Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
NISSA
I’m buried under my fur-lined cape and every blanket in the room when I hear a muffled knock. While I didn’t want Caspien to call a servant, I’m thankful someone is here to light a fire. I don’t have the strength through the cold to do it myself. Even my powers seem frozen in my veins.
The teeth chattering has barely subsided enough for me to call out a weak, “Come in.”
The door creaks open behind me.
“Can you pl-please light the fire?” I manage.
“What the hell, Lila?” a deep voice growls.
The relief of hearing Cillian is overwhelming. I want to cry, but truly believe the tears would freeze on my cheeks.
He is kneeling in front of me seconds later. “What did he do?” he grinds out as he cradles my hand. He instantly jerks away, his face shifting from anger to utter shock as he stares at my icy fingers.
“I’m s-sick,” I’m able to get out between more tremors.
His eyes grow wider as he grabs my hand again, this time holding it tight and covering it with his other. I let out a broken whimper when the heat from his skin seeps into my fingertips.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks.
I close my eyes and shake my head. “Helps,” is all my tired body can get out.
“I’m going to light the fire for you.” He begins to stand.
I clutch his fingers with the little strength I have. “No, please. Don’t leave me.”
He looks across the room at the fireplace, but I can’t let go of the little heat he is giving me.
“What can I do?” He crouches back down in front of me.
“In the drawer, get me…” I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to clear the fog in my brain. “The echinacea and… goldenseal tinctures.” I shiver through the words.
Keeping one hand on me, he digs through the herbal remedies I have in the table next to the bed. When he finds the right ones, a broken cry escapes me when I attempt to sit up.
“I have you.” He twists the amber bottles open, gently places a hand under my head, and lifts it. “Open,” he quietly instructs.
I obey, and he uses the dropper to give me the needed amount of the tinctures. After lowering me gently back to the pillow, he closes the bottles and sets them on the table next to me. My eyes fall shut, but I can feel him watching me as he pulls the blankets up to my chin.
I open my eyes and see what looks like a new resolve wash through him.
He quickly crawls over my body and climbs under the covers with me.
Taking one of my hands, he wraps himself around me and covers us both back up.
If I didn’t actually believe I could be dying, I would appreciate how well we fit together when he settles against my back.
Then my back bows, and I cry out as cold and heat clash through our clothes. He pulls me tighter into him, and I try to suck in a ragged breath through the pain.
“You need the heat. You’re okay, you’re going to be okay,” he murmurs into my hair.
I can’t tell if he’s trying to reassure me or himself, but it helps me pull the wind deeper into my lungs. It only takes moments before our combined body heat begins to release my tensed muscles. I relax into his embrace. My eyelids are heavy, cold and sleep pulling me under.
The last thing I remember is his gentle whisper. “Lila.”
The sun is barely coming through the windows when something wakes me. I lie there for a moment, trying to get my bearings. The rattle of glass drags my attention to the corner of my room.
Cillian’s wrinkled shirt stretches tight across his back as he digs through a cabinet.
“Snooping?” I ask in a sleep-filled voice. I clear my throat as I sit up a little.
He gives me a mischievous smirk over his shoulder. “If I was going to snoop, I’d do it when you weren’t in the same room.” He resumes his search.
The moment feels so normal, so natural. For a moment I pretend that we could have a life like this. That there’s no worry about whether his family is lying to me. No divine requirement to become Caspien’s queen, a duty that makes every fiber of me want to run.
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
“I thought I’d make you some tea. You feel warmer to the touch, but it could help make sure that chill doesn’t return.”
The melancholy retreats, and a smile breaks out across my face as I watch him try to tend to me, digging through the glass jars I brought from my flat.
“And what do you have to make that tea?” I eye the medicinal herbs he has set out. I giggle as he names off a few things that are for completely different ailments.
“Okay, okay.” He gives me a feigned look of affront. “What should I be using?”
After I list off what my body needs, he steeps the tea and settles into the bed next to me. “How are you feeling?” he asks, as I blow on the steaming liquid.
“Much better.” I eye him over the mug as I take a sip. One corner of his lips tips up into a sexy smirk. My eyes jump back to his. I shake my head a little to clear the thoughts. “Will you tell me about the ancient archives?”
