Chapter Thirty-Three
The sunlight is bright and warm as it filters through the cottage window. I reach for Ronan but find the bed empty and cool beside me.
That’s not unusual. He rises earlier than I do most days. He’s probably out drawing water from the well to make our morning tea or meeting with Taran to discuss the training schedule for the next few days.
Except that I can’t feel him.
Which also isn’t concerning on its own. My version of his magic, even after months strengthening it, doesn’t afford me unlimited access to his emotions. I lose my ability to sense him once he makes it far enough away. Even a trip to Kira’s meadow can put him out of my range.
Knowing him, he’s probably planning a surprise of some kind for our first morning as husband and wife. I sink back into the pillow, closing my eyes and preparing to go back to sleep when I hear shouting outside.
“Sylvie!”
It’s Seth. I roll over and put my hands over my ears. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night—for obvious reasons—and I’m really not in the mood to deal with his hysterics before I’ve even had my breakfast.
“Sylvie!”
My ears perk up at this second call. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it sounded like true panic in his voice. But knowing Seth, it’s more likely that Taran washed his dark tunics with his light ones again.
I drag myself out of bed slowly, pulling on my robe. My body is still pleasantly sore from last night. My pulse flutters as I remember the events of yesterday—I’m Ronan’s wife now. I tilt my head back, savoring the memory of his kiss at the altar. His body in mine in our bed.
The way my husband feels—my husband—when he finds his release, when he shudders inside me and tells me he loves me.
It makes me kick my feet in joy. I never dared to dream of a life like this, but if I had, I couldn’t have dreamt of anything better.
“SYLVIE! We’re under attack!”
Oh, fuck.
I leap across the room, reaching under the bed for my sword and dagger. I stumble into the living room barefoot, tripping over my discarded wedding dress. The fire is out, but the torch flickers dimly. When I pass it, it flashes red.
It wants me to take it.
I have no time to think or argue with magical objects I don’t understand. I toss the dagger aside and grab it, then I throw open the cottage door.
Nothing could have prepared me for what’s outside.
There are a dozen bodies in the grass between the two cottages. They’re dressed in dark clothes in a Nithyrian style, and most of them are dead or dying, falling to fire, light, ice, or blade. Around them on the ground are broken bottles of elixirs of some kind, some of them steaming on the ground.
Assassins.
“Ronan!” I scream. Where is he? I can’t feel him. I don’t see him out here among the bodies. But there are so many of them. He can’t be…no, I can’t even think it.
I kick a dagger away from a woman trying to get up, finishing her with my sword.
“Get down!” yells Seth.
I duck to the ground. The heat of his flame passes over my head. I turn back to see a man with an open vial in one hand collapse to the ground behind me, his eye burned out.
“Ronan! Seth, where is he?”
“Come here, Sylvie. Quick. And don’t touch the elixirs—they’re poison.”
I cut a path through the yard, climbing over fallen assassins and dodging puddles of blood and poison. Seth is standing near the well, his sword drawn, turning in circles looking for more attackers.
“Down there,” he says, pointing behind the well. “I called you, but you didn’t come. I had to heal them myself.”
My heart stops when I see them. Ronan and Taran, both unconscious, both covered in wounds.
I drop to the ground between them, my hands going to Ronan’s body first. I lift his tunic, finding the gashes the blades left in his chest and stomach.
Oh gods, he’s still bleeding. I see the burn marks Seth made, but he must not have gone deep enough with his flame.
“Seth, get the elixirs. The smelling salts. The wounds are too deep.”
“There could be more of them.”
“I’ll handle it. Go!”
I press Ronan’s light magic to a hole pierced in his left side. The magic flares on my fingertips thanks to the torch, but the wound barely closes. “Fuck!”
I need Ronan to wake up. My grasp on his magic is too weak without him. I shake him, moving his face and trying to rouse him, but it’s no good. “Seth!” I shout towards the cottage. “Hurry!”
I turn to Taran. He has even more wounds on him than Ronan, and some of them are bleeding as well. Even some of the superficial ones that should have been easily cauterized by Seth’s flame.
I look at the nearest assassin. His body is limp, killed by an icicle to the chest, but his blade is still in his hand. A long dagger, unbloodied, but coated in something dark.
Poison. They’ve been poisoned by something that’s stopping the magic from working. It’s not just in the vials; it’s on the blades themselves.
It’s in their wounds.
“Fuck,” I mutter, turning back to Ronan. There’s a chance that whatever poison is in their bodies could interact with the healing elixirs. But with the amount of blood they’re losing—particularly Taran—we’re just going to have to take that risk.
Seth arrives as I’m straining with the light magic, coaxing Ronan’s skin into closing just a little. “Wake him,” I say.
