Chapter 44
Iresisted consciousness with the stubbornness of an old mule, clinging to the feeling of soft, downy cushions cradling my body, refusing to release the dreamlike sensation of baby-soft cotton grazing my body, or fingers gliding through my hair, the comfort and relief they provided like a drug.
“I’m not waking up,” I muttered in my dream.
“Agree to disagree, mate,” a low, scream-roughened voice replied, grabbing me in my dream and pulling me back to the awful, horrific… comfortable world of the living? Huh?
“Uh.” I peeled my eyelids apart and stared at the confection of bedding all around me. Plush cushions and luxurious, fog-wreathed covers were all I could see. A mattress cradled my ass like a lover, and swaths of mist like lace curtains hung above us. “The cushions are real?”
Kier’s thumb brushed my temple. “Look at me, Zaba.”
I turned my head on the best pillow I’d ever felt—I was starting to suspect the Haar made it—and locked eyes with my husband. Dark shadows carved hollows around his, and stubble covered his jaw.
“What were the first words you ever spoke to me, on our wedding day? Not to the holy woman, not to Rook or Xiona. What was the first thing you said to me?”
I remembered that day. The lace, the flowers, the explosives, and then being bundled into the carriage with my husband and the people who’d become my friends.
“You lost your sister, too?” I said, remembering how full of hate and grief I’d been. I hadn’t healed then. I wasn’t fully healed now, but I was healing. The grief hurt less every month, but the hate had grown with everything Lacuna threw at me, only now I hated my sister instead of Kier.
Kier exhaled hard, dropping his forehead onto the bed. He sat in a tufted fog chair beside me, his posture shrimp-like. “You’re okay?”
“I’m okay,” I confirmed, reaching up to wrap my fingers around the hand he splayed in my hair. “I’m okay, Kier. Wait, why am I okay? Didn’t my ribs break?”
“Just one.”
“Oh, well, that’s alright then,” I joked. He didn’t laugh. I brought his knuckles to my lips and feathered a kiss across the broken skin. I wondered how many bones he’d broken himself.
“The fortress has healers; they were able to patch you up, but you need to rest or you risk rupturing the rib again.” I made a face. “What?” he asked.
“Rest doesn’t come naturally, especially when we’re still in a castle-island full of enemies. We’re still there, right?”
“We are,” he sighed, squeezing my hand. “But they’re not our enemies anymore. Their commander, Loyal, was able to calm tensions and provide testimony to back up our stories. We’re now guests, not prisoners.”
“Hence the pillows.”
“Hence the pillows,” he agreed.
I patted the bed beside me, very carefully adjusting myself to the side and hissing when pain cracked through my middle. Great. I expected a growled warning to be careful, but when Kier just sat beside me, his expression was haunted, reluctant.
“What?” I rested my head on his shoulder, half noticing the clean clothes.
“Your pain isn’t from the rib. The healer team tried to heal your stab wound. The one Jyrard gave you.”
I closed my eyes, bracing myself. “Alright, tell me. I can take it.”
“There’s magic in the wound, and it resisted their work. They can’t heal it. No magic can.”
“Well.” I’d been trying to pretend it was fine, ignoring the way it hurt when every other wound had healed hours after I’d received them. Oh, and trying to ignore the blue gleam to my skin.
“Well?” He pulled back to look down at me, kissing the space between my eyes.
“Yeah, I’m tired and that’s the only word I can muster. Well.”
Kier pulled me closer, his strong arm braced around my back. He wasn’t in his full murder-goblin mode, but Kier was still an amazing hugger even without ginormous muscles and a body that dwarfed mine. The comfort of it was intense, and for some reason my eyes decided to sting.
“No one’s gonna kick us out or try to kill us?”
“No,” he promised, with a slight edge of a growl. I snuggled closer, ignoring the throb in my middle. The stab wound really didn’t like that someone had tried to get rid of it. “And if they do, they’ll have a furious commander to answer to. Apparently, you’re a hero to his wife.”
I made a soft noise. “Fuck knows why. The Haar still took her in the next town.”
“But you tried to help them. You, a human, helped goblins. Don’t underestimate the significance of that moment. Word is spreading through the fortress about you, the human who fights for Bluescale, who has her own jaguar of power, who married a goblin.”
