Chapter 6
SIX
ALLERIA
I can’t breathe.
My legs kick, but find no purchase. The rope bites deeper with every jerk of my body. What little air I have left is trapped in my lungs, and I can’t get any more, no matter how hard I fight.
I claw at my neck, nails tearing into skin as I try to wedge my fingers beneath the rope. I need to make space. I need to get it off. But it won’t move. The weight of my body is working against me, dragging me down, tightening the noose.
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
The crowd is roaring, but my pulse is louder. It pounds in my ears, frantic and wild. My legs kick harder.
Some useless part of me thinks I can find the floor if I just … keep … trying.
I don’t want to die.
But my body is losing the battle.
I’m going to die.
In front of my father. My sister. Brennan.
They’re watching me swing from a rope. No one is moving to stop it.
My vision tunnels. My fingers twitch against the rope, too weak to pull at it. My legs stop kicking, but inside me, everything is still fighting. My lungs burn. My throat works uselessly. My heart forces itself to beat.
I can’t breathe.
Hands close around my wrists, pulling them away from the rope. I wrench against them with my failing strength, twisting my arms.
No. Nononono.
I need my hands on the rope. I need to loosen it. I need to get free before there’s no strength left in me at all.
But the hands keep pulling.
I jerk sideways, and my foot connects with something solid. It grunts, but it doesn’t release me. The grip shifts, locking around my wrists and pulling downward.
No!
They’re stopping me from reaching the rope.
Oh gods, please. I don’t want to die.
“Alleria.”
I thrash harder, twisting my wrists to get free. My back arches. My legs kick out again.
Where’s the rope?
My fingers can’t find it.
“Alleria. Open your eyes.”
Open my eyes and watch people cheer for my death?
I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to see my father. I don’t want to see Brennan. I don’t want to see the world ending.
I almost free one wrist. The grip holding me slips, then adjusts, capturing me again. My mouth opens, and my lungs empty on a scream.
“Alleria. Come back to me …”
Come back?
I shake my head.
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
“Moirthalen.”
The world around me goes silent.
Moirthalen. Only one person says that.
My hands stop reaching for the rope at my throat. I’m still shaking, still gasping. My legs are still kicking.
“Moirthalen, breathe. I need you to breathe.”
My fingers uncurl against a warm surface that rises and falls beneath them. I snatch them away, reaching for the rope again. Before I find it, palms press against my cheeks, and something warm brushes over my skin.
“Open your eyes.”
The rope around my throat loosens, just enough for air to get through. My lungs seize on it, expanding so fast it hurts. Thumbs move over my cheeks in slow circles.
I know that touch.
“Cairn?” His name comes out as a strangled croak. I drag in a breath.
“That’s it.” The low, smooth cadence of his words wash over me. “Again.”
But the scaffold is coming back. The rope tightens. My fingers dig into his wrists, nails biting deep into his skin, as I try to hold on to his image.
If I have to die, I need him to be the last thing I see.
I need to keep him with me while it happens.
I don’t want to die alone.
“Stay here. Stay with me, Aethryn. Breathe again.”
His thumbs keep stroking, and slowly the gray pulls back enough for me to see his face. He is only inches away.
Gold eyes locked on me. Stark, black marks tracing up his throat. The sharp, unyielding line of his jaw.
Beyond him, walls glow with a faint silvery sheen. I blink, shaking my head, but they stay.
Walls. Not open air. There is no crowd screaming for my death. No scaffold beneath me. No rope around my throat.
Has he come into my mind again? The way he did in the cell?
His gaze tracks over every inch of my face, a muscle ticking in his jaw. The tension there betrays him as his thumbs continue tracing slow arcs across my wet cheeks.
Am I crying?
I blink again, and the tight line of his mouth eases a little.
“There you are.” The relief in his voice confuses me. “Stay with me.”
I stare at him, my eyes burning and my throat aching.
“The rope—” My voice is hoarse. “I was hanging … the trapdoor … the rope …”
The lever. The hangman pulling it. The bone-snapping jolt as the rope caught my weight. Brennan’s face looking down at me.
You did this to yourself.
My father’s voice before that, asking me one final time to betray Cairn.
My answer. The silence after it.
A strangled cry escapes me. The rope is gone. I know it’s gone. But my throat doesn’t. The phantom pressure crushes against my windpipe all over again, locking the air out of my lungs.
He leans closer, and presses his mouth to my forehead, his hands still cradling my face.
