CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
EMMERY
Emmery marvelled at how Destonne’s features softened in sleep. With his pain tucked away, all the lines and hardness of his face faded. She had never seen him like this, and one thought struck her so violently her heart sped at the admission of it.
Destonne really was handsome. Unfairly so.
She’d fought not to notice, not to see or feel anything toward him, but as the boat rocked and his brows creased, a pang of emotion sprang into her chest and ricocheted inside her like a fly trapped in a jar. And she didn’t know what to do about this. About any of it.
He shouldn’t have taken her price or her pain, and there hadn’t been compulsion or anything pressing him into it. He just did it. Why? He had to have some ulterior motive. Some sort of plan up his sleeve. But as she racked her brain, the thoughts wouldn’t connect.
Emmery’s breath caught in time with each of his ragged exhales, and she hoped he wouldn’t wake.
Not with injuries this severe. On one side, dried blood caked Destonne’s forehead where his head had collided with the ground.
The other remained untouched, and her hand itched to sweep aside a pesky lock of hair that flopped in his eye.
The urge was absurd, of course. She wouldn’t do it.
But the innocence in his expression reached into her ribcage and grasped her heart so tightly, her chest threatened to cave. As the boat rocked and the curl caught in his eyelashes, it was all she could see.
Damn it, what would be the harm? He was unconscious anyway.
She surrendered and brushed the silky strands aside.
Carefully, she tugged her fingers through them, and as she navigated the thorns, she fell into a rhythm.
Only when she’d sufficiently smoothed his hair did she pull herself away with one last grasp at her slipping sanity.
Thank the gods he hadn’t woken to see her doing that. She’d never live it down.
When she looked up, she found Brennen’s canine eyes full of questions.
She frowned at the wolf and asked, “What?”
“Nothing.” He nestled his head on his massive paws. “Are you alright?”
Emmery snorted. The heaviness in her chest weighed her down like a hefty boulder. “That was an unpleasant and unexpected series of events.”
“I don’t think any of us could have predicted that.” Brennen gave Destonne a meaningful look. “Dez wouldn’t do that for anyone else.”
“I’m sure he would for you.” Emmery pressed her lips together. “It was part of our bargain anyway. He swore to protect me.” She cast her gaze into the blood river. The thick waters gathered on the sides of the boat smelled like an atrocious mouldy coin.
Destonne stirred and a whimper slipped from between his lips, such a sad sound Emmery’s heart leapt to attention. She watched, her chest aching, and she didn’t know what to do with that sensation.
“There's a distinction between protecting from harm and protecting someone’s honour.” Brennen gave her a minuscule nod. “I believe he did both.”
Emmery sighed. Brennen was right. He had, indeed, infallibly done both.
She watched Destonne sleep, his face pressed into the soft fabric of her trousers.
When he stirred again, he reached up and his fingers found Emmery’s cheek.
Emmery’s breath caught and she fell preternaturally still.
Another whimper slipped from his lips as his wounds pulled and his blood soaked her trousers and thigh.
She took his hand and cradled it in hers. “It’s alright,” she hummed softly, the way she’d spoken to distressed patients during her time as a healer. “Rest.”
That seemed to calm him, though as he pressed his face into her trousers, his whimper only muffled. She didn’t know what else to do. How to process seeing him like this.
Hesitant to begin tending to Destonne’s wounds before they came ashore, Emmery studied the crow-faced boatman. As much as he hadn’t given Brennen or her much mind, she didn’t trust him.
At least most of Destonne’s bleeding had clotted. He healed much quicker than she did, even without his magic. Maybe due to the curse knitting him back into one piece before the thorns inevitably ripped through him again.
The saber pactum atop Destonne’s hand caught her eye, but she flipped it over.
She didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think of all Destonne’s deals.
Instead, she examined his nails, which were always short and neat, now caked in blood.
Like the rest of him, his wrists were torn to shreds.
She became lost in the slightly pronounced veins in Destonne’s hands, the skin on his palms a bit rough, likely from all his training.
She had always liked his hands—the sureness in them and how they felt in hers. It was wrong to even think that. But she stroked each of his fingers like the day he retrieved the coin from her fist, and she stared out at the blood river, searching desperately for land.
