Chapter 52
The world oscillates between a hazy night and complete darkness as my stomach shoots into my throat, blocking my scream.
Howling wind rips at my clothes and stings my eyes, drawing water from them that blurs the world around me.
I blink, but it does little good. Part of me is screaming, I’m going to die, but another part of me is just…
falling. It feels inevitable. Like this was the moment that had been stolen from fate.
I should have died that day… The rogue thought that’s haunted me for six years is one of my last. Why didn’t you kill me?
The question I’ll never have answered. The dragon’s copper eyes shine in my mind. The warmth of its breath washing over me as the beast just stared at me. As if waiting. The talon. Then the blinding light that changed my eyes and the course of the rest of my life.
My death was stolen from that dragon—from fate itself—that day.
And I always knew fate would catch up to me eventually. But I’m not ready to die.
The thought screams in my head like breaking glass, and then I stop suddenly, my body slamming into something.
No, not slam into… I’m caught on something, and my head snaps against stone as I’m brought to a violent halt.
The world spins as pain explodes in my joints.
My ribs pop, and I dry heave as the air is knocked completely from my lungs when I double over.
I vaguely note that some sort of loop encircles my waist—as though someone is holding me.
I force my eyes open but see nothing. My lids might as well be closed with how blurry and dark everything is. It’s as though I’ve fallen into a cloud of black smoke. Whatever Cindel hit me with really messed up my vision.
Like a rag doll, I’m dragged through a broken window. My arms are scraped by the jagged glass, but the pain hardly finds traction. Everything is numb and distant. The floor embraces me, supporting my body, and I gasp in pain. Every beat of my heart says it cannot take much more.
Vaguely, I hear the heavy thrum of wind…no, not wind. Panting. Ragged breathing. Someone who’s more out of breath than me.
Two hands on my cheeks.
“Isola?”
Lucan.
“Isola, are you…?” A ragged breath and then, “Please come back to me.”
I want to. Really, I do. I want to be able to pull myself out of this state. But the connection points between my mind and body are scattered. My heart continues to flutter and strain.
Sleep…
“Wake up,” he growls, grabbing both my cheeks firmly. “Wake up!” There’s a deep resonance in his voice that I’ve never heard before. Something almost feral. Raw. It seems to speak to my very soul.
His hands are on me. I feel them yanking at the laces on my jerkin. His fingers brush against my collarbone, warm and familiar. They trace over my scar, the palm of his hand pressing against the sigil etched into my chest.
Heartbeat slowing, warmth returning to my body, I manage to open my eyes. The world is still a bit blurry, but I can now see him looming over me. Lucan is nothing more than a shadow, backlit by the shimmering gold of Ether. He’s using his healing sigil.
“Thank you,” I rasp.
He hangs his head and draws a shuddering breath. I stare at him in the flickering light of the single sconce.
For a moment, I think he’s about to cry. But when he looks back at me, his eyes nearly glow with rage. “How. Dare. You.”
“How dare I?” I blink, the world coming back into clarity. What did I do that would upset him?
“What were you thinking, going off with them?” Lucan’s thumbs brush over my cheeks as he commands the space above me.
Between the exhaustion in my body and the weight of his presence, I’d have to struggle to move away if I wanted to.
But I don’t want to. “You knew whatever she had for you wasn’t going to be good. ”
“You…were there?” The feeling of eyes on me the whole time I walked through the monastery with Cindel. It was him? “Why didn’t you say something?”
“And risk them doing something worse because they felt cornered?”
“Worse than knocking me off a ledge?”
“I didn’t think you were actually going to go out there!” His voice rises slightly. “If I hadn’t…” He scrapes his fingers through his hair, clearly frustrated.
“If you hadn’t what?” I probe.
“I was going to attack them, but it happened so fast. When I heard her triumph, I practically threw myself down the stairs to catch you from the window in time…” His voice softens, and he straightens away, looking across the shattered glass that shines like distant stars in the barely-there light.
Now that he’s not looming over me, I sit up as well. We’re in a study room of some kind with three tables with several chairs each. The window’s been ripped open, the iron twisted back, the panes completely gone.
“How did you do that?” I whisper. For a fraction of a second, he tenses, and suddenly, there’s an unease in the air. Something’s not right.
