Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
CONNOR
I wake in a frothy white bed with the sounds and smells of the sea rolling through the open window. My head is foggy, but the salt air and sunshine tell me immediately where I am. Cardinal Island. A quick look around the room and I know I’m in the infirmary in the warrior camp. But why did they bring me here and not Morwyn’s clinic?
Fiona! I roar and try to sit up, the memories of what happened to her flooding back. I’m off-world which means I can’t hear anything down our bond. It’s not impossible for an image or feeling to travel between us while I’m here, but it would have to be intense to cover the distance. Right now, the bond is quiet. Pain erupts in my upper left pec and wing. I inspect them both and find them bandaged.
A jingle comes from the far corner, and I follow the sound to find Bones hobbling toward me, his front leg and side bandaged.
“Hey, buddy,” I say softly.
He doesn’t make it to me but flops down on the floor halfway between the dog bed and the adjustable I’m on. I work my feet over the edge of the mattress, and they clunk against the bedframe. Damn, I can’t remember ever feeling this weak. I rub a thumb over my scarred eyebrow. Nope not even then.
The door opens and Morwyn rushes in. “Connor, if you get out of that bed, I swear to the creator I will put you back in it and drug you unconscious until your wounds are entirely healed.”
“The Order has my mate,” I say through my teeth. But I don’t put my feet on the floor. In fact, I’m not entirely sure I can stand on my own. The room is spinning, and my head is pounding hard.
“Seb, Remus, and Ellison are tracking her. They won’t let anything happen to her.”
I close my eyes. “Zaire?”
“Alive but still unconscious. He’s in the next room. If he weren’t your Firetender, he’d definitely be dead. But that’s why we’re all here. You were very close to death when we brought you in. I don’t think you would have survived to make it to my clinic.” And if I had died, Zaire, cut off abruptly from our bond and my healing energy, would have likely died too. They did the right thing.
“Thank you,” I grit out.
As pained as I am to be beyond the range of my bond with Fiona, Morwyn wouldn’t lie about the severity of our injuries. He kept the three of us alive by using his key to open a portal and bring us here. The realm itself is healing to our kind. Cardinal Island is a place between places, a realm gifted to us by the creator for our safety and use, imbued with the celestial stuff we come from. I’ll heal faster here. Zaire’s and Bone’s survival was far more likely here than anywhere else.
“You did the right thing,” I tell him.
“Someone send a heater to hell because it has definitely frozen over.”
“How long have I been out?”
“A few hours.”
“And how long before I can go after her?”
“Two days,” he says. “If you eat and drink and rest, you’ll be ready to fight again in forty-eight hours.”
I close my eyes. It’s too long. “Twenty-four hours.”
“This isn’t a negotiation. You don’t have a choice. I can’t make your body heal any faster.”
I lean back against the pillows, my eyes closing of their own volition. I’m wrecked. Forty-eight hours. Fuck . What might he do to her in forty-eight hours?
“Do I need to knock you out?” Morwyn asks, brushing an invisible piece of lint from his sleeve. He’s capable, and it wouldn’t require drugs. Despite the lab coat, he is as much a warrior as I am and has knocked me on my ass in the sparring ring a few times when I was perfectly healthy.
“No. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good. Because the Oracle wants to talk to you, so much that she’s coming here.”
My eyes pop open. “Here? Like today?”
“I’m supposed to send word when you’re awake. ”
Never, in my recollection, has the Oracle ever left her temple for a personal visit, which means I’m probably in big trouble. Will she remove me from the brotherhood? I squeeze my eyes shut. I knew when I took Fiona that there would be consequences, but I can’t bring myself to regret it. She’s worth anything that comes. So I look on the bright side. Meeting with the Oracle might mean answers about Fiona, about what’s happening to her, about how I can get her back.
“Tell her I’m awake,” I say, “and honored she’d give me her time.”
Morwyn reaches a hand out, and I grasp it. “I got you, Connor,” he says softly. “You’re not alone in this. We got you. That’s why this is a brotherhood. Seb, Remus, and Ellison are already zeroing in on her location.”
And wasn’t that just my worst nightmare, to have to wait and exercise patience, to not be the one leading the charge? But I hold on to Morwyn a good long time. I want to rain violence on the Order, the likes of which they’ve never seen before, and carry Fiona out of there myself, but in lieu of that possibility, having my brothers do it is the next best thing.
Soon after Morwyn leaves, one of the Oracle’s acolytes arrives. Dressed entirely in red, their face is masked by a red veil that’s tucked into the high neck of their uniform so that no skin shows.
“Peace, warrior,” comes a soft, low voice through the veil. “I am Nova, here to prepare the room for the Oracle’s arrival.” Nova heads for their bag, their tall, slender body breaking up the endless white and ivory of the room. Bones hobbles after them, wagging his tail, but ends up tiring quickly and returning to his bed.
All acolytes take vows of piety and abstinence before entering the vocation, and in exchange they train directly under the Oracle in divination and astronomy. One of them will eventually rise to replace her. The Oracle herself has a mate, but per tradition, her acolytes must remain celibate while in the position. Celibate and, to the outside world, genderless until they either rise to become Oracle themselves or leave the position.
I push myself up in bed, groaning at the pain that branches through me.
Nova mercifully stops what they’re doing and puts another pillow behind my head. “Be at ease. She knows you are recovering and will require nothing of you physically.”
“Right.”
