Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Camilla
Elaina was remarkably beautiful. It was such a simple kind of beauty, but it was entirely unmatched. I’d never seen anyone shine so effervescently as she did.
It was her soul.
It practically sparkled through her eyes and smile.
Such pure goodness radiated out of her that I couldn't look away. I was supposed to be working. I was supposed to be checking bandages, but she was standing across the room, dimples in both of her cheeks as she smiled and I just couldn’t think about anything else.
Many of the wounded had started to recover, thankfully, which meant there were fewer and fewer bandages that needed my attention. In fact, life was starting to find a rhythm here. Even Elaina had started giving herself the freedom to relax.
She was sleeping more, and the extra rest had brought a new color to her skin and fullness to her hair. Now that she wasn’t constantly worried she would have to deliver the news that someone’s loved one was going to die, she smiled more.
And Gods, I loved her smile.
It was very distracting.
“How’s it going over here?” Elaina asked, stopping in front of where I was bent over Mrs. Manyki.
I cleared my throat, securing the bandage on Mrs. Manyki’s calf. The old woman grinned at me wryly as if she knew exactly how distracted I’d been and exactly who had caused that distraction. “Everything looks like it’s healing perfectly, Mrs. Manyki.”
Rising, I brushed my hands off against my thighs, trying not to shiver when Elaina tucked her arm through mine and began leading me towards the kitchen.
“Can I interest you in some lunch?” She asked, running her fingertips over my forearm. I fought against the shiver that raced up my spine from her touch alone. “It’s possible the weather is finally warm enough for us to sit outside after that awful storm.”
Yes. I would most definitely have lunch with her.
“Lunch sounds great.”
She glanced up at me with somewhat of a bashful smile and I swear my stomach did a full somersault. A single smile was enough to bring me to my knees.
“Will others be joining us?” I asked.
I sincerely hoped the answer to that question was no. Maybe it was selfish, but I wanted her attention reserved for myself. I didn’t want to share her with the world, and I didn’t want to worry that the world would turn her against me.
“Would you be upset if I said no?”
“Of course not!” The words came out in such a jumbled mess that I felt myself blushing. “I only mean that—”
I stumbled.
Blinding pain shot through my skull, so intensely that my knees buckled and the floor came racing towards me.
Elaina wrapped an arm around my waist quickly, holding me steady as all other thoughts fell away.
A tingling energy shot out of my gut, traveling through my body until stars burst in my vision.
“Camilla!” Elaina’s hand rose to cup my cheek.
She faded away. Everything faded away as my vision went out completely.
Absently, I was aware of screaming behind me, cries of bugs crawling over skin and bats flying in the air, but I couldn’t pay any mind to it when that unexplainable pain struck through me once more.
I grasped my head, fingers ripping through my hair as I slammed my eyes shut.
It was unimaginable, worse than any torture my grandmother, the Dragon, or Pasnia had subjected me to. Worse than those days spent on the brink of death huddled on the dirty floor of the palace dungeon. Worse than I could ever attempt to explain to another soul.
Death had returned for me. I was certain of it.
“Camilla, look at me!”
When I buckled a second time and finally to my knees, Elaina fell with me, her fingertips running soothing paths over my head.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice was desperate. “Open your eyes, please!”
I did as she told me. I blinked through the pain, opened my eyes, and saw another world.
The air smelt of mud and pine. Wildly, I spun in a circle, taking in the dusty leaves and cracked ground beneath my feet. Thick branches and dying leaves blocked out any view of the sun, leaving everything around me dim and unsettling.
“Elaina?” I called. My voice seemed to echo endlessly around me.
Woods. I was in the woods.
I spun once more, this time in the opposite direction, desperate to understand my new surroundings. How in all of creation was I in the woods?
“I need a weapon!”
My heart lurched as I jolted from the sudden voice behind me, seconds before my blood ran cold with recognition.
I knew that voice.
A broken gasp escaped my lips as I stumbled towards it, only for a scream to shatter the air only minutes later. The cry surrounded me, echoing unnaturally in my mind as I broke into a sprint, moving towards the sound with desperate intensity.
