Worry
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Voices bounced around my head. Loud, angry, and rough. A vein of grief ran underneath every uttered word.
Bring her creature.
I have her.
No—it was one voice—Cassiel.
I woke with a scream stuck in my throat.
“Amara.” Branwen sat at my bedside, and as she jostled forward to grab onto my arm, the bed bounced. I wheezed in a breath. Branwen’s vanity and bed sat across from my side of the chamber. Dizziness blurred my vision until I focused on Vera shuffling forward, her eyes wide and worried.
“Where is Cassiel?” I kept looking around even though it was clear only three of us were here. “We were just together. Where has he gone?”
A flood of memories returned of the remembered pleasure of his thickness thrusting inside me. I had been lost to him, arching into him, wanting more and more. Then the snap of agony that gave way to numbness.
I yanked the fur blanket away from my legs. My limbs were all intact. I wiggled my toes and despite the shards of pain, they moved. The hem of the sleeping gown slid closer to my knees. After the numbness that spread on the heels of searing pain, I expected the worst. My heart pounded in my throat.
I struggled to accept the agonizing pop was bones breaking, but there was no doubt that was what happened.
With such ease he had pulverized my bones.
Branwen’s mouth continued to move, but the rush in my ears made it difficult to understand.
“He is not here, Amara,” Branwen said gently, patting the top of my hand.
“He crushed you, Amara.” Vera’s eyes remained wide. As if she did not believe her own words. “He broke your pelvis because he fucked you too hard.”
I stayed sitting, breathing hard. His strength was greater than I could have imagined. I’d given myself to him willingly, opened my body to him, and he destroyed it. Not with malice, but from loss of control.
“There is no need to be so vulgar, Vera,” Branwen chastised and turned back to me. “You’re better now, Amara. Lady Drusilla healed you.”
“After His Highness almost ripped her head off,” Vera added. “Lady Drusilla’s head, that is.”
I rolled my ankles in a circle, stifling my wince from the sting prickling up my legs.
‘They’re not telling you the worst part. Since it was so bad, he permanently lamed you.’ The voice entered my mind, so familiar and so missed. The fur blanket I had tossed to the side moved, and a long snout poked out.
“Piper.” I hugged her as her words settled like a pit in my stomach.
Permanently lamed?
Carefully releasing my grip on Piper, I scooted to the edge of the bed and slid my legs off.
They settled and everything felt normal so far.
I shoved off with my palms. A hiss escaped between my teeth, and I pressed my hand to my hip where the sharp pain traveled.
I stepped forward and my leg buckled, my slanted gait becoming increasingly obvious.
A knot swelled in my throat and it only grew.
My entire plan was to run from here and get to the Barren where I would only be able to travel on foot.
And I was falling for the man who would not only snuff me out, but had caused even my escape plan to worsen by making me slower.
I could not afford to break.
I let out a slow breath, returning to sit on the bed while mentally folding away the reality I would face later. There was no longer anything I could do about this. Despite being slower, I could still escape.
Vera and Branwen both leaned away as if Piper had some sort of illness. It was a reminder of where I stood with them. As kind as they had been, it did not mean they viewed me as an equal.
‘They are only letting me stay until you woke. His Highness ordered it.’ Piper’s derision came through on Cassiel’s title.
Cassiel ordered it. After breaking my body, he sends the single creature I would want to see. A man who shattered my pelvis and in the same breath swept up the pieces.
“How long has it been?” I asked Piper.
“Close to a sennight.” Vera’s answer echoed Piper’s in my head.
I bit my tongue, trying to rein in my horror.
Nocturn was in six dawnlight rotations. Finding Egan was of the utmost importance. What if he had taken the grimoire to his father? I scooted up in the bed to mask my unease. My hand smacked into something hard under the fur blanket. I inhaled sharply.
“Has Egan been in here?”
“Yes,” Branwen answered, her mouth twitching at the corners.
Egan had left me the grimoire.
I barely contained my shout of excitement.
“Apologies, Amara, but I must take your . . . wraithling.” Vera cleared her throat and approached. “Do I . . .?” She cupped her hands in front of Piper who turned to give me a look, her little snout twitching.
‘Back to my little cage in the barn full of sexual deviants,’ she mumbled. I pressed her to my chest.
“Soon,” I whispered as low as I could, hoping she understood I was telling her that we would be leaving this place. Spanning my arm out, I let her climb to my hand and transferred her to Vera’s arm.
Vera squealed, squishing her eyes closed, but she did not drop Piper, which was all I cared about.
“Stop being dramatic, it’s a ferret,” Branwen muttered, pushing off my bed and shuffling out behind Vera. “I will leave you to continue resting.”
Their footsteps retreated.
I angled myself to the side so my back faced anyone who might enter, arranging the bottom of the silky chemise around me.
With my nerves aflutter, I pulled the grimoire from under the fur.
What Cassiel had done to me, there was no way around the horror of it. There would be time to fully grasp his act, but not at this second with answers literally in my hands.
I let out a shaking breath. The spine cracked as I opened it, and a wave of mustiness wafted from the parchment.
