28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
Magic was bitter on my tongue.
But as I screamed, it erupted from me in a wave of rage, the dark room illuminating in starlight that pierced through the air. It disintegrated the dagger and flung the bartender against the wall. Glass shattered over top of him, cutting into his head like a ripe melon. Sapphire followed with another blast. Her starlight formed that of a shard, impossible and bright, before it flew through the air and ripped through the side of his head. We didn’t get his excuse, his plea—it was silent, save for the thudding of his body as it soared through the air before smashing into the wooden steps.
I scrambled over to Eero. His eyes were already closed, the magic flickering off him like a faded painting. His brown hair turned silver, pallid skin tan, thin lips plush. My entire body was trembling as I reached for him, rolling him onto his side to alleviate the pressure the dagger forced into his back.
“Sapphire,” I wailed, but she was already in front of me before my voice was louder than a raspy whisper. I was choking on the air in my throat, reaching for his face as tears formed ravines down my cheeks. They dripped off my face onto his as I leaned over his body, whispering over and over for him to open his eyes.
But he was cold, and far too still. My body was numbed from the magic that spewed from my fingertips, but nothing could deafen the agony of my heart swelling inside my chest, suffocating me. He wasn’t responding to me—and that pain…dull, distant pain…was fading. It was fading fast.
“Aurelie, Aurelie—I need you to listen,” Sapphire said, stuttering on every word. I’d never seen her panic, save for the time the Spring Court ignited in flames. She was always so level-headed and cool to the point I thought she was cruel when I first met her. But now, I knew it was her only means of defense.
And her guard was crumbling down bit by bit at the sight of Eero limp beneath my hands.
“We can fix this, but we must go fast,” she rasped. “I will take the dagger out, but you have to find that magic within you and put all your might into it. I will help, but this isn’t good. We need to…well, we need to work together. Do you hear me?”
I did, but my ears were ringing, and my mind was buzzing. She snapped in my face and forced my attention up to her. After nodding, she hardened her stare and jerked her head.
“That sorrow you feel, you need to use it. Emotions are not a hindrance, and they are not to be ignored. They are your power, Aurelie Cane. If you let them slip, your magic will fail you, and he will die. Do. You. Understand?”
I choked on a sob and nodded quicker, repeatedly, until she finally looked back down at her cousin. I had never been so scared—never had my magic been so crucial. So imperative. Before, it was a means of self-defense and power, but now? It was life or death.
It was the only thing keeping me from another day with a man I’d known for so little but loved so much. My bodyguard. My Winter King. My Eero.
“On three.” Sapphire hesitated, her hand trembling over the handle. “One…”
I forced my focus from his face to the tip of the dagger that had torn through the flesh of his chest. The blood was crimson and stained his shirt.
“Two…”
I closed my eyes after my hands found the spot over his wound. She told me to focus on the sorrow. She told me that, in the end, my innate emotions would guide me through. I couldn’t let it slip, but how could I pick it apart? How did I know if the tingling in my hands was that of terrible anxiety, or of magic in the rawest form? If the aching in my chest was that of terror—or the one thing able to save Eero from the most lethal type of blade known to fae?
“Three.”
I felt the silver slice through my finger as she tore it from his back, and although it elicited terrible pain through my bones, I pressed my hands against his gaping wound and screamed. My fingers turned red hot, and the dagger clattered onto the ground. For a moment, it was dark.
Too dark. Behind my eyes, inside of my mind. Quiet, stark darkness.
When I opened my eyes, starlight fluttered off both our hands. Eero was convulsing on the floor, his blood coloring my hands red, but it was working. I felt my life source draining into him, part of me to save all of him—my heart to his heart, my soul binding onto whatever part of him I could reach. Liquid dripped out of my nose, and when it dropped onto his cheek, it was crimson. Every bone in my body started to ache, as if they were being cracked inch by inch, fractured by the weight of magic.