They return to their work, lighting the red candles and topping them with reflective domes that diffuse the light. They place a gold clock on the dresser across from me. It looks like something out of the Victorian era, all gears and glass with gold-and-pearl accents. Quiet ticking fills the room. Nova removes a black silk shroud from the bag and covers me and the bed with it.
The acolyte bows and exits the room, turning off the lights on their way out. Everything in the dim, candlelit room is black and red and gold ticking gears. My mind goes quiet in that space, my focus landing on the rhythm of my heart, my breath .
Sometime later, it might be a minute or an hour, the Oracle arrives, striding in with the posture of a queen. Although her size is diminutive, her presence would give even the strongest warrior pause. Rightfully so. She’s powerful. More powerful than any of us. She holds her chin high, her wild, curly hair framing a face with olive skin, a hooked nose, and a smile with one slightly crooked eyetooth. She wears a simple white blouse and a long floral skirt with a wide belt and leather sandals. It’s an outfit I might find on any older woman walking past my restaurant in New York. Nothing special. Nothing regal. But the power coming off her makes the hair on my arms stand at attention. And although I can’t get out of bed, I bow my head.
“Such deference from an Aries,” she says, moving closer. Bones gets up and hobbles over to her, wagging his tail. She smiles at him and rubs his ears. “Ah, an ambassador on your behalf. How persuasive he is. But I’m afraid you and I have unfinished business, Connor.”
“Bones, go lie down,” I command, and he does with an almost comical harrumph.
“I’ll get right to it,” she says. “Taking the bride from an altar in front of more than a hundred Order members was impulsive, irresponsible, and dangerous. You disregarded the direction of your appointed advisors, abused your position almost tyrannically, and in so doing, toyed with the lives of the brotherhood and our species. You had no idea what the fallout would be when you threw that woman over your shoulder, and here you are, injured and without the muscle to back up your decision while your brothers try to clean up your mess. ”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“No, you are not.”
“Okay. You’re right and I’m not sorry.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” she murmurs.
“The bride, Fiona, is my mate. She called to me, and I was unable to deny her.”
The Oracle’s pupils reflect the candlelight as if she holds an entire universe within her. “Has Fiona accepted your claim?”
“Yes. Just before she was stolen back by Roman. She is my true mate, the other half of my soul. Everything you accused me of is correct. I am impulsive and reckless, and I acted on my own without guidance from you or the rest of the four. But I don’t regret it. I could no sooner leave her on that altar as I could leave my own head. Every single moment I spent with her was worth the rest of mine without her. I will never regret saving her from him. I will never regret taking her.”
“I see.” She rubs her palms together in tight circles as she paces the room, her footsteps and the ticking of the clock the only sound. “No doubt you are curious what punishment I’m planning for you.”
I gulp. “It has crossed my mind.”
She stares up at the ceiling, and the flames from the candles reflected there. So that’s what the acolyte was doing. Normally, the Oracle meets with her subjects at the center of her sanctuary, where an observatory offers a clear view of the night sky. Here, the candles and reflective things Nova set up create an artificial view of the sky, one I have no doubt mirrors the actual position of the planets accurately. Her eyes glaze. “I’ve spent the past weeks in solitude, meditating on our predicament. Never in my thousands of years as Oracle have I seen the stars quite like this. And when you took her, I feared the path before us had become bleak, darker even than it would have been before. But it is easy to forget that the creator is always at work in the universe and that coincidences are often not coincidences at all. Was it a grand coincidence you met your mate when you did? Or did the creator place her in your path?”
“I’d like to think it was destined.”
“Yes. Because of love. You think your love was destined. But the stars tell me she is more. She is much more. You should know that Fiona is human, Connor, entirely so. She’s fragile. And while being with you will grant her health and prolonged life, she will never fly. She will never be a dragon.”
“I know. I accept her as she is.”
The Oracle paces in the opposite direction. “Different species. Different gods. Different ways of worshiping.”
I scratch my jaw, wondering what she’s getting at.
“Your mate, as it so happens, is exceptionally blessed.”
“Blessed?”
The Oracle nods slowly. “Blessed with a gift from her god, one that may be our salvation.”
“What kind of gift?”
The Oracle taps a fist to her chin. “It is veiled from me. The answers the stars give us are always shifting. They show me multiple futures, crossroads, possibilities. Fiona’s light is bright. I see her clearly and that she was chosen to be your mate for a reason, but beyond that, the future is cloudy. What I can say now, with certainty, is that you were meant to be in that garden on her wedding day and you were meant to take her, and if we are going to be ready for what is to come, it is imperative you get her back.”
A huge, relieved sigh leaves my lips. “Morwyn says I won’t be well enough until the day after tomorrow.”
“Listen to Morwyn.” Smiling wistfully, she looks back at the ceiling, her fingers grazing her throat. “I see you with her. I see her in your arms.” The Oracle inhales sharply, a look of horror transforming her face. Her hands fly to her mouth.
“What’s wrong? What do you see?” I push myself up in a panic.
She quiets me with a raised palm. “The fires of change.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Heal, Aries, then go get your mate. You have my permission to bring her here for Mason’s ascension when it is done.” She turns to leave, looking forlorn somehow.
“Is there something else?” I ask, knowing in my gut she hasn’t told me everything.
With a long deep sigh, she turns and looks directly at me, her dark eyes large and soulful in the candlelight. “Whatever happens, whatever you have to do to get her back, you must succeed, and do not blame yourself if there are unexpected complications. Some things are meant to be.”
A soft smile warms her face as she turns and leaves. All the candles flicker out. The clock stops ticking. And her acolyte breezes in, turns on the lights, and takes it all away without another word.