CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN #2
“You did great, Kaelia,” she assured me. “He may need a while to come around. Let us organize to have a few Veythar bring him to the infirmary.”
I opened my lips to protest, but a loud hacking sound had me freezing. I whipped my head around to find the wounded man beneath me struggling for air, his chest heaving as the first signs of life returned to his frame.
“Talon,” I breathed.
His bruised eyelids fluttered and then slowly lifted, revealing my favorite pair of eyes. A deep, ringed crimson lined his irises, and the veins beneath the surface were stained a darker, inkier shade than usual.
He looked like he had crawled back from the very edge of the abyss.
“Hi,” I blubbered, my lips wobbling. I reached out, my hand cupping his cool cheek, my thumb tracing the line of his jaw.
His cracked lips tipped up at the corners, the thin skin stretching taut against his teeth in a ghost of a smile.
“Hello, little flame,” he croaked.
His left hand moved with a sluggish effort, settling over mine to pin my palm against his face. His touch was weak, but the heat was beginning to return to his skin.
An unladylike sob tore from my chest. I did not care who was watching or how much of his blood stained my clothes. I threw my arms around his neck, burying my face in the crook of his shoulder as I cried silently into his chest, my body shaking.
Talon groaned and his muscles bunched beneath my touch as he attempted to shove himself upward. The effort sent a fresh wave of tremors through his frame, and his head lolled back against the obsidian with a sickening thud.
“The Thrynn Chambers,” he swallowed. “I need to… the prisoner.”
“No,” I snapped, my hands moving from his neck to his shoulders to pin him firmly against the ground. “You are going nowhere. You can barely keep your eyes open, Talon.”
He ignored me, his jaw setting in that unrelenting line I had grown to know. He tried to plant his boots against the floor, his breath hitching as the movement pulled at the fresh, smoking scar on his ribs.
He looked like a fallen god trying to claw his way back to the heavens, and the sight of his weakness made my chest ache with a renewed fear.
“It cannot wait,” he growled, though the sound was thinned by exhaustion.
“Yes, Master, it can,” Leona piped in, her voice surprisingly stern as she began gathering the blood-soaked herbs into her basket.
I had not even realized she had used them.
“You have lost more essence than I can quantify. If you attempt to walk to the chambers now, you will be back on the floor before you reach the archway. You must keep off your feet for a while.”
Talon’s gaze flickered to her, a spark of fire catching in the deep blue depths, but the crimson rings around his irises remained. He looked back at me, his eyes searching my face.
“Rest,” I whispered, my voice softening as I leaned closer, my forehead brushing his. “Please. The prisoner is not going anywhere in those shadow-binds.”
He let out a long, shuddering breath, the tension finally bleeding out of his shoulders. His head slumped forward, resting heavily against my collarbone, and I wrapped my arms tighter around him, holding the weight of the man who held the weight of the city.
* * *
The gate to the Thrynn Chambers groaned open. The room stretched wide into the gloom, its walls carved from black stone that seemed to drink the violet firelight of the torches.
A dozen Veythar were already assembled, their tall, motionless figures like statues carved from the night itself.
This was no council of advisors; it was a court of predators, and the air hummed with the electric tension of a hunt.
At the center of the chamber knelt the remaining High Court guard. His wrists were locked in shadow-forged cuffs that hissed with an energy that made the fine hairs on my arms stand on end.
He was a pathetic sight—pale, slick with a feverish sweat, his body racking with tremors.
His eyes darted with a frantic, unfocused energy, his head jerking as if he were recoiling from unseen lashes.
I lingered in the mouth of the archway as Talon stepped past me. He moved with a deceptive grace, carrying himself as though the dagger had never tasted his blood.
Not even a wince twitched in place of that stoic mask.
The Veythar shifted almost imperceptibly, their heads bowing the smallest fraction in recognition of their leader.
Talon’s booted feet stopped before the guard, the toes of his shoes close enough to touch the guard’s kneeling knees.
“You arrive in my city unbidden,” Talon said, his voice calm. “You struck at me within my walls. Now, I urge you to speak. Why did the High Court send you here?”
The guard shuddered, his lips working soundlessly. His eyes rolled back briefly, and when his voice finally broke through, it was hoarse.
“We were told… the fugitive was released,” he gasped, his gaze flickering toward me for a heartbeat before wrenching back to the Talon.
My stomach clenched, heat rising beneath my skin.
“The High Court does not breach the borders for whispers,” Talon said, his quiet tone making the guard flinch. “How did you know he had been freed?”
The man’s breathing became a series of frantic hitches. He shook his head violently, his fists striking his own skull in a desperate attempt to quiet whatever voices were screaming in his mind. The clang of the cuffs against his bone echoed through the hollow chamber.
“They are always watching,” he choked out, his voice dissolving into a whimper. “They see everything. Nowhere is safe from their eyes.”
A frown tugged at my brow.
My mind flashed to Leona, to the way she manipulated the ancient vines of the keep to see through the stone and soil. But I brushed the thought away as quickly as it came.
That was a Veythar power, a manipulation of spirit and earth that no mortal could ever hope to replicate. Humans were blind to such things. They must have stationed spies near the border, or perhaps there was a traitor whispering in the dark.
The guard’s eyes found mine, wide and spilling over with a terror that made my knees weak.
“You,” he whispered. “They wanted you. You are the reason—”
“Silence,” Talon commanded.
The man’s words died in his throat. He sagged forward, his chin dropping to his chest as sweat dripped onto the obsidian floor.
Talon bent over the guard’s slumped figure. He loomed over the man, his shadow stretching long across the floor, swallowing the guard whole.
“I hope you understand that your kingdom has failed you. They sent you here to die.”
“Please,” the man begged. “I am only a soldier. I have a family… a life.”
For a moment, I could not breathe. The raw desperation in his voice cut through my defenses. He was a person. He was a father, or a son, carrying out orders he likely feared to disobey.
Talon did not waver. He looked down at the man as one might look at a rusted, useless tool.
“By sending you here, the High Court has offered us a gift,” he mocked. “And we are not a species who waste what is given.”
“No—” the man’s cry was strangled by a chorus of whispers that began to rise from the shadows. His body convulsed against the cuffs, but there was no escape from the dark.
Talon raised his hand, and the shadows in the room answered with a ravenous surge.
I turned my head away, my chest heaving, as the chamber filled with a crescendo of overlapping voices—a thousand ghosts screaming at once.
I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could scrub the sound from my mind, wishing I could forget the way the man’s spirit felt as it was picked apart.
When the silence finally returned, it was far worse than the noise. The man’s body slumped, empty and hollowed out, a mere husk bound in cold shadow.
The shadows withdrew, curling back into the corners like satiated beasts.
Talon turned from the corpse to face the gathered Veythar. His expression was a mask of crystalline ice, his eyes burning with a light that promised ruin.
“The High Court has chosen war,” he declared, his voice ringing through the chamber. “So war they shall have.”