28. Chapter 28 #2
For a moment, I simply waited for the rest of the sentence. The part that explained the conditions of my servitude. But it didn’t come.
I didn’t know what to make of that. I distrusted kindness instinctively at this point.
“Your Majesty,” I said tentatively, “I need to place my hands under your tunic. Is that okay?” It didn’t feel right to do this without telling him what was happening. He might’ve been insensate, but it was possible he was aware of what was happening to him.
“He hasn’t spoken in two days,” Reina said softly, now even closer. “Do it.”
There was only one reason they’d trust me this much—Owain.
The king lacked Owain’s imposing size but accidentally injuring him could come down on my head. “Camrick, can you help turn him onto his side?”
He didn’t hesitate. He seized Berian’s hip and shoulder and pushed.
“I’m going to pass out from this,” I said, lifting the king’s tunic.
I placed my palms on either side of his waist and bared my teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“So I hope you two have a plan to get me out of here before I’m discovered sleeping with the king.
Don’t want the queen to chop off my head. ”
Camrick snorted. “It’s becoming ever-clearer why he likes you.”
I did not need to hear that. “Just…don’t leave me at the foot of his bed like a dog or something, please.”
I didn’t like the idea of leaving myself completely vulnerable with people I didn’t know, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe that Owain would set me up to be abused in his own home.
I reached for the magic waiting near my heart. Well-rested, it came eagerly and with more abundance than I’d felt in ages. Each thread slipped past flesh without resistance, descending into the hidden spaces where the worst damage lay.
Some damage could be excised, while some had to be endured.
Scars weren’t inherently a bad thing. They were armor on the outside and fortifications on the inside. But a house riddled with stone blocks inside made no space for living. I answered each stubborn scar with an impossibly precise knife made of tiny pulses of flesh-rending magic.
Afraid to undo too much damage at once, I left some behind, focusing instead on coaxing life back through starved vessels. Sweat gathered at my spine as I drained myself so that he might live. Hours seemed to pass inside that narrow focus.
Slowly, my magic faded, each thread demanding a higher price than the last. Spots danced in my vision when I heard Camrick say something about me in an uneasy tone. But I didn’t worry until I heard the dimming sound of shuffling of slippers on stone—Reina, walking away.
Didn’t matter. I had to finish this. The king was teetering in the space between life and death, and it was my job to drag him back into the light. I sagged, breath unsteady, shaking as I held the final threads in place a moment longer, ensuring the repairs would endure once my magic withdrew.
Hands braced my shoulders, holding me upright. Camrick’s? Too big to be Reina’s.
The the king took a deep breath and shifted on his own.
My work.
I’d helped him already.
Reina gasped and said softly, “Gods preserve us.”
Just another small push…
The scent of deep woods and dark tea drifted through my senses. Warmth brushed against the remnants of my magic just before everything faded to a dim haze. I’d fallen asleep—no other explanation.
Of course, I thought dimly. If I’m going to conjure a hallucination, it would smell like him.
I tried to shove the scent away but failed to do any good. It was too strong.
An arm—no, two—slid under my shoulders and knees. Everything tilted, and my head lolled against something firm. His chest was warm even through the layers of my dress, solid and unyielding beneath my cheek. My exhausted mind listened to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and relaxed into it.
“You always overreach,” a deep voice murmured above me, more affectionate than chiding. The vibration of it traveled through his chest and into my cheek.
Dream Owain was carrying me. I tried to open my eyes, but they felt stitched shut. My limbs were leaden and unresponsive. I couldn’t wake up. I lost myself in the gentle sway of his stride, in the controlled strength I knew wouldn’t falter.
Work-roughened fingers caught briefly on the coarse fabric of my dress as his thumb brushed over my arm where he held me. The faint scrape of a signet ring pressed into my upper arm.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” I muttered, the words slurring together. I was shaking from the chill left behind from draining myself.
“I’ve lived here since the day I was born, with one notable exception,” he said quietly.
My dreaming mind had also conjured the warmth of his magic seeping into my skin.
What little remained of my own reacted to its invasion without my permission. It leaned toward him, tempting me to follow.
This was exhaustion painting me a fantasy. Had to be. And yet…
What did it matter? I was dreaming, so I could accept anything I wanted—even from overbearing princes.
Defeat came easily. I let myself sink into his warmth, pressing my face closer to his chest, breathing him in like a starving creature. “You smell nice.”
There go the last shreds of my dignity.
“So do you.” His chuckle was a low, intimate sound. His arms tightened reflexively like he remembered exactly how I fit against him.
“I shouldn’t have let you do that without me,” he murmured, voice held low. A quiet exhalation, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, rumbled out of him. “I’m sorry, Luna.”
Each word pierced the armor formed by my righteous anger to settle deep within my chest. I shifted faintly, and he moved me into a more comfortable position in his arms.
“I deserve it,” he added. “But I’ll fix it if it’s the last thing I do.”
Cruel of my dream to make him sound so convincing.
The swaying stopped, and his grip tightened before he lowered me so slowly it felt like drifting down on a soft summer breeze.
His hands slid from beneath my knees and shoulders with infuriating gentleness.
I tried to lift my arms to grab him back—he was my dream, I could have what I wanted—but they wouldn’t budge.
Then, those same warm, callused fingers gently swept the damp strands of hair away from my forehead. Weak as a newborn kitten, I leaned into the touch. But it disappeared as something heavy settled over me instead—blankets, I thought distantly.
This was the sort of tenderness born of exhaustion. Too good to be true. The kind my heart would invent after too many nights convincing myself I no longer wanted him.
Then I felt the air near my face warm, and his scent deepened. A thumb grazed my cheek.
“You shouldn’t have been brought here like this,” he said, softer still. “But now that you are…let me make it right.”
“You can try,” I whispered, trying but failing to fill the sound with venom.
“Trying isn’t enough,” he said at last. “I had power, and I used it. I told myself a lot of things that were all true to justify what I did. None of it changes the fact that I took your choice.”
The words felt too…big and lucid to be part of a dream.
“I’ve already proven I’m not above begging, Luna.”
He had, on his knees, looking for all the world like I’d ripped out his heart. I tried to muster enough anger to clear the bitter regret away, but it was like trying to hold water with a net. Affection remained stubbornly difficult to kill.
Featherlight warmth brushed my forehead again then stopped, as if he’d remembered he hadn’t earned even that.
His lips lingered above my skin—an apology, a promise, all wrapped up in one act so painfully sweet I wanted to wrap my arms around him.
My magic calmed and settled into my body as if it had finally connected with the thing it had been straining toward.
Even as I reveled in it, some furious part of me wanted to tear the feeling out by its roots because it hurt even as it healed.
“When you wake,” he said, voice roughening, “I won’t ask you to absolve me. But I will give you every reason to trust me again. That’s a promise, moonlight.”
As sleep claimed me, my final conscious thought was of the gentle lift of the mattress as he rose and how much my traitorous heart wanted him to stay—even if the rest of me still wanted to remember why that was a terrible idea.