Chapter 27 - Sapphires and Blood
Wrenora
He’d been gone most of the day. More than once, I wandered into the throne room so I could peer out the massive windows to the north, the expanse of permafrost glittering like a sheet of white quartz.
It was beautiful. The mountains in the distance stood as sentinels of the harsh weather that surround the Ice Fortress.
I hated the cold, but the beauty of it...
I wandered after Fynn up to the study, thinking perhaps Callan would come there first. When midday passed and he still hadn’t arrived, I decided to take a risk. I would imbue a sapphire. Callan wasn’t here to distract me, so it seemed like the perfect time to try something potentially disastrous.
I looked down at Fynn’s incredulous glare.
“What?” He hopped up and sat next to Callan’s notebook, his gray tail flopping on the table every few moments. “I’m ready.” His ears twisted as he sniffed in my direction. “It’ll be fine. Trust me. This is the best way—while Callan has no expectations.”
His glare was unyielding. How much judgement could I feel from a cat?
“You don’t think I can do it.” He dipped his head and licked his paw as if disinterested. “For that, I can assure you I most certainly will.”
I ran my fingers over Fynn’s spine, and he trilled happily as he stood, giving me full access to his back, prancing in circles around the desk before he sat in the same spot again.
“Then if I destroy one of his sapphires, I can just...practice on a spinel before I try again.”
Fynn wasn’t any more convinced than I was, but I’d committed myself. I held one of the sapphires up to the light so I could look through it. It was a long, uncut stone, pristinely beautiful in its raw form. Meowing loudly, Fynn flopped onto the tabletop and rolled to his back to show me his belly.
“Here’s hoping I’m still able to stand after.”
I dug my fingers into Fynn’s fur as I read through a page in the notebook one more time.
He grabbed at my fingers, playfully chewing before he relented and let me scratch around his face.
He knew I was right. There wouldn’t be a better time to try, and it would hopefully take my mind off the fact that the sun was sinking fast, and Callan was still not back from wherever he’d gone.
I took a deep breath, focusing on the shape of the sapphire—slender and long—ideal for fitting with a bail and hanging from a chain around a neck. The striations in the stone were perfectly parallel, and as I pressed my magic into the gem, they glowed between the miniscule grooves.
Focusing on the heat flowing from my fingers around the stone, I closed my eyes, savoring the feel of energy.
After a moment, Fynn hopped off the table, scared away by the light the sapphire emitted—brilliant purple with pink undertones.
It had been years since I’d imbued a sapphire—the last time I’d been tasked with making a healing stone.
While I’d been successful, it had turned the gem a garish blue color.
Based on the light, I’d say this one would retain its purple hue.
My energy was starting to wane when I reminded myself to focus on the magic.
I tried to think about suppression and containment, but my mind immediately turned to Callan—his lilac eyes, his warm smile, his frosty magic and how the stone needed to hold all of him in its fibers.
A calm washed over me as I saw his face in my mind.
The thread that had been tightening between us pulled again as the last of my magic was pressed from my fingers and into the sapphire.
I swayed on my feet, splaying my hands across the surface of the worktable. It was hot—hot enough the pewter goblet had softened until it sagged and the leather on the cover of the notebook curled on the corners.
But it was done.
I left the stone where it was and stumbled over to the sofa where I unceremoniously collapsed. A second later, Fynn jumped up and pranced over the curve of my waist until he kneaded my shoulder.
“I told you I’d do it,” I whispered as the cat plopped down and proceeded to groom himself. “I told you...”
I closed my eyes, thinking I could rest for a bit before Callan returned.
––––––––
Stern words echoed off the ice walls. I sat up, my thoughts thick and slow as I struggled to pull myself to my feet. I was still disoriented, realizing Fynn was gone. Footsteps drew closer, and I paused in the middle of the room, recognizing Magdala’s voice. Had something happened?
The thread pulled tight as I took another step. Callan rushed into the study, Magdala close behind him. I let out a massive sigh of relief before I realized what I was looking at.
“—to the healer, Callan. You need to have your wounds—”
“I’m fine. I’ll handle them myself...”
Our eyes met and he stopped dead a few paces away.
