Between a mage and his best friend #3
If the arrogant lord held both his and Maksym’s, then he could see her bout declared over in a way that would not be a mark against her. And with the drunken debauchery sprawling over the patio, no one would be the wiser as to who or where the veto flares came from.
I just couldn’t understand why the shifter bastard hadn’t fucking done it yet.
“And I would appreciate it if you took your spectating elsewhere,” Maksym added.
His lip curled as Enora blocked a blow but let out a pained cry at the impact.
“Perhaps situate yourself somewhere she can seek your comfort easily again, and I don’t need to see your face.
There is a witch waiting in my study to tend to her. ”
My instincts were sliced jaggedly in three ways:
Do not take my eyes off Enora.
Race down to be at her side.
Punch Maksym square in the fucking jaw.
One, thankfully, willed my body into autonomous motion.
I left in silence, throwing open the door into the corridor and nearly flattening Gallan with it. The slimy leech had been there the entire fucking time, if I had to hedge a guess.
“Why am I not surprised to see you clinging to that door like vermin?” I grumbled as I ran, and Gallan came up just a pace behind me.
“There’s a witch waiting for her, back at—”
“I. Know.”
I flung open a door into a set of tight stairs that wound into the arena’s service halls. Plane stepping would’ve had me there in an instant, but I needed more than that blink to calm myself down.
“Fuck,” Gallan mumbled. “She’s going to be fine, you know?”
“Is she?” I snapped back over my shoulders as our hurried footsteps echoed up the staircase. “Because it fucking seems to me like—”
BANG. BANG.
The vetoes—they acted like flares when broken, leaving no doubt with their thunderous explosions. An ache settled into my chest, and I took the rest of the stairs twice as fast.
“We knew this was going to happen eventually,” Gallan panted behind me. “Someone was going to try to fuck her over. I went to the apothecary last week, spent a small fucking fortune on some tonics the witch said to get.”
No relief trickled into my body.
“I can’t remember what they were called,” he continued, “but she said they’d bolster Enora’s body. Make her pretty much impossible to kill. Something about her blood and aether that—ugh, I can’t remember the goddess-damned specifics. But she’ll heal up faster, too.”
“Forgive me for not having any confidence in that.” I pushed past two staggering, bloody-pulp contestants and down another short stretch of hall.
“Well, I’ll just go fuck myself, I guess,” Gallan scoffed. “And to think, I had the decency to cover for you while you were busy fucking your best friend’s betrothed.”
I felt a flit of energy in the air as he vanished and left me with that lovely reminder.
The gates from the pit swung into the hall, and Enora came staggering through, supported by two guards who carried most of her weight.
I tried not to let my attention linger on the blood that trailed behind Enora’s dragging feet, or the steady stream trickling from her nose and mouth, or the wound soaking her hair.
“Give her to me, now,” I barked.
“Fuck,” was the only coherent word that left Enora as the guards shuffled her into my hold, and I swept her into my arms. Everything else came as a pained or gurgled grunt, but the scrunch of her battered face said enough.
I reached for the planes, felt the prickle of aether on my skin, and stepped us straight through to Maksym’s study.
“GODDESS BELOW!” came a shriek that sent me stumbling as brocade walls and dark furniture settled into my vision. “Not again.”
The aforementioned witch, a plump and ancient Umbrite woman, was on her ass in front of Maksym’s prized leather chaise, and not in a way that made it seem like she’d made herself comfortable there.
Gallan was sprawled in an armchair by the dwindling fire, and I quickly understood the meaning of again.
“Sorry,” I winced as I adjusted Enora in my arms and grimaced further at the low moan she let out.
The witch was already scrambling up and fighting a blanket over the chaise. “Here. Here. Put her here.”
Enora gurgled out a string of what had to be curses as I set her gently onto its surface, carefully supporting her head while I lowered her against the arched back. True to my luck, I fought to stifle a gag as she coughed a concerning volume of coagulated blood onto both of us.
“You gave her all four, Mister Nightwing, you are positive?” the witch chirped at Gallan behind us. “First, the mix of blackgale, then the—”
“For Mina’s sake, you old bat, yes,” he bemoaned. “For the third time. Yes, yes, fucking yes. All four. In the right order. Now, just help the poor woman, would you?”
The witch muttered something in unfathomably ancient Umbrite tongue and shuffled over, setting her wrinkled gray hand on Enora’s blood-crusted forehead.
There wasn’t much reaction left in the princess, but the witch lifted her eyelids—one with much more difficulty than the other—and seemed pleased with the fluttering eyes she found.
“Just one more to go, young lady.” From a pouch on her belt, the witch dug out a vial the size of a thimble and black as pitch. “This one leaves a bit more to be desired than the others.”
There was no resistance in Enora as the witch tipped her head back a bit, dumped the sludgy contents between her lips, and clamped her mouth back shut.
Enora shifted a little as her chest heaved, but the witch gripped her jaw in place, and the fight vanished from her quickly.
The muscles in Enora’s throat worked a few times before the witch released her.
The uncomfortable sigh the princess let out gave my already erratic heart a miserable squeeze.
“Now, everyone out!” the witch barked, and I went stiff as a post.
“Why?”
The old bat rolled her eyes as she gave me a deceptively strong shove and waved an arm toward Gallan.
“Because I am not done with her yet, cursed mage. And I know you think you’ve seen all there is to know about our dark blessing, but some things are sacred.
Scram, both of you. Come back in a bell or two if you wish to be useless and watch her sleep. She will wake when she is ready.”
I exhaled through my nose and brushed off the witch’s hand. The last thing I felt like doing was being anywhere that wasn’t squarely at Enora’s side, but I also wasn’t in the mood to argue with anyone, especially not a witch who’d probably seen the birth of our nation.
Gallan was already waiting for me at the door when I trudged over.
As we slipped out into the hall of Maksym’s quarters, the Umbrite cast an uneasy glance back at me. “Cursed mage… Do you think she knows about your…you know…” He gestured to his left eye.
I rolled the only one I could.
“Fuck if I know.” There were so many other things that were actually worth worrying about. “Come on. I need help cleaning Enora’s room.”