50. Ayres
Ayres ripped his arm away from the prince’s grasp.
“Milla, talk,” Ayres barked. He didn’t move his gaze from Rorax even as she closed her eyes. He refused to move off her just because she’d stopped fighting.
He didn’t trust her. Not at all.
A tear leaked out of the corner of Rorax”s closed and swelling eye, and he bit back a snarl. She hadn’t even waited a full day to attack them. If she was trying to get him to feel any pity for her, trying to convince him that she was sorry for this bullshit to let her live, she could think again. He should have known she would try and pull something like this the minute he had his back turned.
Ayres wrapped his hand around Rorax’s throat, not to cut off her oxygen, but to remind her that if she so much as jerked her body a millimeter, he would snap her neck.
Rorax gripped his wrist with trembling fingers.
Ayres tensed and he waited for her to try and pull him off her, but she didn”t.
Instead, she pulled his hand almost imperceptibly tighter against her throat. Like she wanted him there, to restrain her.
The miniscule movement eased something in his chest.
“Ayres,” Milla barked, suddenly right next to him, panting hard with her hands on her knees. “Are you . . . listening to me?”
Ayres’s head snapped up, but he kept his eyes pinned on the female beneath him. “What did you say?”
“An emergency courier just let us know. The Weather Contestar has been murdered in her room,” Milla rushed. “Rorax is influxing, Ayres. She doesn’t have any control.”
Another tear slipped out from the corner of Rorax’s closed eyes, and she pressed her lips together tightly.
“She was seconds, seconds Milla, from killing Piers.” Ayres finally looked up at Milla. “I should kill her now and be done with it. I can’t wait around for her to just pick us off, one by one.”
Milla’s cheeks burned an even brighter red than they already were, and she jabbed a finger in his face. “Don’t you dare, Ayres,” she snapped. “This would have happened with any Contestar we selected. It’s our job, our responsibility to protect her. By Selecting her we promised, we gave our word. Our Queen gave her word. Our House gave its word. We knew this was going to happen eventually and we weren’t prepared. This is our fault.”
Ayres ground his teeth together and looked back down at Rorax.
When Rorax slowly peeled her eyes open, an alarm bell rang through his skull.
She looked empty, defeated . . . and broken.
Ayres had seen some of the same looks in his soldiers’ eyes after coming home from war. Some of them came back from it and some of them didn’t.
“Rorax,” he snapped. “Look at me.”
Her white eyes just stared lifelessly up at the ceiling, looking through him as though he was a ghost, like he didn’t exist.
“Rorax,” he snapped at her, a little louder this time. “Look. At. Me.”
His hand gripping her neck released her, moving up to grip her chin. “Ror.”
Milla knelt on her knees next to Rorax. “What the fuck did you do to her?”
“I didn’t— I don’t think— shit.” Something like fear rattled in his chest. He had all but thrown her into the ground. What if he’d caused some irreparable damage to her brain?
Ayres slid off her, kneeling on the opposite side of Rorax’s prone body. “Fuck Rorax, talk to me.”
He slid his fingers into her hair, feeling for cuts or damage, but he didn’t feel any blood.
The prince disappeared and then reappeared, holding the side of his head with one hand and a pint of water in the other. He dumped it down on her, and she jerked, some of the life returning to her eyes.
“Rorax?” Ayres asked, softer this time, and her eyes moved to him. Thank Marras.
Her gaze slid to Piers, and she winced. She pushed her way to her elbows slowly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to him. “I’m so sorry. I—”
“You just had an influx,” Ayres told her, his voice staying remarkably gentle for how conflicted he felt. “If you feel that again, we need to know. You know what to look for now.”
Rorax winced and nodded.
Ayres stood, scooped her up in his arms, and looked down at the prince. “I’m taking her to the Healers Hall. Do you need to go?”
His friend shook his head. “Naw, she just gave me a little bump. I’m okay.”
“I’m so sorry, Piers,” she whispered again, her voice hoarse. “I’m so, so . . .”
“It’s okay,” Piers assured her. “I’m not dead. When you get back you can apologize to Phillip. He’s the one you pinned to the door with your knife.”
Rorax winced in Ayres’s arms and nodded.
Ayres was halfway to the Healer”s Hall before she spoke again, making guilt burn in his chest. “Thank you, Ayres. For protecting them from me. The last time I felt that lost in blood lust I was in Surmalinn . . . I . . . I’m so sorry.”
Ayres pressed her tighter. “It’s okay, everything’s okay.”
He said the words but didn’t know if he even believed them.