Chapter Seven
Ronan
By the time we make it back to the palace, a small crowd has gathered in Quinn’s chambers to welcome her back.
Or rather, outside of her chambers. Because as they’re all being informed by a harried-looking healer, she isn’t accepting visitors.
“Make way,” I say, and the crowd parts for me. The healer bows and backs away from the door to let me pass.
“Go the fuck away!” yells Quinn as I open the door. An empty wooden bowl flies through the air, impacting the wall inches from my head. “Oh fuck, sorry Ronan. I thought you were that damn healer again.”
Quinn is propped up on a stack of pillows, her short, red hair freshly washed and mostly concealed by a towel. Her skin is still pale and her eyes are hollow, but she otherwise looks unharmed. The healer’s magic did its job, thank the gods.
“Have you been throwing things at the healers?” I ask. “They kept you alive, you know.”
“Barely. I’m kicking my left leg right now. Can you see it?”
There’s no movement beneath the white sheets.
“And look. Here comes the right one.”
Nothing.
Behind me, Taran lets out a low whistle.
“Exactly,” says Quinn. “I can’t fucking move, Ronan. This is what the healers did for me. They trapped me in this damn body.”
That’s obviously unfair of her to say. Without the healers keeping her breathing since the fight in the throne room two days ago, she’d be dead.
And there are many wounded who lose the use of their legs but go on to live full lives—I treated a young woman just today with an injury to her back that will likely result in the same fate. Even magic has its limits.
But it won’t help Quinn to tell her this, not now. “Did they say whether you might recover?” I know from experience that sometimes these injuries improve in the first few weeks or months.
“I don’t fucking know. You ask them. They were all very excited because I screamed when they stabbed me in the right hip with a fucking needle. I asked if that meant I would walk again, and they told me it’s too early to say.”
Considering Quinn’s tendency to throw things at people who give her answers she doesn’t like, I don’t blame them for refusing to get her hopes up. I’ll speak to the head healer myself before I leave to get a better answer.
“How are you feeling, though?” I take a seat on the edge of the bed, close but not too close. Taran sits in a chair opposite me at a safe distance.
“You already know,” says Quinn. And of course I can read her anger as clear as day. That and her utter disappointment in me.
But I’d rather wait until she’s calmed down a little to deal with that.
“I meant physically,” I explain. “Any lingering effects of the poison?”
“You mean other than the fact that I can’t fucking walk? Oh sure, I’m great.”
“Your aim is still good,” I say, looking at the cracked bowl on the floor.
“No, it isn’t,” she replies. “That was meant to hit you in the fucking face.”
I feel her mood shift just before she starts to laugh, her smile lighting up the shadows under her eyes and making her look like herself again, her full, asshole self.
Gods, I’m glad she’s alive and awake. She throws one of her pillows at me, and I toss it aside and lean over and hug her.
Then she raises her arm and forces Taran to get up and join us.
He does it reluctantly, or at least that’s how it appears, but I can sense his relief.
They may not always get along, but they care for each other, just as I care for them.
“I’m surprised you didn’t bring the traitor with you,” says Quinn, looking over my shoulder at the empty room. “Too afraid of what I might do to her? You should’ve let her try to finish me off; she might’ve stood a chance now that I can’t walk.”
Taran and I look at each other. “She’s gone,” says Taran. “They’ve taken her to her brother.”
Quinn cocks her eyebrows at me. “You sure they took her, and she didn’t just leave?”
I give her a look that frightens her with its severity. “You weren’t conscious for most of the throne room. She protected you; she let me heal you. She fought for me.”
“She fought Adria and survived?” Through Quinn’s anger, she can’t help but be impressed. “If Sylvie got away, does that mean Adria is dead?”
I shake my head. “Larus stopped them from killing each other. Adria fled; she’s out in their camp somewhere, but she wasn’t on the field for today’s skirmish.
Sylvie fought with us in the streets the first night, but she was taken from the palace last night.
