Chapter 46
LYRA
I didn’t remember crossing the hall. One moment Vareena had been standing beneath the ruined musicians’ platform with Light burning between her hands, cream and gold against a room gone red and black.
The next I was on my knees beside her, broken glass cutting through the fabric of my dress, my palms against her face while Raiden tried to hold the rest of her together.
“Look at me.” Vareena did. Her eyes found mine slowly, unfocused at first, then sharpening enough that I saw recognition in them. That was all I needed.
“You’re okay.” The words came out before I could think about whether they were true. “You’re okay. Calis is here. Damon is here. Just look at me.”
Mistress Calis knelt on Vareena’s other side with both hands pressed over the wound beneath her ribs. Gold Light poured between her fingers, bright enough that I should not have been able to see the blood beneath it.
I could. There was so much of it.
It had soaked through the cream fabric of Vareena’s gown and spread beneath her across the white stone.
Raiden had both hands pressed against her side, but every time Vareena tried to breathe, more blood slipped between his fingers.
His hands were red to the wrists, his sleeves were red, and there was a streak of it across his cheek where he must have touched his face without realizing.
“Again,” he said.
Calis didn’t look at him. Their Light sank into Vareena, and her back arched. A terrible sound caught in her throat, and I grabbed her face harder.
“Vareena. Look at me. Look at me.”
Gold flooded beneath her skin. For one heartbeat, I thought it was working. I watched the Light spread through her chest and imagined torn flesh closing beneath it, imagined blood reversing course, imagined Vareena sitting up and swearing at all of us for making such a spectacle.
Then the Light came back through the wound.
Blood came with it, and Calis’s face changed.
“No.” Raiden saw it too. “No. Again.”
Damon lowered his hands.
“Again!”
“Raiden.” Calis’s voice broke around his name.
He stared at her as if he didn’t understand the language she was speaking, then shoved his hands harder against Vareena’s side. “Then tell me what to do.”
Calis said nothing.
“Tell me where to press. Tell me what you need. Take mine.” Fire sparked wildly around his wrist before dying against Vareena’s blood. “Take my magic. I don’t care. Just fucking help her.”
“Raiden—”
“Do something!”
Vareena flinched, and his anger vanished so completely it was as if someone had struck him.
“I’m sorry.” He bent over her immediately, his voice breaking. “I’m sorry. I’m right here.”
The battle continued around us. I could hear it without understanding any of it.
Fire roared somewhere beyond Raiden’s shoulder.
Stone split with a sound deep enough to shudder through my knees.
Someone screamed, then screamed again, and Master Rhovan shouted for the eastern supports to be reinforced.
Magister Halos’s Light flashed across the ceiling.
Shadowkin crawled through breaches that should never have existed, and every few seconds the room filled with the wet impact of magic meeting flesh.
None of it seemed real anymore.
Only Vareena did.
Her ribbon had loosened on one side. One pale gold end rested against her shoulder, blood already soaking into the silk, and the sight of it sent me somewhere else entirely.
Tie it.
She had sat on the edge of my bed while I stood behind her, trying not to catch her hair in the knot. The frayed thread had snagged against my fingertip. She had asked how it looked.
Like the same ribbon you always wear.
Perfect.
My hand moved into her hair now, fingers catching the same silk.
It was wet.
“Stay with me. Do you hear me?” I leaned closer when Vareena blinked. “You have to stay with me.”
Her mouth moved, but nothing reached me. “What?”
Another breath rattled through her chest. She winced so sharply that I stopped breathing with her. Calis reached for her again, but Vareena made a small sound of protest.
“I know,” Calis whispered. “I know it hurts.”
The word hit me harder than all the blood. Of course it hurt. I had been so busy telling myself she wasn’t dying that I had forgotten she was lying on a stone floor with a hole through her body.
“Can you stop it?” I asked.
Calis looked at me.
“The pain. Can you stop the pain?”
Her eyes lowered. “I can try.”
“Then do it.”
Gold gathered in Calis’s palm, softer this time. She touched Vareena’s sternum, and the Light spread in a thin glow beneath her skin. Vareena’s breathing eased—not enough, but some.
“There.” I stroked the hair away from her forehead. My fingers left blood behind, and when I tried to wipe it away I only made it worse. “Better?”
Vareena managed the smallest nod. “Good.”
Her eyes moved past me to Raiden. He was trembling so badly now that his hands shook against her side. Vareena watched him for several seconds, then somehow, impossibly, she frowned.