I wasn’t entirely sure where I was or how I had gotten here, but I knew I needed to move. I needed to find her.
That was the single most important thing I could do with my otherwise useless life.
Twigs snapped under my feet as branches smacked across my face, but I kept running, not even feeling the splitting skin across my cheek.
“Thea!” Another voice, one I didn’t recognize.
I shoved myself over a fallen tree, running at full speed. After no more than a few paces, the pinch of a cramp started in my left side and I ignored it, shoving my hand against the ache just as I spotted characteristically golden hair.
“Thea,” her name escaped in a whisper.
I almost couldn’t believe it. After all this time, she was standing right before me.
Just feet away. She stood with her shoulders squared in a simple gown, while her lady-in-waiting trembled behind her.
Thea’s skin was pale and gaunt, exhaustion painfully obvious across her features and bones obviously protruding across her collarbone.
A splint awkwardly encircled her wrist, and she kept the arm close even as she reached behind her, palm open and demanding.
“I don’t have anything!” cried her lady.
I stared at them, trying to understand the panic clear in both of their eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Thea looked around with narrowed focus, her eyes coasting over me as she did. Her eyes passed over me without the slightest hint of recognition, as if I weren’t there at all. Or as if she couldn’t see me.
Holding my arms in front of me, I glanced down at myself, swallowing audibly.
I couldn't see my hands.
I could feel the extension of my arms as if they were right there in front of me, though. Rubbing my forefinger against my thumb, I marveled at the way I could sense the touch without actually seeing the appendages themselves.
I wasn't really here. Whatever magic had brought me this vision didn't allow me to actually interact with Thea.
She and her lady were alone, with nothing but a white cat at their ankles who stared at them with twitching whiskers.
Thea’s lady jumped as a snarl ripped towards them, and it was only then that I could look past the two women and notice those awful Underworld monsters crawling towards them.
Four of them, with peeling skin and rotting teeth, lurched for the girls with vicious, inhuman roars.
Thea spun, lifting her leg to kick out at the one that rushed at her while grabbing for the other that moved towards her lady. With her uninjured hand, she slammed her palm upwards, pushing the monster’s nose into its decaying flesh before she fell backwards and rammed her elbow into another.
“How do we kill them?” her lady screamed, as her arms lit up in flames. She waved her arms awkwardly at the monsters, clearly untrained and clueless on how to actually defend herself.
The Dragon had insisted that the members of the Council learn to defend themselves, but he clearly hadn’t been concerned with members of the palace staff—an oversight that could very well mean this poor woman’s death.
“I’ve only ever seen them killed with a blade to the head,” Thea breathed as she continued fighting.
That momentary exchange had been too much of a distraction.
Thea didn’t notice the creature behind her until it had already closed its mouth around her forearm.
She threw her head back and screamed as its jaw clamped down so forcefully that her skin split on contact.
Blood poured from the wound, dripping onto the cold ground.
“Run!” she ordered, ripping her arm free and taking a few desperate, staggering steps before she found her balance and took off.
“No, wait!” I called, following them.
I couldn’t see where we were through all the damn trees.
The monsters followed us, hunger giving them even more of that unnatural speed.
“Thea!” her lady panted. “What do we do?”
Thea’s eyes were wide. She shook her head. Her steps faltered for a brief second.
“I don’t know. Just run.”
And so they did.
And somehow, I knew instantly that it was the wrong decision.
“No,” I whispered, the eerie feeling falling over me. “No, turn back. Go back!”
They couldn’t hear me. I screamed. I shouted her name over and over, begging her to stop because I didn’t know how I knew, but I did.
I knew that death awaited her in that direction.
Still, they ran.
They ran until the trees thinned, and the brick houses of a village came into view.
They ran right into the arms of seven armed men.
My stomach heaved, the vision fading as quickly as it had come on—so fast, in fact, that the world spun around me as dizziness threatened to send me tumbling forward.
Elaina sat in front of me, tears streaming down her perfect face as her hands gripped either side of my cheeks. She stroked my hair, whispering my name over and over in a desperate plea. Her concerned eyes scanned over every inch of my features.