The Larien scrawl had more of a flourish at the ends; the text was more compressed and toward the middle of the page.
I carefully set it upon the edge of the bedding and scooted off the bed.
I crouched and immediately regretted it.
My leg buckled and I fell on my bottom. Breathing slowly through my nose, I forced myself to stay still until the sharp stabbings inside my leg abated.
A harsh gasp left my mouth. I couldn’t fall apart. Gritting my teeth, I lifted my bowed head and opened the small compartment under the frame of my bed where I had stashed the mylk flowers with my journal. Tucked to the edge were my ink and feather.
I lifted my journal, feather, and ink, placing them on the edge of the bed to free my hands.
Bracing, I stood and dropped on the edge of the bed to scoot against my pillow.
I preferred a desk, but I had to be able to hide the grimoire quickly.
Once the journal was spread, the ink set up against my leg, and the grimoire open, I took a deep breath and began.
The lettering settled its shaking as it always did when I first looked at it.
The first word scrawled in thick lines across the top: Designations.
I flipped to the middle of my journal and poised the tip of the quill to scrawl the title.
Squinting, I continued to read, absorbing every single word.
Redbloods, bluebloods, Warlords; they each had different titles. Betas were Bluebloods, magick wielders with one gift. Warlords were Alphas—those with heightened strength, the most physically imposing of the rest, and blood-drinkers.
Yet there were only four in existence, though the manner the text spoke described it as if there could be more. With luck, further in I would find proof my instinct was correct.
One truth that remained true . . . Warlords were closest to deities . . .
I continued reading and discovered why there had not been more. They must be Awakened. The text stopped short of explaining how one was to do that.
A throb assaulted my temples, but I couldn’t stop. I flipped the page about ‘Omegas’, the title the prophet called me. The reason redbloods did not menstruate every moon rotation like Bluebloods was because we could only be bred by Alphas—Warlords.
If I didn’t know the council tried hiding the grimoire, or the imprisoned prophet, I would have believed this all impossible.
Awakening for redbloods was different from Warlords.
Ours were not forced—all of us were meant to Awaken upon our twenty-fifth life rotation.
Redbloods needed their Warlords to satisfy them.
Our very essence was what was being suppressed by the annum injection.
Tabby’s mention of the suppressants. Of course, they were suppressing me; this had to be some sort of factor in why. How utterly unbelievable . . . yet, it explained so much. I had passed my twenty-fifth life rotation five annum ago—and felt nothing. The injection had kept it sealed in me.
These urges Cassiel wrought from me, the undeniable attraction. All of it was part of our nature. My body was meant to take him. Then why had he shattered my bones with such ease?
My mind raced as I battled with the ache throbbing through my temples. Pacing myself was necessary when reading, but I had not been able to stop. I blinked with effort.
We were all in a caste system, but bluebloods, Betas, had rearranged everything to fit a story that would suit them.
This . . . this explained so much.
The prophet was right. Cassiel must know the truth.
I was his bondmate . . . Me, not some woman who would possess my body. Did that woman even exist? Or was it simply another lie from Bluebloods . . . from the council poisoning Cassiel?
Elation expanded my chest.
I shut the grimoire and my journal in which I had transcribed.
Crouching, I placed the journal within the small compartment under my bed, returning my quill and ink as well.
The grimoire needed to be somewhere less obvious.
I scanned the chamber, and my gaze fell on Branwen’s wardrobe.
With a glance at the door, I hurried to the wardrobe and then crouched to slide the grimoire as far under the wardrobe it could go.
Now done, I returned to my wardrobe and dressed in the sapphire gown.
I walked out with the back of it gaping.
Each step pinched my knee, a slight limp added to my gait, as if the tendons were snipped too short.
I leaned into my right side and had to stop to brace myself against stone.
Bending and unbending my knee did not work.
Exhaling in a short burst, I continued down the path to the parlor.
Branwen, Ida, and Hester sat around the circular table, having tea with dusklight filtering in from the pane.
Ida went still, while Hester eyed my uneven gait.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Hester set aside her teacup. “Branwen did not keep you company so you could fall ill again.” Disapproval marred her scrunched eyebrows.
I didn’t know Branwen had been the one to care for me.
“Thank you,” I directed at her.
“Of course,” she murmured, waving both hands at me. “Do not worry yourself over it. I was happy to help.” Her soft voice remained even with sincerity.
“I have been bedridden for far too long. My legs feel like they need to stretch.” I faced Hester as I said it.
The creases on her forehead relaxed, and her lips pursed as she nodded.
I faced Branwen again. “Can you help me with the laces?” I asked, turning.
She stood and approached. “I must see Cas—Lord Draven,” I corrected myself, clearing my throat.
“You must request a visitation,” Hester answered, sharing a glance with Ida whose eyebrow twitched in that obnoxious way of hers.
“What is it?”
“We have never dared to request an audience with him,” Ida scoffed.
The corners of my lips tightened downward.
They were not his bondmate.
“Who do I speak to about seeing him?”