Taran and I followed her on Kira to a boat heading upriver, a Nithyrian boat taking her to Seth’s camp. That’s where she is still.”
“You can sense her from that far away? How?”
“No idea. She’s awake now and scheming, trying to find her way out of wherever she’s being held. I wish I could sense more than that, but I’m grateful I can still sense her at all.”
“And you’re sure she didn’t go willingly? You’re sure she didn’t lie about the timing of the attack to make all of this happen? To make it possible for her to get away? To make you have to come and get her, leaving you vulnerable?”
“It doesn’t make sense, and you know it. If she wanted to kill me, why not do so in the throne room? She had every opportunity.”
Quinn doesn’t have anything to say to that.
“She came to see you, you know. That night after the fighting. She wanted you to know that she’s sorry.”
Quinn turns away from me towards the window. “I don’t care.”
But that’s a lie. I can feel that she does.
“I need to get her back,” I say, surprising myself with the waver of emotion in my voice. It’s been so long since I slept that I feel close to tears just thinking of her. “I don’t know what they’re doing to her.”
Taran rests his hand on my shoulder somewhat awkwardly. It’s been a long time since he’s had to comfort me. “We’ll go again tonight after you’ve had some rest. We’ll see if there’s some way to get to her.”
I know this is about the last thing he wants to do, and I’m grateful to him for offering it for my sake. “Thank you.”
Quinn looks at us like we’re both morons.
“I told you she would be trouble from the start, Ronan. Didn’t I say it?
And I’m sorry, I know you love her, but I still don’t trust her.
Not anymore. Not after what she hid from us, what she hid from you.
And you might think that because she helped you, she doesn’t want to hurt you, but you have no idea what her plans may be.
She could have had any number of reasons for keeping you alive in the moment.
It may even be that she does care about you to some extent, enough to stop her temporarily, but that doesn’t mean she won’t try again.
We know their scheme didn’t go according to the plan as she told it to us, but who knows what she might have been concealing or why?
She’s dangerous. But—” She pauses, knowing I can feel what she’s going to say next before she says it.
She glares at me a warning to listen to her anyway.
“But I do think it makes sense to bring her back here if you can manage it. If you can manage it without getting yourself caught or killed.”
I nod, seeing her conclusion. “If escaping was part of her plan—which it wasn’t, but for the sake of argument, if it was—then getting her back might ruin whatever she intended to do next. So you’ll help us find a way to bring her back?”
“I will,” she says. “As long as you’ll let me kill her if it turns out she betrayed you.”
I have no idea what I’ll do if it turns out she’s betrayed me—I haven’t even let myself consider the possibility.
But I can’t imagine there’s any version of events where I let Quinn kill her.
“I won’t need to,” I say with a tone of finality that shuts up whatever smartass thing she wanted to say next.
“You know, in spite of everything, I actually like this for you, Ronan. You’re such a fucking idiot for her that it makes you seem human.
All those years thinking you were a god, and it turns out you’re just like every other man out there thinking with his dick when the right person comes along.
Let’s get her back before you hand over the keys to the palace yourself. ”
“Too late,” I say. “I’ve already invited Adria over for dinner. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Her lips quirk up into a sly smile. “Send a letter to Seth, too. I heard one of the healers saying they heard from the scouts that he’s hotter than the both of them now, and he was never hard on the eyes. We can make it a party.”
Taran backs away from the bed, shaking his head at both of us.
“Just wait, Tare,” says Quinn. “Your day will come. I bet you’ll be even more of a lost puppy than Ronan is.”
I know Quinn is right about that, but I won’t betray Taran’s confidence to tell her so. “I don’t know how he’s meant to find someone when half my court is waiting outside to see if you’re alright.”
The toe of Quinn’s right foot taps underneath the sheet. I point to it, and when she realizes what it means, she tilts her head back in relief and exultation.
“Send them in,” she says. “Let’s find out how much I can still feel.”