“As I raced down here, I was sorting out what to do,” he says calmly. “I combined our sigils. I drew the armor one you found and my healing one to make an aura that defended me enough to break the window and catch you without sustaining too much damage to my own body. I was just in time, too.”
Does that explanation make sense? Combining sigils is advanced magic. Doing it in the sundering pits nearly tore me apart. Can Lucan do that?
I touch my temple where Cindel got a direct hit on me, and my fingers come away damp, stained crimson.
Or maybe it’s from when my head cracked against the outside of the building.
His story doesn’t feel right…but my head hurts so badly, I’m not thinking straight.
It’ll make more sense in the morning, I tell myself.
My cheeks feel warm as he leans away from me and I lace myself back up. My trembling fingers fumble with the cords as I struggle to pull them taut.
“Let me help you,” Lucan says softly, reaching forward slowly enough that I have plenty of time to object.
I don’t.
There’s something so entrancing about watching his fingers carefully, almost delicately, put my clothing back together that I nearly forget about the pain I’m in. I trace his outline with my eyes. The lines of focus etched around his brows. His strong jaw. Every strand of dark-blond hair.
“There,” he murmurs as his fingertips smooth over the leather by my collar. “Now, let’s finish healing you.” Etherlight swirls around him, rising like a gentle tide. It washes over me, enveloping me. Its warmth sinks into every cut and scrape. A soft golden glow illuminates us both.
A stretch of silence passes between us. I’m mesmerized by the movement of his hands as they hover over me, bathing me in magic.
Especially when he brings them close to the side of my face where the thing that Cindel threw hit me.
He meets my eyes, and my chest squeezes as my mind takes me back to the moment between the two of us in the window of our hideaway only an hour or so ago.
He’s nearly done, and I feel like this might be my only chance…
“What did you mean earlier?” It’s the least important thing for me to ask right now, but it’s the only thing I want answered.
“Why couldn’t you… With me?” The question is half-formed because I’m not quite sure how to phrase it.
I’m not quite sure what we were going to do, how far things would have gone.
If I was right about what I saw in his eyes at all.
I have suspicions, but the last thing I want to do is say it out loud and be wrong.
He doesn’t answer. For a second, I think he’s not going to—that he’s just going to ignore me again.
“You’re a difficult person,” he says slowly, as if the words themselves are hard to say.
I laugh. “Me? Difficult?”
“I can’t be the first person who’s told you as much.”
“I think you might be.”
“Liar.” He grins, and I realize the expression mirrors my own. “You are astoundingly difficult.”
My grin only widens. This is the Lucan I’ve become familiar with in the Tribunal, even grown fond of. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“See? Difficult.” He pulls his hands away, and the Etherlight fades. I want to tell him to keep going, just so I can see the details of his face more clearly. “How do you feel?”
“Much better.” I tilt my head from side to side. There’s still some stiffness in my spine, but nothing major. “Thank you.”
“Always,” he says sincerely. Lucan stands and extends a hand down to me. “We should go. I don’t think anyone saw me catch you, but it’s hard to be sure.” There’s a worried edge to his tone. He’s no doubt thinking of Cindel and her lackeys tracking us down.
I take his hand and let him help me up, even though I don’t really need it. It’s an excuse for our fingers to linger intertwined. His skin is almost burning hot. He lifts me up, drawing me closer to him than normal. Closer than people tend to stand—closer than friends.
Neither of us move, fingers linked.
“You still haven’t answered me.” I lock eyes with him, speaking with purpose. I’m not moving until he elaborates.
He groans and runs his free hand through his hair. The movement angles his body in just the right way so the bulk of the muscle in his arm is on display. I can’t stop myself from admiring the flare of his shoulders.
Then he turns his gaze fully to mine, and I almost drown in their stormy depths. Brown and gold are warring as much as he seems to be fighting to find his next words.
“I… I don’t know how to do this,” he finally says, giving my hand a squeeze. “I’ve never been with anyone before. But I know without a doubt that wanting you is the only thing in this fucked-up world that keeps me sane.”
The words are so deliberate, said with such intensity in his stare, they puncture a thousand tiny holes in me. And yet, somehow those same words mend them at the same time.
My grip on his hand tightens, and my heart races—my body betraying me by craving something that I’m certain will destroy me.