Chapter 36
For one disoriented moment, I don’t know where I am. The campfire has burned low, reduced to glowing embers and thin ribbons of smoke. My roll is tangled around my legs, the cold biting at my face.
Then I hear him again.
“No—” The word breaks from him raggedly.
I push upright so quickly that I trip trying to get out of my roll.
Desmond thrashes, his breaths harsh and uneven. Sweat glistens across his brow despite the chilly air. His hands clench so tightly that the leather cord strains around his wrists. Purple light pulses beneath the skin of his arms, lighting up his veins.
I freeze, remembering when that same light lit Gashil from within. Gashil had thrashed like it hurt worse than the strike of a blade. He fled because of it.
The glow pulses, brightening every time his body jerks. Small sparks snap from his fingers, hissing before vanishing. The air is charged with an energy that makes my skin crawl. It feels wrong. Unnatural. Goosebumps rise across my skin.
What is he doing? Shadow-wielding?
A pulse of violet lashes outward, striking the grass.
It’s too dark to tell if he’s wrangling shadows or if that strange energy summoned something.
I hate seeing the twist of pain on his face—the way his legs kick as if he’s fighting ghosts.
How could I live with myself if I let him suffer like this?
I have to wake him up before whatever he’s afraid of happens. Before someone gets hurt, including himself.
“Desmond,” I call out, crawling toward him.
Another violent shudder racks him. Purple sparks scatter harder this time, streaking across the air in crooked lines.
The air suddenly smells of rot, and the strange energy presses against me like the warning crackle before a storm.
My chest burns from the inside out, my breath stalling as if my lungs refuse to pump air.
Every instinct I have screams at me to retreat.
Instead, I crawl closer until the air is so thick with the suffocating energy that something inside me feels terribly wrong, my heart palpitating, my hands trembling.
Too winded to speak, I try to scream into his mind. Desmond! Wake up! I grab his shoulders and shake him, tears pricking my eyes. It stings, as if the moisture within me is being sucked away, leaving my eyes too dry to see. Every second I stay near Desmond hurts.
I should leave him alone exactly like he warned me to. But the look on his face as he twists, groaning, teeth clenched—
He looks like he’s dying.
Another broken sound tears from his throat as he thrashes. I grab his head, jerking it to face me. Then I press my forehead to his. Listen to me, I try to speak into his mind. The nightmares aren’t real. Wake up!
His eyes snap open. He surges upward with a snarl, faster than I can react. His bound hands slam against my throat and drive me backward onto the ground. The breath punches from my lungs.
Purple light blazes in his eyes. For one horrifying second, he looks at me like I’m something he needs to kill as he pins me down with his body.
I claw at his hands. “Desmond—” I choke out.
Recognition crashes over his face. The light vanishes, and he scrambles away, breathing hard enough to shake. “Fuck.” His voice breaks apart. “Cynthia—” The horror on his face is worse than the hands that had pressed against my throat mere seconds ago.
I cough hard, sitting up as the withering pain inside me still throbs. I want to tell him I’m alright, but it would be a lie.
He rushes toward me again. His fingers tremble as they brush against my throat, as if I’m something delicate that he’s irrevocably broken, and he hates himself for it. He stares at the red, angry marks, his face paling with nausea. “I’m sorry. I never meant—I shouldn’t have let you stay.”
Nodding slowly, I whisper, “I know.”
Then he lunges for his flask and holds it up to my lips. “Drink,” he begs. “It’s one of Maeve’s strongest healing tonics.”
It’s so bitter that my stomach turns, but I gulp it down until I feel whole again. Then I push the flask away. “What happened?”
“I almost killed you.” The sentence comes out hollow, but I feel his fury so strongly that it overpowers every sense I have. Hot, writhing anger, and shame burning bright beneath it. It’s all directed at himself. “You have to go back to the inn,” he says, not a request, but an order.
He expects me to cower from him and run away, but no matter how badly he might wish I would, I feel him mourn the one thing he so desperately wants.
To be seen not as the Prince of Death, but as Desmond.
Levitating a dagger toward us, I cut his bindings. “No. I told you I’d stay.” However dangerous it seems now doesn’t matter. I won’t reinforce his fear of himself. “Now lie down. I want to try something.”
Desmond stares at me with so much disbelief that my chest aches. “You need to get as far away from me as you can.”
Instead of listening, I wrap my arms around him, squeezing him tight. He draws a sharp breath, unnaturally rigid like a man who has forgotten how to be held.
“Your Gift only leaks out when you have nightmares, right?” I ask him. That’s why he can control it if he doesn’t sleep.
Slowly, he nods.
“Then all we have to do is make sure you don’t have another one. Simple, right?”
He scowls. “That is as far from simple as you could possibly—”
I raise my finger to his lips, shushing him. “The second you fall asleep, I’ll go back to the inn. Promise.”
He debates it, sitting so very still as if one twitch might startle me. “You promise.”
“Of course.” Unlike him, I can lie through my teeth. “And since you know how stubborn I am, you’ll give up arguing now.”
We break apart. He lies atop his bedroll, eyeing me with a mistrustful frown. I lie down beside him, and we stare up at the stars.
“Want to hear a bedtime story?” I murmur.
Desmond sputters in disbelief. “After what just happened?”
“This one helped Evie sleep.” I tap my knuckles against his, then grab his hand before he can pull away. “She had nightmares too.”
His body tenses at the touch like I’m holding a knife to his throat. “What about?”
“Fae. You know, the usual tales about kidnapped maidens and unseelies who suck the marrow from the bones of human children.”
A short laugh escapes him. “I can’t say that either of those is untrue.” He pauses, then says, “Let’s hear the story.”
A star shoots above us, its pale light streaking through the inky black. The moon is waxing, a warning that we’re ever closer to Desmond’s deadline for the tomb raid.
“Once upon a time,” I begin, “there was a fair maiden who outwitted a fae prince. She was not cunning or cruel like the folk, but was a woman warm of heart and soft of tongue. One day she disobeyed her village elders, walking too far into the forest where many faery doors were said to be hidden amidst the aroma of honey and pine. She followed a trail of perfectly round red toadstools, picking each to cook into a lethal poison.”
“Poison?” Desmond murmurs. Absently, he adds, “I haven’t slept beside someone since before—”
I pinch him. “Don’t interrupt.” I won’t let him linger on the past. “At the end of the trail, she reached for the final toadstool, but instead found herself grasping a cloak made of sunlight. . .”
And I tell him the story as his breaths grow languid and his eyes flutter closed. His fingers curl around mine, and a gentle smile warms his lips.
Even when his body relaxes into the trance of long-needed sleep, I still tell him every word, all the way to the end.