Chapter 30
The clearing vanishes in a blinding burst of light, erasing sight and sound. Force slams me back into the grass. White sparks and wind howl around me, yanking at my hair, stealing my breath.
Then it stops, and the world is all dark. I cough and roll to my side, pushing myself up on trembling arms. Bright spots blot out my vision.
I lift a shaking hand to my throat. There is no new wound. He didn’t strike. And I hurt too much to be dead.
A groan cuts through the ringing in my ears. The masked man stirs a few feet away, also on his back. We were thrown apart by something. It’s like the air between us exploded.
Before I blink away the spots, he’s already on his feet. He staggers toward me. He’s still coming. That blast of energy only delayed him.
“Help me,” I whisper, tears squeezing out.
Something slams down between us, shaking the ground. A comet, smoking black and glowing white. My mind rearranges around what I’m seeing as it moves and stands, resolving into a man.
A man, glowing bright as the stars, with dark, misting shapes extending from each shoulder.
Wings. A glowing man with wings.
I would think I’m hallucinating, but the masked man stumbles back, eyes wide. For a breath, the three of us are frozen, the strange man between me and my pursuer.
The masked man looks past the newcomer to me, and flips his dagger, grasping it by the blade. He raises it. He’s going to throw it…
The air shatters again. A burst of shimmering energy explodes from the stranger’s outstretched hand, slamming into the masked man and flinging him across the field toward the tree line.
My sight is still painted with afterimages, but I make out the masked man clambering to his feet once more.
He stays bent, as if one side is injured.
The dagger hangs in one hand, still red with my blood.
He takes one step forward, and the stranger steps forward too, palm outstretched in a clear threat.
The masked man glances at me, then melts into the trees.
I’m alone with the stranger. I no longer feel my arm, the pain replaced by numbing cold.
He turns. Huge, feathered wings extend from each shoulder.
Either they are misting, or my vision is blurry.
His skin glows as if all the starlight in the field is landing on him alone.
Hair like ink swirls around his bare chest, reaching his waist. And his eyes are even more inhuman—they blaze bright silver.
If the gods walked this world, I would think this was one of them.
“Lysandra.” The voice reverberates through my bones.
I know that voice.
I inhale. “Alaris?”
He kneels in front of me, faster than I can track. I’m frozen in his starlight stare. “Are you hurt?”
The edges of him blur. “Is this real?” I whisper.
He reaches for me. His fingers cup my face, tilt my chin, checking my neck. His hands move over my blood-soaked nightgown, down to my chest, my stomach, pressing, searching. “Lysandra. Focus. Were you stabbed?”
I blink, and his outline sharpens. I have to warn him. The masked man left the clearing, but he could come back. “That was him,” my voice rises. “The man after me. He followed me from the palace…”
His entire body goes rigid. “That’s the man who tried to kill you at the palace? He’s the reason you left?”
I nod, gasping.
The air around him dims as his eyes blaze. He bares his teeth in a snarl and twists toward the trees.
He’s going to go after him.
“No.” I grab for his arm, smearing red on his luminous skin. “Don’t—please don’t go. Don’t leave me.”
The tension in his frame doesn’t ease, but slowly, slowly, his attention returns to me. His glowing gaze drops to the red mark I left on him.
He catches my hand and turns my arm over, tracing the blood up the inside. His fingers find the wound. He pulls the torn fabric back, and his starlight gaze flashes.
“Ouch,” I say sluggishly. Now that I know he’s not leaving, my eyelids droop. I can rest.
I don’t know if I’m moving slow or he’s moving fast. In a second, his arm is around my back, and his long fingers press into my neck. My head lolls into the pressure.
His expression goes hard. “Shit.”
He grabs my arm and squeezes it, swinging my legs into his grasp. Gravity vanishes as he pushes off and we shoot straight up.
I’m tucked into his chest so tightly, I can only get a sense of the dark world rushing past us out of the corner of my eye. His skin is smooth against my cheek. I always thought of his touch as cool, but it doesn’t feel that way now. My limbs are tingling. I close my eyes.
“Don’t go to sleep, Lysandra,” he says, above the wind. At the way he says my name, the command in it, I open them, even though my vision swims.
The pain in my arm thrums as we land, but it’s a dull, distant thing. Alaris is walking fast toward the castle lights. He’s shaking. I glance up in alarm, but I can’t focus. Why is he shaking? But no, it’s not him—it’s me. I don’t feel cold, but I’m shivering.
“Stay awake, Lysandra. Don’t you dare go to sleep.” He kicks open a door. “Karns! Healer, now!”
Everything is blurring, but I keep my eyes cracked as he told me to. I’m floating as we move through halls and rooms. He lowers me to a bed. A huge red smear on his chest drips down his stomach.
“Karns! In here,” he shouts again, ripping open my collar to bare my arm. He presses a cloth into the wound, holding it hard.
I grunt and try to wiggle away. “Hurts.”
“Hold on, sweet Ly. I have to stop the bleeding.”
I close my eyes, quaking.
When I crack them again, the room is bustling with people.
It is not my room. I find Alaris. He is still gripping my arm, twisting to yell at a blue-robed healer.
I want to tell him not to yell, that it’s okay, but my lips don’t move.
His onyx hair once again curls around his face, the longest pieces reaching his shoulders.
His skin is no longer luminous. His eyes are dark. Someone draped a shirt over his back.
Hands press a cup to my lips, and the bitter taste of medicine hits my tongue. I place the smell and cough and sputter. It’s a sedative.
“No,” I murmur, my voice weak. Panic curls in my chest. It jolts me more awake, but the room is already tilting from the little I’ve swallowed. “Don’t want it.”
I try to jerk away, but Alaris’s grip keeps me still. “Ly, they have to stitch your arm.”
I shake my head fiercely. “No,” I moan.
“They have to close the skin before they use ointment.”
“He’ll come back,” I whisper. I need Alaris to understand. I can’t be put under. I need to be able to run if the masked man returns for me.
“He won’t.” His voice is hard. “I promise I won’t leave your side. Not for a second.”
He takes the cup from the healer and holds it between us.
My gaze shifts from one of his eyes to the other. If he leaves, I’m certain the masked man will be back through the window. And I won’t escape again. “Not a second,” I echo.
I let him put the cup to my lips.
The sedative takes effect quickly. The room fades, and his grip on my arm releases.
I can’t see where he is, and I can’t feel him anymore. No, don’t leave, I try to say, but I don’t think the words come out. I feel thread pulling through my skin, the slight tug too distant to bother me. The darkness is pulling me under no matter how hard I fight.
Where is Alaris?
Then the bed on the other side of me sinks. I catch his scent through the haze. Night air, cool and clean, and cloves.
So I let the draught take me.