The room came back into focus slowly, until the trees had faded completely, replaced by the wallpapered walls of Nikolai’s home. Thea’s screams faded, replaced by the music of a piano in the distance.
“Thea,” I whispered her name almost involuntarily.
“Camilla, what is it? What happened?” Elaina sobbed my name, thumb swiping against my cheek. Her touch brought on a sting, and I flinched, reaching up to find the dampness of blood on my fingers.
Blood from where the tree branches had scraped across my face as I ran.
Lifting my head, I stared back at Elaina, completely unable to answer her question. I had no godsdamned idea what had just happened, and I didn’t have the time to ponder potential explanations.
I only knew that Thea needed us, and she needed us right fucking now.
And there was only one person in the entire realm that I would trust to save her.
“Clay!” I screamed his name, my throat raw as if those cries in the woods had completely ripped through my vocal cords. “Clay!”
A crowd had gathered around where I had fallen in the hall. People of all ranks and designations stared down at me with their eyes pinched and lips turned down into disappointed, judgmental frowns.
Even through the chaos of my own sobs, I heard the exact moment when a woman I had nursed back to health only days ago turned to the man at her side and whispered, “She’s gone mad again.”
Elaina’s head snapped back, and she barked at everyone to back off, but their stares still lingered.
Maybe that’s what this was. Maybe I was just losing my mind again.
No, I had to believe this was real.
It felt real. That swirling sensation of doom deep in my gut felt far more legitimate than any false vision Pasnia had forced upon me.
Heavy footfalls sounded as Clay rounded the corner with urgency, chest bare and sweat-slicked as if he’d run here directly from the training yard. “What is it?”
I pushed to my feet, swatting away Elaina who tried to force me into a seated position.
“We have to go!” I insisted, hurrying to him even as I was painfully aware of how wild I sounded.
Clay and Elaina shared a glance over my shoulder, and he took a step towards me and grasped my forearms. He wore the expression of an old friend instead of a king as he held me steady. “Why don’t we sit down?”
“No!” I snapped, shoving him back. I didn’t need him to be my friend right now. I didn’t even need him to be a king. What I needed was for him to be the man who would do anything to save her. That’s what she needed. “I’m not crazy!”
Clay frowned. “No one is saying that, Camilla.”
“We have to go!” I screamed again, not caring about the whispers that were growing louder and louder in the corners of the room.
With a heavy breath, Clay scanned the hall before pulling us into a nearby room, ordering that no one was to disturb us.
“Camilla, I need you to calm down and talk me through what’s going on.” Clay closed the door to the dining room we had fallen into and turned golden eyes onto mine.
He guided me towards the table even as I shoved away his arm once more.
“No!”
His chest shook with a growl. “That wasn’t a question; it was an order from your king!”
Oh, for Gods sake, he was being unbearably obtuse at a time that I needed him to move. “She’s in danger!”
This conversation was taking too long. We didn’t have the time to sit down and go through every single detail. Why didn’t he understand the urgency? Weren’t they supposed to have some great, epic love that superseded all the realms?
My voice hardened, taking on a viciousness I hadn’t adopted in a long time. “She is going to die if you do not leave this very fucking second, Clayton.”
“Who?” he demanded, stepping to the left to block me when I tried to force my way out of the room. “I need some more information here.”
“Thea!” I screeched, throwing my arms up wildly.
Her name alone was enough to have an immediate effect on him.
As Elaina’s hand flew to cover her dropped jaw, all color drained from Clay’s face.
His veins darkened instantly, the blackness shooting up his arms and neck.
Unable to stop myself, I stumbled backwards as he took a single, heaving breath in.
I could see his mind working, running back over the words I had said and trying to make sense of them.
“How do you know that?” he asked through a locked jaw.
Words caught in my throat.
“For that brief time when you went to Inanis you trusted me with your kingdom,” I reminded him, grasping his hands in mine. “I need you to offer me that trust again. I don’t have time to explain, but I am telling you the truth. Thea is in terrible danger, and she needs us. She needs you, Clay.”