“Why don’t I just show you instead.”
Cillian pulls back a single large mahogany door. The hinges groan, like the entry hasn’t been used in a long time. Peering around him, I stare down a dark staircase barely illuminated by fae fire.
As we wind down the dark stone stairs, the deeper we go, the mustier the smell. The stairs are slick with algae, and my legs are still weak and unsteady from the night before. I run my hand along the edge of the wall to help my balance, determined not to fall and make a fool of myself.
Without a word, Cillian places a hand on my lower back to steady me as we descend deeper under the castle.
The stone steps end and open into a narrow corridor lined with a handful of doors. He leads me to the second door on the left. The moment his free hand makes contact with the door knob, a vibration radiates through the corridor.
Cillian grabs one of the fae fire torches from the wall and leads us into a dark room.
As he places the torch in a metal pit in the center of the space, the room comes to life, fae fire winking in glass-paned bookcases.
I can barely make out the ancient scrolls and leather-bound books inside through the layers of dust obscuring the glass.
I make a lap around the small room, taking in the date markers on a few of the panel doors. Running my fingers across the two drafting tables on the right, I leave dust tracks behind.
“Doesn’t look like this room is visited often,” I muse. “No Cyndr?”
“No.” Cillian is taking in the bookcases as intently as I am. “I was shown these archives as a child during a history lesson. I’ve never actually been down here to research anything myself. And obviously they aren’t maintained by the staff.”
I walk back around to the shelf that appears to have the oldest of the parchments and peer in through the grime. “May I?” I ask.
He gives me a quick nod, and I grip the golden handle and pull. The musty smell of old parchment and leather assaults me when I peer inside. I sigh when I don’t see any sense of organization to the piles of aged literature in front of me. Again, I’m wishing for the helpful little dryrd.
Gingerly lifting a stack of scrolls, hoping the whole lot won’t tumble from the shelves, I move to the tables to unroll one. Cillian takes up the table next to me, opening a leather-bound book that is clearly from a more recent time.
As he flips through the book, I study the first page of my scroll—a map of Castara. I scan the diagram of our lands, taking in the Kingdom of Varethiel longer than the rest. When I shuffle to the next page, there is a map of Pollara.
“I’ve never seen the other worlds.” I run my hand over the depiction. “Have you ever been?” I ask Cillian without looking up.
“Not often. A few times with my family for royal events.” He comes over and looks over my shoulder at the table.
“Pollara is beautiful. Their crystal and salt mines are like nothing else I’ve ever seen.
” He points to an area on the map. “The stars at night look as if they’re so close you could reach up and touch them.
” He pauses and then peels the page back to a third map.
Alhena—the Vampire world. Even the image appears to be drawn darker than the others.
“Royal visits to Alhena are even rarer.” I don’t have to be able to see his face to sense the change in him. The tension is rolling off of him. “It is not somewhere I’d like to visit again.”
“Why?” I instinctively whisper, like the vampires will be able to hear me through the parchment.
“It’s a vicious, brutal world. Humans are still the vampire world’s main source of food.”
I jerk my head up to him in shock. We have humans here as workers, but they are treated well. Most prefer life here.
“It’s different there,” Cillian adds. “Humans are used for whatever the vampires want, and humans have no say.”
“How do humans end up there?” Why would anyone willingly go to a world like that?
“Apollyon has never forgiven Elohim. He turned his people against the humans. They aren’t just a food source, they’re the enemy. Many of the humans there were manipulated or stolen by vampires that have snuck back to Elohim’s world, but some humans go there in death.”
“But Enzo, the Varethiel guards—” I cut myself off, shaking my head. I don’t know any of them, but they didn’t seem to fit what he’s describing.
“Yes, the original demons are irredeemable in their anger and vengeance. But some of the made-vampires remember being human and disagree with the treatment of their former kind. It’s actually why Aiden opened Varethiel to a few who have proven themselves.
” He pauses, thinking. “It was a risky decision. But helping those that wanted out of Alhena—I admire it.”
His eyes turn towards me for the first time. “Just be careful if”—he hesitates—“when you have to go there.” We stand there, staring at each other for what feels like minutes but could have been only a few heartbeats.