“Highness, this is—” He held a hand up to silence her, his eyes never wavering from me.
I couldn’t help my own gaze from dragging down his disheveled form.
He wore half his armor, the left side having been melted away, leaving jagged edges of ice where his pauldron should have been.
His face was scratched across his cheek, and there was blood smeared over his forehead.
I raked my eyes over the rest of him. Other pieces of his armor looked like they’d been shattered away.
A dark stain on his left thigh caught my attention next.
He’d been attacked. He’d been injured. This was why he’d been gone for so long.
“You’re hurt,” I whispered, the ribbon yanking me forward as I forced my gaze back to his eyes.
Silence. I took another step forward, noticing that he tensed, as though he held himself back from closing the distance between us.
“Callan, you must have someone tend to your injuries,” Magdala repeated.
“I assure you, I’m fine,” he said without looking away, his glare sending a shiver down my spine. The intensity of it was all consuming, and I took another step closer.
Magdala threw up her arms and turned away, slamming the door to the study as she left. But I couldn’t take my eyes from Callan's face.
“I...worried.” The words slipped from my lips without my permission.
“I didn’t mean to trouble you. I...I needed...” His throat bobbed with emotion. “I needed to clear my mind.” He moved closer, so close I could smell the wintery peppermint of his skin.
I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t step back, the thread pulling and pulling and pulling.
He lifted a hand, holding it inches from my face, the warmth radiating off his skin so decadent I nearly leaned into it before I remembered.
All at once, the spell broke and Callan took a massive step back, glancing past me to the worktable.
“I imbued a sapphire,” I said, the words rushing past my lips as he stepped around me, letting what was left of his armor melt away.
He stood at the worktable, his hands at his sides as though he was afraid to reach for it.
The long purple stone rested on a strip of satin, patiently waiting for him.
Like with the amethyst, it glowed with lavender light when he finally picked it up, and he curled his fingers around it before he turned to me, anguish in his eyes.
“Regardless of whether this works, I’m sending you home.”
Confused, I stepped closer. “There are two more sapphires I can—”
“No.” He couldn’t hold my eye contact as he favored his left leg. “It’s not safe here.”
My eyes snapped down to the dark stain on his pants.
“You were attacked again.”
He closed his eyes, still holding the sapphire in his hand. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not—”
“It does matter,” I said, the frustration blooming in my chest. “It’s not any more safe for you than it is for me.”
His gaze snapped back to mine, confusion furrowing brow. “Why do you care?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t know.
I shouldn’t care. I should be upset that whoever tried to attack him had not been successful.
He was the warrior prince who’d singlehandedly been the turning point of the war.
If not for him, I would have never been a slave.
I would have never seen the dark side of elves, their prejudices, their hatred.
But he was not what he tried to be. He was not as cruel and cold as he wanted everyone to believe. I’d seen a gentler side of him—a broken man who tried to hide himself behind a ruthless reputation and a wall of ice.
I tipped my chin up with confidence I didn’t entirely feel. “Who says I do?”
A smile broke across his lips like the one he’d shared with me on our way back from Dyga. It faded quickly, melting back into his same mask of cold broodiness he always forced over his features.
“Now, let me see your leg.”
“There’s nothing you can do for—”
“Let me see,” I demanded, my voice loud enough it bounced off the icy walls.
His eyes grew wide, perhaps shocked I’d spoken so firmly, before he pulled the fasteners loose on his pants.
I hadn’t entirely understood what I was asking him to do until he stalked over to his chair and sat, pulling his boots free before he stood again to strip his pants, leaving himself in nothing but his undershorts on his lower half.
When he sat again, he stretched his long muscular legs out so I could get a better look at the laceration high on his left thigh.
“It needs stitched,” he said after the two of us frowned at the cut, still oozing blood.
He stood and unfastened his jerkin as he walked over to a cabinet wedged between a couple bookcases.
He rummaged through the drawers until he found a small leather pouch.
All I could do was stare at his backside.
If I’d thought the top half of him was beautiful, I’d been unprepared for the rest of him.
Heat rose in my cheeks as I thought of what he could do with those strong legs.
My breath caught as he turned back around. Why was he so fucking beautiful?