As my eyes rolled into the back of my head, I was left with that sense of utter darkness once more. It was inescapable. It was a thing of nightmares. but something even blacker than death existed within my headspace. The void turned to shadows, and an eerily familiar figure flitted around like a ghoul, hissing at me.
Relinquish his soul, and yours shall taste the bitter harvest—feeble halfling spawn.
I choked on the air in my throat, Sapphire’s words a distant hum. I still had hold of Eero, I knew I did. His body still convulsed beneath my grasp.
Once is an accident, twice is a sacrifice. Reap his soul, bestow him as sustenance unto me.
I wailed out a no, unsure if it was resonating through me in the form of words or as a distant thought. A silent plea. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be—it was all in my head. But the shadows were smothering and unavoidable. When I forced my eyes open, the shadows breezed away, and starlight bled off my skin in the form of tears, of magic, of sweat and blood. Between the blurred lines, I could see Sapphire staring wide-eyed at me, and beneath me, Eero stopped trembling.
It was still again, the starlight slowly flitting through the air like a dusting of snow.
I collapsed onto my side, eye-level with Eero’s still, motionless face. But as my hand slipped off his chest, blood smearing across the rough fabric of his shirt, I felt the thudding of his heart.
The air hit me in the chest when I woke.
I gasped, jolting upright and facing shadowy darkness. Water plopped onto the floor just ahead, a small fire crackling with two bodies hovering near it. Sapphire’s head snapped to me, and she gasped, scrambling over on all fours clumsily—the real Sapphire, not the aged, glamoured disguise she’d once occupied.
“Aurelie,” she rasped and all but tackled me back to the ground in a hug. I winced, freezing up as her long arms wrapped around my torso so tight, I thought I might snap. In an instant, she let off and backed away. “Sorry—I just, I thought you’d gotten hurt.”
I swallowed, and when I tried to say something, nothing but dry, scratchy breath broke past my lips. In the faintest whisper, I hissed, “Eero?”
“He’s fine,” she said gently and guided me to my back again. She adjusted the material beneath my head. “He woke after I got Calista free of her chains. He’s disposing of the body.”
The body. The remnants of what had happened flashed across my mind, and I winced. I tried to rub my eyes clean, but each time I blinked, I saw the chaotic shadows dancing in my head and the blood that stained my hands. That was when I opened my palms flat and stared at them—but they were clean.
Well, clean enough. The crimson had been rinsed away.
“Calista was just telling me her stories,” she said even quieter as she turned her head toward the fire. “She was the mastermind behind these tunnels, the reason so many lives were spared when war bled through the Elkyn Kingdom walls…fae and mortal alike. That man was her son—enraged that his mother had hid his halfling blood from him for so long.”
So he strung her up and left her to die? I frowned. He deserved death, nothing more, nothing less. Who would do that to their own flesh and blood, lies or no? Evil men, that was who.
“You did good, Aurelie.”
I turned my head to the side and looked at Sapphire. I didn’t feel like I had—I felt weak, tired, afraid—but I cracked a dry-lipped smile. It was genuine, at least…because Eero was safe, and so was Sapphire. We’d managed to save that woman, too.
“How…long?” I said, my voice cracking with every word. Slowly, I’d get my voice back, but it was like grating nails against stone. “How long was I asleep?”
“A day.”
I gasped, and Sapphire beamed. “We have to—”
“We have to rest,” she said, snapping at me so I’d stop talking. “We told the others it’d be a week. We have time. It’d be no use hunting down the Circle of Sorceresses when you can hardly talk. They’ll laugh you out of the room.”
I pursed my lips, but I knew she was right. There was no use fighting it. Instead of arguing, I forced my eyes shut and inhaled deeply. Sapphire hummed in approval before letting me be, returning to her spot where idle chatter echoed throughout the infinite system of tunnels. I couldn’t sleep, but I could wait—for my strength, for my voice, and for Eero’s footsteps as he returned.