The warmth of his mouth and the steady pressure of his palms against my face reach me before his words do.
“No. Don’t go back there.”
I gasp, choking on air, cough, then force myself to take another breath.
His lips touch my forehead again. Then the tip of my nose. Then my cheeks, where the tears are still falling.
I let go of his wrists and throw myself at him. One arm goes around his neck, my other hand fists into the front of his shirt, and I bury my face against his shoulder.
A terrible sound rips out of me. A second one follows it. Then a third, each one tearing loose with such violence that my entire body shakes with them.
His arms close around me, and he hauls me against his chest, one hand cradling the back of my head, fingers threading into my hair.
I twist my grip tighter into his shirt, and press my face harder into his throat.
And those sounds keep coming, muffled against his skin.
His mouth finds my temple, my hairline, my ear.
“I have you.” The rough rumble of the words vibrate against my skin. “Aethryn, I’m here.”
I burrow closer, breathing him in. Woodsmoke and clean skin and a scent that belongs to no one else.
This is real.
It has to be.
He’s really here.
I’m not dead.
My tears wet his neck. His shirt is bunched in my grip. And he keeps pressing slow, unhurried kisses over my skin.
I don’t know how long we stay like that.
Long enough for my sobs to turn into hitching breaths that catch and stutter, then become long, shuddering exhales that still shake my body.
My grip on his shirt loosens slowly, my fingers uncurling to rest flat against his chest. His heart thuds under my palm, and my pulse reaches for it, trying to match its calm, steady pace.
For the first time since Brennan took me, I’m not waiting for the next terrible thing to happen. I pull back just enough to look at him. His hand slides from my hair to my jaw, his eyes moving over my face.
There are shadows under his eyes that weren’t there last time I saw him. Deep ones. Like he hasn’t slept at all.
“Is this real?”
He nods. “Very real.”
“Where are we?”
“The camp near the Dell. What do you remember?”
My mind shies away from the question, but the image forms anyway.
“The rope. The drop.” My hand lifts to the place the rope sat. “After that, I don’t … How did I get here?”
I should remember more than that, but there’s only the rope, the panic, and then Cairn.
“You’re alive and safe. That’s all that matters right now.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything.”
One corner of his mouth tips up. “I know.”
I stare at him. He holds my gaze without blinking. The message is clear. He has no intention of explaining anything to me.
I sigh, and look away. My gaze moves slowly around the shelter—the low fire, the table with covered dishes, the furs scattered around me. I recognize it now as the same place he brought me when he first took me prisoner.
It feels like a lifetime ago. So much has changed since then. Especially me.
Back then, I was terrified of him. Now he’s the first thing I reached for when I thought I was dying.
I look down at my body. The shift they gave me to die in is gone. In its place is a black tunic made of soft material that’s far too big for me. I lift the collar to my nose, and the scent that fills my lungs is his.
“Is this yours?”
That muscle in his jaw jumps again. “We needed to get you out of what you were wearing.”
I bury my nose into the collar again, breathing in his scent. When I lower it and look up, his eyes have brightened, the gold shining so intensely, I have to look away.
“Where is everyone?”
“Resting. It took Serath and Caelum a long time to heal you.”
Heal me?
My hands lift to my face. The skin beneath my fingers is smooth. The swelling has gone from my eye, and I can see out of it clearly.
I press a hand against my ribs where Brennan kicked me over and over while he counted the years he’d waited for me.
Nothing.
I check my wrists, where the iron chains tore through and ropes burned my skin.
Nothing.
My hands return to my neck.
There’s nothing there either.
The rope is gone. The burns are gone. The bruises Brennan left on me are gone.
But the memories are still there.
“They healed everything?”
“It took some time, but yes.” He eases back, and cold rushes in where his warmth was. I shiver, and his eyes narrow. His knuckles trail down my cheek. “The healing took a lot from you. You need to eat and rest.”
He stands and crosses to the table. My eyes stay fixed on him the entire time. His movements are missing the elegance I’m used to seeing, and the tension in his stance is obvious, even to me.
He pours water into a cup and brings it over to me. I wrap my hands around it and take a cautious sip. My throat stings when I swallow. From the screaming, probably. But the water is good and cool.
While I’m drinking, he goes back to the table.
When he returns, he has a bowl in his hands.
The smell of stew reaches me, and my stomach grumbles.
He laughs quietly, and hands it to me, then lowers himself back onto the furs beside me.
His hand finds the small of my back, and rests there while I eat.