Chapter 11 #2
The great hall was unrecognizable. Piles of broken glass littered the little there was left of the floor. Huge chunks of it were sinking in the water. Light broke in prismatic shapes, adding to the undulating chaos and making it hard to see anything through the abstract mess.
Kye rose from a pile of glass, catching an attacking monster off guard. Apparently, touching them was no longer enough for him, because Kye punched the cluster of tentacles with all his might. Glass burst into an explosion of shards.
“Human, let’s go!” Seraphine yelled.
“It’s Maren,” I snapped back. “And no, I’m not going anywhere. I need to see him.”
If things went wrong for Kye, I couldn’t do anything to help him. I couldn’t run to his rescue. All I could do was stand here and watch, dying inside from worry and fear with every new tentacle reaching for him.
Yet I couldn’t leave, as if my stare alone could protect him somehow.
Seraphine cursed softly, but the staircase without a railing was too narrow for her to drag me up it by force. She stopped a few steps above me, looking out through the glass too.
I searched through the forest of tentacles for the blue one with the eyeballs but couldn’t find it. There seemed to be more glass than living flesh in the palace now. The shards and glass chunks of all shapes and sizes piled up high.
The pools were filled with broken glass too, the sheer amount of monsters in the water preventing it from sinking. The sharp edges of broken glass sliced through the tentacles, marring the glass with sizzling, steaming streaks of green goo.
Kye stood up to his hips in glass shards now. With his fingers spread, his arms raised, he dared anyone or anything to attack him.
Leaning heavily on his sword, Enric stood nearby. The monstrous green blood had left long smoldering streaks in his chest armor and dark, gaping wounds in his arms.
Kye looked unharmed and determined. But Enric was clearly tired and hurt.
“They need help,” I said, taking a step down. “We have to call more guards.”
“No,” Seraphine stopped me with her hand on my shoulder. “You can’t go down.”
“But they...” I started but let my voice trail off.
The Abyss creatures had stopped their attack. Their long, glowing tentacles slithered between the broken glass, retreating into the water below.
“What’s happening?” I muttered, flattening my nose against the glass wall to see better.
“I don’t know.” Seraphine frowned. “But they’re no longer fighting.”
“Are they leaving for good?” I asked hopefully.
Kye escorted Enric to the exit where the guards from the outside grabbed him and helped him out. Kye then waded through the broken glass along the great hall and the corridors toward the tower where Seraphine and I stood.
“Maren?” he called for me before he even reached the bottom of the stairs.
And I ran.
Without thinking, I ran down the stairs to him.
“There you are,” he exhaled with relief at the sight of me.
He stepped back quickly, raising his hands between us in warning because I must’ve looked ready to jump into his arms again. And maybe I would’ve. I’d give anything to be able to hug him right now, even if just to reassure myself that all was fine, he was okay, and I was safe.
But I stopped, making an effort to calm my eagerness.
He stared at me, his body visibly relaxing. His outstretched hands softened, his spread fingers curled, no longer stopping me but reaching for me. Realizing he was holding his arms open for me, he dropped his hands to his sides again.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “Seraphine here did a great job at protecting me.”
I tipped my chin at the guard. She blinked at me, her frown firmly in place, as if I mocked her instead of complimenting her skills.
“Thank you.” Kye nodded to the guard, running a quick, assessing glance over her injuries. “You need a healer hag.”
“I’ll be fine.” She shrugged without a single wince, despite the gruesome acid burns on her arms.
“No, go get the care you need,” he insisted. “And get someone to bring Maren’s mattress up to the tower. She’ll stay high above the ocean for the rest of the night.”
“How about you?” I asked quickly, noticing what must be at least a thousand cuts all over his body.
His legs and forearms looked simply shredded. Blood oozed from the cuts, then rained down to the floor in morbidly red glass drops. His blood retained its color even when turned to glass outside of his body.
“You need a healer too,” I said firmly.
He chuckled with a shake of his head. “I’m not getting a hag out of bed over a few scratches.”
“A few? Look at that. You’re bleeding,” I argued.
Seraphine passed me on the staircase on her way down.
“Your Majesty.” She gave Kye a deferential bow and a wide berth before leaving, casting a perturbed look at the red glass droplets under his feet.
“It must hurt like hell,” I said, pointing at his cuts. “Can you at least get someone to clean them and maybe put something on them for better healing?”
“Something that would turn to glass the moment it touches me?” He smiled, then shook his head.
“I don’t need anyone to treat them even if they could be treated.
Look.” He brushed off the blood crystals clinging to his right forearm.
“They’re healing already. I’m a fae, remember?
It doesn’t take long for our wounds to heal, especially shallow cuts like that.
They weren’t even made with an iron blade. Just glass.”
Two guards entered the palace. They found my bed, then carried it up the stairs to the top of the tower as I remained at the bottom of the stairs under Kye’s close supervision.
“You’ll be safer up there,” he assured me.
“And where will you be for the rest of the night?” I asked.
Anxious apprehension vibrated through me at the thought of sleeping alone anywhere in this place, no matter how high from the water that was.
A satisfied smile appeared on Kye’s face. He knew how much I needed him in this terrible darkness, and he clearly loved being needed.
“I’ll be where you are, dearest,” he cooed ever so gently. “After all, it is now my duty to sing you to sleep, isn’t it? I take that duty very, very seriously.”