Seth’s face pales as he looks at Taran. “I healed them. I burned those wounds. Why are they bleeding, Sylvie?”
“I don’t know. Seth, the smelling salts.”
His eyes won’t leave Taran. He kneels, almost frozen with fear.
“Seth!” I take the satchel of elixirs from him as he stares blankly, digging around until I find a vial filled with orange crystals. I shove it under Ronan’s nose, and he takes a sudden, gasping breath, clutching at his chest as he wakes.
I throw my arms around him. “Oh, thank Vayla.” I press down on his wounds with much stronger light magic as he blinkingly comes to.
“What happened? Sylvie? Are you hurt?” He reaches for me, feeling for injuries with his magic.
“It’s your blood. Lie still.” I touch each of his wounds in turn. The skin joins back together, but it’s much slower than I expected. Slower than I’ve ever experienced before.
Still, at least it’s working.
“Taran. He took the worst of it.” He tries to get up, but I push him back down.
“Drink an elixir. The frankincense one—that’s for bleeding.”
“Seth,” I say calmly. He’s crouched over Taran, burning a cut on his hand and then watching it open again, even the burn mark fading.
I take his hand and move it away so I can heal Taran with my light.
“Go down to town and get a healer. The Temple of Vayla has a couple. And then get Larus and the others. They could be in danger too.”
“I’m not leaving,” says Seth. His eyes are crazed as they reflect the pool of blood beneath Taran on the ground.
It’s a lot of blood. It’s like Elia all over again, only at least now I can control the healing magic.
But I can’t control Seth’s fear, and with Ronan awake, I can feel it acutely. I’ve learned to wield Ronan’s empathy selectively, but I can’t avoid feeling very strong emotions when I’m near enough to someone in crisis, and Ronan is nearby.
And sometimes, like now, they overwhelm me.
I’m having trouble holding onto the light magic as I rip Taran’s shirt open, trying to find all of his wounds.
There are so many. The shouting I heard earlier, the shouting I ignored thinking it was just Seth panicking about nothing. This is what was happening.
They were outnumbered, ambushed, likely in the dark if these are shadow-born like I expect. Ronan would have been able to sense them, to see them, but Taran wouldn’t have.
Seth must have come late to the fight. And then he tried to warn me, tried to get me to help him, and I didn’t listen.
His panic runs through my veins along with my guilt, and I lose Ronan’s light.
“Seth, please. I need to focus.”
“I’m not leaving!” Seth grabs my hand, forcing it to a small wound that is rapidly bleeding on Taran’s stomach. “Heal him, godsdammit.”
“I’m trying!”
“Sylvie, it didn’t work,” says Ronan, sitting up. “The wounds are reopening. My magic is gone.”
“Fuck!”
“Sylvie!”
“Everyone stop and give me a minute,” I say.
My thoughts are rushing in a whirl of confusion.
I force myself to breathe. If I can’t calm down and figure this out, they’ll die.
“Taran and Ronan were poisoned, and it seems like some version of the anti-light-magic poison Zara used. It was on the blades, so it’s in their blood.
It’s stopping the light magic from working, even from me. ”
“And fire,” says Seth. He’s clutching his knees to his chest.
“And fire. The elixirs may still work. They’re alchemy, and not all alchemy is magic.”
“But it won’t be fast enough,” says Ronan, crawling towards Taran and clutching at his side. “Sylvie, he’s dying.”
“No, he fucking isn’t.” Seth reaches over to where I left the elixirs and smelling salts on the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting an elixir into him while you decide how to save him.”
“Ronan just said it won’t be fast enough—”
“I DON’T CARE.” Seth grips the bottle with white knuckles, his shoulders shaking with anger and fear. He brings it to Taran’s lips, but he’s unconscious so he doesn’t drink.
Seth blinks a tear out of his eyes as he opens the smelling salts vial.
“Seth, don’t,” says Ronan gently. “He’s going to be in a lot of pain.”
“This has to work.”
Ronan grabs Seth by the shoulders to stop him, but he’s in pain too. Seth overpowers him easily and shoves him aside. I reach for Ronan to stop him from hitting the ground.
“Seth, I know you’re scared, but stop. This isn’t helping.” I heal Ronan’s wounds again, hoping the healing will last longer this time.
And then I turn back to Taran just as Seth forces him awake.
He lurches upright, taking a gasping, rattling breath that tears my heart open to hear.
Oh gods, he’s going to die.
He blinks in confusion at Seth and then cries out as Seth shoves the elixir into his mouth. “You’re going to be alright. Drink.”
Taran chokes on the elixir, coughing up blood with it.