Old wounds torn wide open
ENORA
It took ages to piece together why my body felt like it did the first time a horse tossed me clean out of my saddle and straight down a mountainside.
But eventually, it all came back to me—those fucking rigged matches.
Two bouts with bright-eyed Umbrite hopefuls who I just stood a chance against, wearing me down before I was thrown in the ring with a tenured Elixia member a hundred times my age and three times my size.
If not for how cocky those first two men were, and how that unearned confidence clouded their judgement, I would’ve been out early and probably on my way to the fucking gallows already.
Whoever set off those veto flares had my immense gratitude, even though I hoped to the gods I’d never have to put those pathetic thanks into words.
The chaise supporting me wasn’t the most comfortable thing I’d ever touched—though it would remain to be seen if that was because of how sore my body was.
A thick fur throw had been draped over me and tucked under my chin, bringing my internal temperature to that of an active hell pit, and my legs were so awkwardly placed, I knew they’d ache awfully when I moved.
One hung over the edge of the chaise while the other was half drawn up, and in that little triangle of space, with their little branch-like arms wrapped snug around my calf?
Eilir.
The sprite was curled up on their side, clinging to me for dear life, and sound asleep with their head on my thigh.
I’d never understood the makeup of their wings, but they draped over me like a sheet of the softest, waif-like silk, molding to every dip and crevice.
Their last remaining head-leaf twitched a little with each breath.
Beside my chaise, Jasper was asleep too, albeit a little less gracefully. He was slumped back, lips partially parted, with an open book balancing dangerously on his thigh. My attention wandered between him and Eilir, and my chest ached so furiously, I had to turn my eyes up to the ceiling.
Leave it to them to be waiting on me like I’d been brought back from the dead.
It pained me to disrupt Eilir especially, but I needed to get up. A proper bed would hopefully be my next destination, after I’d gotten off the ache-inducing arch of that chaise and figured out where exactly I was.
“Eilir?” I croaked. “Can you move, please?”
The sprite didn’t shift until a thud and a curse came from my side as Jasper’s book fell to the floor. Eilir sat up so damned fast, the motion was just a blur for my pitiful Odessan eyes.
“Princess!” they chirped a half second before they latched themselves to my neck, nestling their face in and smothering me with the fur throw.
“Easy, Eilir,” came Jasper’s soft warning.
The sprite loosened their hold a fraction and peered up at me with beady black eyes. “You’re okay?”
I offered them a smile. “I think so. Will be even better when I can actually move.”
They squeaked a tiny, clearly embarrassed noise and backed off, perching on the end of the chaise.
The stifling fur fell away as I planted my hands and forced my body upright, cursing quietly under my breath. Goddess, every inch of me was stiff and sore in a miserable way—but it was a far cry from the bloodied and battered, half-lucid state I vaguely recalled being carried from the arena in.
A frightening testament to whatever the hell was contained in the putrid vials Gallan made me drink before we left the barracks.
My hips and knees gave cracks of protest as I righted myself and swung them over the side of the chaise. Already, I felt embarrassingly out of breath.
The thinly veiled concern in Jasper’s pinched brow came as no surprise. “Do you need a hand?” he asked, all palpable unease.
I shook my head. “Just give me a minute. Are we…?”
I didn’t have the faintest idea where we were to supply any guesses. A study of some sort, but the dark furniture and richly papered walls weren’t something I recognized from anywhere I’d been in the Keep.
“Max’s study,” Eilir chirped as they puttered over and started examining my hands in great detail, one finger at a time. “In his private quarters.”
Jasper shook his head at the sprite doling out their examination, but a small smile tugged at his mouth for a fleeting second.
He sighed, though, and it disappeared. “The witch needed somewhere with a bit of privacy to finish fixing you up. It was not exactly the same level of care any of the others were getting, so—” He half shrugged.
Ah yes, the eternal special treatment I could never seem to escape.
At least it meant my own bed was close by, if we were somewhere in the depths of Maksym’s own quarters.
I’d definitely need a bath first, or a damp washcloth at the very least, but I could taste the relief my mattress and a day or two of uninterrupted sleep would bring me.
There was no way they’d call a fourth damn event in as many days and wrap up the Agōn Ferr in less than a week, with most of the contestants beaten within an inch of their lives—those that had survived, at least.