Only when the bow of the boat launched onto the shore with a sharp thrust of the boat man’s oar did she realize she was tracing the veins in Destonne’s hands like a guide to his heart. Brennen shot her a pointed look, and her cheeks flushed like she’d been caught.
The boat man’s grotesque crow beak turned up in a jagged smile full of shadows and secrets as blood dripped from his distended mouth. Emmery tore herself away from that horrific visage.
Thankfully, Brennen supported most of Destonne’s weight on his back when they dragged him ashore.
The weight of the King’s body bore down on hers, and she grunted as they heaved him over the side of the boat, careful not to disturb his wounds, though several split and blood spilled in great rivulets.
Before them lay a massive stone fortress with no door and a cluster of twisted trees with bark as dark as the shadows surrounding them.
They carried Destonne to the copse and leaned him against a trunk, though the King’s head lolled to his chest. Brennen made himself busy, gathered dry wood, leaves, brush, and dug a small hole to keep the fire contained.
When he was done, Emmery summoned her flame and the fire flickered to life.
She crouched next to Destonne and rested the back of her hand against his cheek, then his forehead. His skin had grown clammy and a sheen of sweat gathered at his brow, but his hands felt ice cold.
“I’ve never seen him this bad. Not even during the war,” Brennen said. He sniffed at the weeping skin on Destonne’s face where Senka’s claws had torn into him. A grimace tugged at his mouth.
Emmery’s jaw slackened in shock. Didn’t kings usually sit back and let their people sacrifice their lives on their behalf? “He fought in the war?”
“We both did.”
Not sure how to process that, Emmery carefully tugged at his tunic in an attempt to remove it without disturbing him. She shuddered as Destonne’s screams echoed through her head. Never before had she heard anything like that, and she’d seen some horrific wounds.
Once she removed his shirt with Brennen’s help, her trembling hands hovered over his chest. As much as she didn’t want to admit it to herself, she was afraid to touch him. Afraid to take his pain.
The King lay so still he may as well have been a corpse. She couldn’t even check his pulse because all she would find is the cold, dead absence of one.
“Destonne?” she whispered. She gently touched his cheek.
He didn’t stir, his breath laboured and shallow.
Brennen lay there and rested his head on Destonne's thigh while Emmery rubbed her chilled hands together, and she closed her eyes to focus on healing his wounds. Her flame tugged again as her magic wiggled free from her fingers, but she shoved it away, locking it behind a wall.
The silver threads flowed from her hands and she placed her fingers on his mangled chest.
The pain cracked like lightning, shredded flesh and tendons and—
Gods, those were bones snapping.
Emmery’s back arched, as if it could ward off the pain.
But she couldn’t hold back the sad, weak cry that slipped from her.
The pain persisted. And persisted. Ravaged and ate away at her, bit by bit, scraping and clawing and writhing, but the wounds slowly knit and she worked down his arms and chest, desperate to have this done.
To be rid of this pain. She focussed on his back, where she finally identified and found those splintered membranes.
Agony. Sheer agony. The corners of her vision faded, the pain became a warm, wet blur and her heavy head lolled. She fought for consciousness.
Destonne’s eyelids fluttered open and his lips parted on a ragged exhale. “I forgot what it’s like,” he murmured. His deep, gravelly voice stirred something in her chest. Emmery met his eyes but couldn’t speak.
“Not to hurt,” he said on an impossibly long breath.
At the statement, bloated with such vulnerability and heartache from the depths of his soul, she couldn’t do anything but stare. After she’d endured his pain at the pond and now this confession, she now knew that was how he lived—his body his own casket of torment.
After running his tongue over his bottom lip, something sharpened in his eyes. “Careful, your vestige is thinned.”
Emmery hated to admit he was right, but as her body heat fled with each of her threads, her glow faded to a mere honeyed residue. Yet underneath it the urge to take all his pain and hold it within herself screamed. Also the urge to hunt down that bitch Senka, and cook her eyeballs like eggs.
But as she reeled back her magic, relief struck her so violently she nearly crumpled to the ground.
Emmery brought her finger to his cheek to heal Senka’s claw marks last. His stuttering breath caught her off guard, and the way he looked at her made her focus anywhere but on him.
Anywhere but at whatever lingered in that look that she couldn’t handle, like a waltz she didn’t know the moves to.
When his hand lifted and caught hers, she yanked it away, though her heart leapt at the touch.