“Valour will love the notoriety.”
Kier’s soft laugh rippled over my forehead. “Don’t lie, you love the notoriety too.”
“I don’t hate it.”
He laughed again, his arms cinching as tightly as he dared around me.
Lacuna had done a number on both of us, and he must have been able to sense the mess she’d made of my emotional state like I could sense his.
It would take weeks, maybe months, to recover this time.
But we were alive, and not currently under attack, and laughing.
It felt like a miracle to hear him laugh at all.
I paused, my head cocked, ears attentive.
“What?” Kier murmured.
“Just waiting for the world to come crashing down around us. Or maybe an assassin to break through the window. Or a bull to slam through the door and murder us.”
“Not everyone is happy we’re here, but they obey the commander’s orders. We’re going to be fine. There have been three meetings since you fell unconscious.”
“Oh, I like that. Much more graceful than passing out. Fell unconscious. I should do that more often.”
“Please don’t, it terrifies me every time.”
I curled closer to him, resting my hand on his chest, my fingertips against the strong pulse in his throat. “I’ll try to avoid all falling unconsciousness-es from now on. Tell me about these meetings.”
“Hearing might be a more appropriate term, but I told them everything I know of Jyrard and Cleodora’s hostile takeover of the Bluescale Court, of my father’s death, the Haar’s spread, the last battle outside Lazankh and the fire creature. They now know everything.”
“Even about that one time I tried to stab you.”
“Why would I tell them about our sex life?”
I groaned, my head on his shoulder. “Attempted murder is not sexy.”
“Everything’s sexy when it’s you doing it, mate,” he argued, his hand tightening on my hip. “And you don’t have to worry about the world falling; the worst that can happen is the leaders decide not to return to the Bluescale Court with us.”
“That’s pretty bad, Kier,” I pointed out, sinking deeper into him, unconsciousness settling over me.
“We’ll handle it. We’ll handle our enemies. We’ll handle whatever’s left after Jyrard and Cleodora are dealt with, and we’ll find a way to get everyone here home where they belong.”
His pause made me frown. “What is it?”
“Some want to stay. They’ve grown used to life here and prefer it.”
I shrugged. “It’s a pretty cool castle-island-thing.
Maybe a whole new court will emerge from this world.
” I peered up at him, trying to untangle the mass of feelings in our bond.
“You can only blame yourself for what you’ve done with intention.
Accidents aren’t your fault. Subconscious acts aren’t your fault.
Bringing everyone here is in the past, Kier.
They’re fine, they’re alive. More than that, they’re thriving.
“They’ve got whole communities, whole cities here.
I saw a guy in a leather business suit. And let’s not forget the woman who threw her drink on me.
That wouldn’t have been possible if they were suffering here.
They’ve built a new world from the fog. And sure, maybe they didn’t ask to leave their homes, and maybe it was terrifying at first, but you didn’t kill them. ”
Kier sighed, a slow expulsion of breath, and for a long minute he said nothing.
“Up in the spire,” he began, clutching me tighter, “it was Jyrard’s voice taunting me, but sometimes my father’s, sometimes Corvyr’s, sometimes my mother’s.
Hers was the worst. She’s—ashamed of me. Of what I’ve done, what I’ve become.”
I kissed an errant freckle on his throat.
“Natasya said the same to me. But it wasn’t her.
Even if she might have believed that if she was alive, it wasn’t her, it was Lacuna.
That wasn’t your mum, or your dickhead father, or any of your soon-to-be-dead brothers.
It was just a fucked-up entity trying to mess with your emotions and damage your mind. ”
“I think she would be ashamed of me.”
“That’s why Lacuna’s such a canny bitch. Because everything she says is convincing. It could be true. But it isn’t. Kier, I’m not ashamed of you. Your friends who love you aren’t ashamed of you.”
“Letta, we just left them.”
“I know.” I closed my eyes, tight pain in my chest, Hames’s words drumming through my head, Cherish’s vivid gold eyes. Had they turned dull? Empty forever? “We’re going back.”
“To what?” Kier asked, his voice desolate. “What if we return and Jyrard’s killed everyone?”