41
Blinding pain ripped down the bond, and I nearly fell from my horse as we raced through the desert. Clutching my chest, I doubled over, barely managing to stay seated.
“Assyria?”
I shouted down our bond.
She didn’t answer.
“Assyria!”
That one came out with an intensity only reserved for my worst behaving soldiers.
Still nothing but that searing agony.
“Rokath, what’s wrong?”
Rapp yelled. I couldn’t even pick my head up to answer him.
“She’s in pain,”
I gritted out.
Thankfully, Rapp understood what was happening and kicked his horse, urging him on. Mine followed, and I gripped as hard as I could with my legs and knotted my fingers in his mane.
Two dogs barked, their fervency growing, and we rode straight toward the sound.
Assyria must be dying for this level of anguish.
I was no stranger to near-death experiences, and this level of torment always accompanied it. “Hurry,”
I wheezed. Her death wouldn’t necessarily mean my own, but I would share this pain with her until the end.
She doesn’t deserve to suffer.
The thought stole the rest of my breath. I couldn’t—wouldn’t think about her like that.
Because she’s my mate.
Once again, I cursed the Fates. Lately, trusting their timing was becoming tedious. Whether the Weaver had deemed this path the correct one or the Reaper had placed a curse on us was undecided. We had to continue walking forward regardless.
Rapp slowed his mount as we rode upon a pile of rocks, and in the darkness, Grem and Zeec’s red eyes flashed. Rapp leaped from his horse and raced toward them, and I gritted my teeth and slid from my own. Each step was like a lance through my chest, but I couldn’t stop. Not when my mate was dying.
Cresting the rocks, I found Rapp crouched beside a limp, lifeless Assyria and a severed cobra. “Fucking Reaper,”
I swore. She’d been bitten, which explained why she was suffering in such an excruciating way. The snakes found in the Paks Desert were the deadliest in all of Ravasz, which meant Assyria was quite literally teetering on the threshold between life and death.
I have to save her.
Sucking in a serrated breath, I called my wings from my back, stretching and flexing them as they settled between my shoulder blades. “Give her to me,”
I growled at Rapp.
His head snapped up. “I can fly her–”
“No,”
I snarled, half-stumbling forward. My heart thundered in my chest, and sweat broke out on my temples. “Take the horses and the dogs. I’ve got her.”
Rapp didn’t argue a second time. He hauled her up to where I stood, and then I clutched her to my chest like she was the key to slaughtering all the Angels.
She very well might be, for I’d spent none of this time with her trying to figure out why she was essential. An action I kicked myself for as I spread my wings wide.
Assyria weighed nothing in my arms, and with one powerful flap, I launched us into the sky. The desert air at night was biting, and I willed my wings to catch the wind and spear us straight to the healer’s tents. A shiver wracked her small frame, and I curled around her, trying to prevent her from moving.
The torture was enormous, bigger than the Skala Mountains at my back, and pure, unfiltered adrenaline was the only thing keeping me airborne.
Why did you run, Assyria?
And better yet, why did I trust her not to?
I left her in such a state of anger earlier. I should have said something, done something different. I wanted to comfort her in that moment, but she wouldn’t look at me. She twisted her dainty fingers in my heart and pulled out an array of emotions I’d numbed for centuries. I didn’t know what to do, what to say, most of the time when it came to her.
The lights from the camp grew brighter, and I barreled toward the center of it, not caring that the entire fucking army saw me carrying a limp female in my arms like a fucking hero.
With a thud, I landed at the entrance to the healer’s tent, then stumbled inside. Assyria’s head lolled to the side, and she looked so fucking pale in my arms. A cry of alarm sounded around me, and I snapped my attention to them. “Anti-venom, pium, poppy,”
I managed to grind out, each step forward spearing me with blinding, unending agony.
No one moved, only stared in wide eyed, slack jawed shock.
“Now!”
I roared with the last of my strength, then collapsed to my knees, Assyria still clutched against my chest. Her heartbeat was so weak, so faint…
“Your Glory, if I may,”
the lead healer said, arms outstretched as if he were going to take her from me.
“Where,”
I growled, and he stepped back, gesturing toward an empty bed off to one side.
My knees protested as I stumbled toward it. The bed was thin and narrow, but clean. I placed Assyria on it with as much gentleness as I could muster. Three healers were on her the moment I let go, though I didn’t move more than an arm’s length from her side.
No one bothered to tell me to leave either. “Halálhívó, would you like a stool?”
an underling asked. The withering look I sent in his direction had him slinking back immediately.
“Lift her head,”
the lead healer instructed one of his companions. The male worked his hands beneath her shoulders, and as he raised her, her head snapped back, unsupported.
“Out of my fucking way,”
I snapped, shoving him aside and taking his place. This time, when Assyria rose off the table, my flexing biceps were there to give her the support she needed.
The lead healer poured two potions down her throat, then a splash of water. “You may lower her now.”
As I did, I jostled her shoulder, and a flare of pain traveled down our bond. Gritting my teeth, I pointed to the right one, “She is injured here too.”
“We will tend to it after her other wounds,”
he assured me.
The male I had shoved and another examined her calf, splashing more potions there and using some sort of tube and bulb on two puncture marks.
Where she had been bitten.
