my mind. “Don’t you dare,” she’s saying. “Don’t you dare leave me.”
“I’m here, Sylvie. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Gods, I don’t think I could if I tried. And I hate myself for it. I hate how selfish it is. I hate the way that it strengthens my magic to admit it to myself, to her. To admit that I’m going to keep her as close to me as I can, no matter the consequences for us both.
I can’t let her go.
I hold her in my arms and press my light into her skin through my hands, gripping her as tightly as I can. I don’t think she’s in pain, but I hope the light soothes her. I hope it comforts her.
I whisper soothing words to her, my lips on her forehead, in her hair. My hands stroking her back. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. I’m here. I won’t let you go.” I whisper them over and over as the carriage takes us home.
As I carry Sylvie into the palace, she croaks out another word at me. “Bath.”
I can’t say I blame her for asking. Her dress is soaked in her blood, and her hair and body are filthy from the cellar floor.
But I’m ashamed to admit that my own body responds to her request. I know I shouldn’t want to see her naked in this state, but it’s hard to forget what we were doing before all of this happened.
And it’s even harder when she starts feeling things at me again. Wicked, wonderful things.
“Should I get a servant?” I ask. They’re busy replacing all the candles in the entire palace, but it’s the polite thing to do, to offer to let a servant bathe her. The gentlemanly thing to do.
I don’t want to be polite.
“No,” she says, shaking her head to the side a tiny bit. “You.”
With fucking pleasure.
I carry her down the stairs into my private bathing chambers. There’s a large copper basin that I use when I’m too dirty to enter the natural pools, and I ask the servants to fill it while I tend to her.
I place her on a bench with a towel beneath her. Her feelings are begging me to undress her, to hold her, to kiss her again, and fuck, I want to. “You have no idea how fucking badly I want to.”
But I can’t do it, not while she can’t respond to me.
“I promise I’ll give you everything you want,” I say to her. “But not until you can move on your own. Not until you can feel it with your body as well as your mind.”
Her mouth pouts a little at the corners. I want to kiss the smile back onto her face.
But I resist. I pull her toward me, feeling her warm breath on my neck as I slip the fabric off her shoulders. She’s straining, trying to get her lips to move.
“Just relax,” I say. “Let me take care of you.”
I step back to ease the fabric from her waist, and gods, the sight of her naked drives me wild with desire.
I’ve wanted this so badly. I’ve pictured her body so many times; I’ve touched myself to the fantasy of her. I’ve come in my hand with her name on my lips. But to see her, to finally see all of her, it’s beyond my wildest dreams.
“Touch me,” she begs, her voice just a tiny bit stronger. Gods, I want to. I want to hold those beautiful breasts in my hands, to circle her perfect little nipples with my tongue, to feel her arch under me—
“No,” I say. There won’t be any arching, not for a while yet. And there won’t be much feeling either, not on her part. I shimmy the fabric from beneath her, trying very hard not to look at the space between her legs, the space where my tongue was only hours earlier.
I pick her up before I can get a better look, but it doesn’t help. If anything, it’s worse with her naked body pressed against me. Her desperate attempts to push herself against me, fruitless though they are, are driving me mad.
“I’m getting you clean, and then you’re getting some rest. And then we can talk about whatever you’re trying to do down there.”
“Talk now,” she whines.
I hold her head up and look her in the eyes. “I can’t. If I talk about it…”
I swallow. Fuck, I can barely stop myself from touching her as it is.
I lower her into the steaming bath. Her fingertips grip the fabric of my shirt, begging me to remove it and join her.
I want to. I’m filthy too. Would it be so bad to bathe with her?