“You’re…” She stopped to breathe.
Raiden leaned closer. “What?”
Another shallow breath. “Ruining your coat.”
For a second, no one moved. Raiden only stared at her before a sound escaped him that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t broken in the middle.
“I don’t give a fuck about the coat.”
Vareena’s mouth moved faintly. “I liked it.”
Raiden bowed his head.
I laughed. I actually laughed. It came out wrong, tangled with grief so sharp I couldn’t tell where the laughter ended and the sob began, but Vareena looked at me when she heard it.
There she was. Still Vareena. Still worrying about Raiden’s fucking coat while she bled out on the floor.
“You hated his coat,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I did not.”
“You told me the embroidery was excessive.”
“I said…” She drew another careful breath. “Cindralith men were excessive.”
Raiden made another broken laugh. “That sounds more accurate.”
Vareena’s gaze returned to him, and the humor left her face.
She looked frightened.
Not peaceful or accepting. Not like someone in one of Auntie Nara’s old stories who suddenly understood every mystery in the world because death had come close enough to whisper the answers. She was twenty years old and bleeding on the floor.
She was afraid.
Raiden saw it. He bent until his forehead nearly touched hers. “Hey. Don’t. Look at me.”
“I am.”
“I’m here.”
Her fingers twitched against the floor, and Raiden caught them immediately. She couldn’t close her hand around his, so he wrapped his around hers instead.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he told her.
“The lower market,” I said quickly. “After midday.”
Vareena’s eyes moved to mine.
“You said you were buying food.”
Her mouth moved, and I leaned closer to hear her.
“Because…” A pause. “You’re cheap.”
A laugh burst out of me and became a sob before I could stop it. “Yes. Fine. I’m cheap. You can buy everything.”
Her eyes softened.
“All of it,” I promised. “Whatever you want. You can buy another dress you don’t need. You can make me try on six of them and I won’t complain once.”
That earned the faintest look of disbelief.
“Fine. I’ll complain. But quietly.”
Lidia made a sound behind me, and I realized for the first time that she was there. She stood beside Dax and Emrin, blood streaking one side of her face and disappearing into her red hair. She was crying openly, tears cutting clean tracks through the soot on her cheeks.
Dax stood utterly still. The front of his formal coat was torn, and black blood covered him nearly to the elbows.
Emrin had one hand locked around his wrist, and he held hers so tightly their fingers had gone white.
None of them came closer, as though stepping into the small circle around Vareena would make this real.
Another Shadowkin shrieked somewhere behind them. Eiryx’s Shadow struck it before it reached us, dragging the creature sideways into one of Master Kaiz’s fires. Neseryn stood at his back, black leathers streaked with blood, while Kieran fought several paces beyond them.
They were keeping the battle away from us. Buying us minutes.
Minutes for what?
Vareena coughed, and blood spilled over her lower lip.
“No.” I wiped it away with my thumb. “No, don’t do that.”
The noise of the hall disappeared for a little while. Not because it actually stopped. I could still feel impacts through the stone. I could smell blood and smoke. I could hear people dying.
But Vareena was looking at Raiden, and Raiden was looking at Vareena.
Hours ago, he had forgotten how to speak because she walked into a ballroom wearing cream and gold. They had kissed for the first time tonight. One kiss. One dance that became two. A few stolen minutes on a terrace.
That was all they got.
Vareena’s gaze shifted toward me. “Lyra.”
“I’m here.”
“Don’t…” Her face tightened with pain despite whatever Calis had done.
“Don’t what?”
Vareena tried again, but nothing came. Panic moved through her eyes.
“Hey.” I put both hands around her face. “You don’t have to talk. Save your breath.”
She shook her head, her fingers moving weakly against Raiden’s hand.
“Tomorrow.”
I stopped. Her eyes flicked toward the ribbon caught between my fingers and then back to me, and I knew what she meant.
“No.”
The word came out too quickly.
Vareena blinked.
“No, because you’re coming tomorrow.” I tightened my grip on the ribbon. “You’re buying the food, remember? That was the deal. I’m not paying because you decided to get stabbed tonight.”
Her mouth twitched.
I leaned closer, desperate now. “And our room is a disaster. Your boot is still under my chair. You left three books on my side of the window. You still owe Lidia money from that stupid bet about Dax, and you promised you were going to fix the tear in my training coat because you said my stitches looked like a drunk farmer did them.”
Lidia covered her mouth.