I wanted to fry that fucking snake, and unfortunately Rapp had beaten me to it.
Fingers curling into my palms, I waited, shifting from foot to foot as they worked. My own physical agony eased, though the emotional agony was something unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It was as if my heart was simultaneously racing and shattering into a thousand tiny shards, pounding so hard against my ribcage I thought it might crack the bones there and leap from my chest in an attempt to close the distance between Assyria and me. Almost involuntarily, I rested a hand on her uninjured shoulder, needing to touch her, to feel her, to ensure she was fucking here with me.
For I could not breathe, not rest, until I knew she would live.
The thought frightened me. And nothing ever caused me to feel real fear.
Color returned to her cheeks, and the rapid rise and fall of her chest softened and slowed. Sweat dotted the healer’s brows as they worked, cleaning and binding her leg. Eventually, the lead healer approached her shoulder again, moving it around and drawing a snarl from me as pain flared again.
He leveled a serious look at me. “This is going to hurt.”
Then, without further warning, he twisted, and an audible pop filled the tent. Assyria, still unconscious, jerked into my hand, a weak sound spilling from her throat. But then, the tension in her brow eased, and she sighed.
The healer settled her arm across her belly, then fetched rolls of fabric and began binding her shoulder and arm. “She needs to keep this immobilized for at least a week for the joint to heal. But otherwise, she should make a full recovery.”
It was all I could do to brace my hands on the table and let my head hang. The breath that had been lodged firmly in my throat finally escaped. “Thank you.”
When I looked up again, the lead healer’s maroon eyes were wider than when I had dropped into the tent with Assyria in my arms. “Of course, Halálhívó. I shall check in on her daily to ensure her continued improvement.”
“Does she need to remain here?” I asked.
He shook his head. “She can recover here or in your quarters, sir. Whichever you prefer.”
“My quarters,”
I pronounced, moving around the table in preparation to lift her.
The lead healer produced a bottle from his pocket. “Give this to her the moment she wakes. Ensure she has more water as well. Some food might settle her stomach if she is nauseous.”
I accepted the potion, then studied my mate. Ever so slowly, I snaked an arm behind her knees, careful not to touch her bandaged calf, then did the same beneath her mid-back, trying to support both her head and injured shoulder as I lifted her. This time, her heart beat a slow, steady rhythm against my cacophonous one.
Adjusting her slightly, I left the tent without another word. Most of the camp had settled, given it was now the middle of the night, and all was quiet as I strode toward the black tents in the center. Rapp and the hounds perked up at my approach, seeming to relax once they saw Assyria still breathed.
“Thank the Fates,”
Rapp said, rising from the stump he’d been sitting on.
I wasn’t sure a ‘thank you’ to those cunts was what I wanted to offer at the moment. This situation was exactly the issue I had with being attached to a female in the first place, let alone my fucking mate. They were a weakness, a liability, and a distraction.
“Open the flap,”
I said, too exhausted to try to be nice.
He hurried ahead of me and pulled it back. Ducking inside, I placed Assyria on the bed with the same level of care I had lifted her. Then, I put the potion on the bedside table. “I need water and something to eat,”
I told Rapp.
“I’ll be right back,”
he said, disappearing.
Unable to help myself, I settled on the bed beside her, watching those dark lashes fan against her cheeks, studying the dip of her lips, the shape of her jaw, the way her clothes hugged her figure. Lifting her hand, I studied the ring too, wondering why it was so important to her, why she had put herself at risk to retrieve it, and why Rapp had risked revealing her identity to win it.
My friend returned with both food and drink a moment later. “What’s so important about this?”
I asked him, indicating the dainty ring with the tiny garnet stone.
“It was her mother’s. She died in the plague, along with her whole family,”
Rapp told me.
Something that felt a lot like sympathy surged from my gut. First, she’d told me of how Vagach had treated her. And now this.
What else didn’t I know about my mate?
I said nothing, placing her palm over her belly, mirroring the one trapped there by the healer’s dressing. “I’ll see you in the morning,”
I said by way of dismissal.
“You’re staying here?”
Rapp questioned.
I managed to tear my gaze away from Assyria long enough to glimpse the shock on his face. “I am.”
My tone left no room for further questioning.
As much as I hated it, I had to.
Needed to.
Wanted to.
I smashed that thought into oblivion.
“Well with her near-death experience, that would make sense. The bond and all,”
Rapp offered with a shrug.
“Exactly,”
I replied coolly, returning my attention to my mate.
Rapp shifted on his feet like he wanted to say something else. “I’m glad Assyria is okay. I really like her, Rokath. I wish you’d see that you could too.”
Before I could respond, a whoosh of air brushed over us, signaling his departure. I waited another minute before carefully undressing Assyria, tucking a pillow under her head, and climbing onto the hard mattress beside her.
Watching. Waiting. Wondering.
Protecting Assyria from harm was one thing—at which I’d utterly failed that night. But caring for her? Liking her? That was an entirely different ask, one that I wasn’t sure I could manage, especially after what happened to me while I grew into an adult male. What happened while I trained at Fured. What happened to Thast.
My body calmed as I lay beside Assyria, and my eyes grew heavy as I reached for her stomach, resting my hand atop it just so I knew she was still alive. And then, before I was even conscious of it happening, sleep claimed me.