With that thought, I sat through Eilir’s inspection as patiently as I could. The sprite moved from my fingers and up my arms, bending each joint as they went. They inspected my eyes, my ears, and my mouth before fixing me with a stern look and pointing at my feet. “You can wiggle your toes?”
“Yes, Mother,” I sighed as I did my best to move them visibly through my blood-and-dirt-crusted boots.
“All eight of them?”
Jasper made a quiet, amused noise, but said nothing.
“We’ve got ten toes, Eilir, and yes, I can move all of them.”
The sprite huffed but turned their attention on Jasper. “Take her straight to her room. By foot. And nowhere else. Understood?”
The mage’s eyebrows climbed in highly amused surprise. “Understood, emissary.”
Eilir spun back around, pecked me on the cheek, and vanished. Off to important sprite business, I had to assume.
“By foot?” I asked. “Are the planes broken, or…?”
Not that I was exactly a fan of having my being distilled into aether and thrown through the planes of existence, but I was growing accustomed to it. I’d—only possibly—hoped that might be what would deposit me in my own room.
Jasper shook his head as he stood, gathering up his book and moving his chair away. “Strict instructions from the witch. No other magic influences until sunrise. Apparently, it might just…undo all the healing your body has already done.”
“Goddess,” I muttered with the mental image of unraveling like an old scarf. “Walking it is.”
Jasper offered me his hand, but I pushed upright on my own—even with the annoyed glance he cut me.
Despite my bone-deep aches and exhaustion, my body felt concerningly steady once I got my feet beneath me.
My first few steps were still taken with caution, and I didn’t stray too far from a piece of furniture as we headed to the door, but I managed fine on my own.
That didn’t stop Jasper from being glued to my side, the brush of his hand ghosting my lower back.
The study door led out into a modest corridor, where brocade paper gave way to tenebrous stone, a couple of decorative tables along one side, and a few doors along the other.
It was easy to assume where the gilded double doors set into the middle of the wall led to—and the rumble of dual-toned masculine arguing from behind it only confirmed my suspicion.
Maksym was in residence, but goddess only knew with whom.
“Just at the end,” Jasper said, a little pleading, as he gave me a firm nudge.
As if he could blame me for wanting to eavesdrop on my future husband. But just as I was about to heed his plea, I noticed what was hanging beside us in the hall—a painting, and a portrait at that.
A rare treat for my time in Grimmoria so far.
And as I took it in, I realized just how precious the sight really was.
An Umbrite woman was depicted in masterful strokes with glossy black and pin-straight hair that brushed her waist. She was turned just slightly, allowing whoever had captured her visage to highlight the sweeping angles of her cheeks and the delicate tip of her nose.
Even in paint, her amber-black eyes seemed to blaze, and her pale-gray skin was radiant.
A modest circlet sat delicately on her head, and a single aquamarine ring decorated the hand she rested proudly atop her swollen belly.
I had no words. So, I looked at Jasper with my lips parted in shock, hoping I didn’t need to ask, and he simply nodded.
Maksym’s mother.
The last Queen of Grimmoria, glowing with the radiance of the life she was growing in her womb.
The life that would, even seventy years after her tragic death, still palpably grieve for her.
I could tell how unhealed that wound was when I’d wielded the little information I knew about her at the ill-fated dinner with Maksym.
And the longer I stood there in silence, staring at the image of one sovereign lost too soon, I couldn’t help how my thoughts circled to my father, someone I’d thought remarkably little of as of late and was suddenly feeling an immense amount of guilt about.
“Come on,” Jasper said quietly.
He steered me the rest of the way down the hall, half-supporting me as we passed through another set of doors and the short distance to my quarters. Maybe I’d overdone it, leaving the study, but I was struggling to contend with a wave of fatigue and a tightness in my chest already.
From the way Jasper would not take his eye off me, he could tell. “What can I get for you?”
“I just want to get all this blood and dirt off me.” We were already moving toward my bathroom before I’d even finished that thought. “Then bed. Sleep seems—”
My room was spotless.
It had taken that entire distance to realize my room was not in the ransacked, tar-covered condition it was that morning. All the furniture righted, the linens changed, even stacks of clean clothing on the bench at the foot of my bed.
A bit of the lived-in charm I’d brought it was gone, sure, but I couldn’t believe it. “You cleaned?”