Chapter 10 Aurelia
Aurelia
“She’s been asleep for five days—surely we need to wake her to, I don’t know, eat… drink… ask her why in all the realms she chose this cursed place to visit.”
Five days.
Too long.
“Seraphine, that’s enough. No—don’t poke—”
A sharp jab to my eye snapped me into consciousness. I flinched, blinking against the blur until a face swam into focus.
Sharp violet eyes, wide with delight, blinked at me, framed by lashes so long they looked brushed with ink. Her skin was a deep, glistening onyx, and her wings—filmy and insect-like—beat so quickly they appeared frozen in place. They hummed softly in the air above me, hovering far too close.
“Oh, wonderful! See? She just needed a little encouraging,” she sang, pulling back with a grin that suggested she’d happily do it again.
“Seraphine,” the second voice came again, firmer now. A woman leaned into view beside her—dark crimson hair braided neatly, eyes so pale and opulent they seemed to swallow the whites, leaving her gaze uncanny, almost unearthly. “She’s in no state to be badgered.”
“Badgered?” Seraphine gasped, mock-offended. “I’m reviving her—clearly.”
“Forgive her.” The red-haired woman’s tone softened as she turned fully toward me, the sharpness in her expression easing. “I’m Lysara. How are you feeling?”
Her hand brushed lightly across my arm, steadying me. But the touch ripped me back into memory.
Hayat. His hands on my skin. His mouth at my throat. The sting of teeth. Heat, hunger, and the terrifying way I had wanted it. My pulse spiked, nausea rising with the memory.
Seraphine cocked her head, expression sharpening as if she could taste the panic radiating off me. “Oh, look at her face. She remembers something.”
“Seraphine,” Lysara warned again, low and clipped this time.
But my mind was already reeling. A knife in my hand. The shadowed figure before me. The slide of steel through flesh. Warm blood spilling over my fingers. And then—my own face staring back at me.
Warmth pressed against me, suffocating and relentless, like a second skin.
My eyes snapped open to a dim haze of gold.
Firelight licked shadows across the walls, painting the deep green velvet drapes in a warm glow.
I tried to sit up, but pain tore through my chest, white-hot and blinding.
My hand flew to the bandage beneath soft linen. Linen. Not my leathers.
I lurched upright, ignoring the rip of pain in my ribs. “What the fuck…” My voice cracked. “…where am I?”
Neither answered. Seraphine’s pointed ear twitched. Lysara’s head snapped toward the door.
“Uh oh,” Seraphine murmured, “Boss man’s coming.”
On her way past, she plucked a loose thread from my blanket, twirling it around her finger with a wicked grin before vanishing. The two slipped behind a velvet drape into a hidden seam of darkness, gone before I could demand answers.
Silence roared in my ears.
That was when I saw him.
A man sat in the corner near the hearth, restrained to a chair bolted into the flagstones.
Black coils of shadow wrapped his wrists and ankles, pulsing faintly.
His head hung low, hair curtaining his face until he slowly lifted it to meet my gaze.
His eyes were deep-set, unreadable, the color of old copper.
My breath stalled, caught sharp in my chest.
“You’re awake,” he said, his voice roughened with exhaustion.
My throat was dry, the words cracking as they left me. “Who are you?”
He tilted his head, a crooked half-smile tugging at his mouth, though it never touched his eyes. “A healer.”
My gaze darted to his restraints. “Then why the hell are you tied up with—what are those—shadows?” I forced steel into my voice, though my eyes swept the room, hunting for anything—a candlestick, a shard of glass—anything I could wield.
The blanket tightened in my fists, flimsy shield though it was.
He wasn’t free, but I wasn’t sure I was either.
A dry huff escaped him. The restraints I recognized as shadow shifted as he adjusted himself. “Apparently, my skill is valuable. My freedom isn’t.”
I let myself look at him then. He had broad shoulders, built for strength, but weariness clung to him, softening the sharp set of his jaw.
His shirt sagged loose at the collar, baring a stretch of tan skin over a sculpted collarbone.
Warmth seemed to radiate from him, yet the look in his eyes was distant, unreadable.
He might have been someone broken by captivity…
or someone dangerous enough to deserve it.
My stomach knotted. A chill spread through me, sharper than pain.
My pulse hammered as I scanned the shadows binding his wrists, imagining them around mine.
I dragged my gaze back to his face, searching for some sign, some anchor to tell me whether he was threat or ally. But there was no answer there.
I narrowed my eyes as realization struck. “You’re from Synnex, aren’t you? One of the missing healers.”
He didn’t bristle; the corner of his mouth flattened, that easy half-smile snuffed.
I knew I’d recognized the sound of those softened coastal vowels.
And no one outside Synnex wore charms etched from tideglass at their collar; the shard glinted faintly beneath his shirt as he moved, proof enough. Strange that they’d let him keep it.
For years, the stories had haunted us. Healers crossing into Nyxarra, chasing remedies no one else could provide, only to vanish into its fog.
Families praying until their throats bled.
Offerings piled at Sylvara’s shrines—sprigs of harvest grain, pressed flowers, whispered pleas that the goddess of flora and lands might clear their paths home and keep them safe as they wandered. But the prayers went unanswered.
Some said Nyxarra devoured them whole. Others said its shadows wore their faces now.
Whatever the truth, no healer who left for this realm ever came back the same—if at all. But they hadn’t trained as I had. They didn’t have someone like Aeryn waiting on the other side.
The thought pressed down on me, but I shoved myself upright anyway, breath shallow, pain lancing through my ribs.
My pulse thundered–equal parts fear and determination.
If he really was from Synnex—if he was one of the missing healers—then maybe, just maybe, there were answers here. Answers I could use to aid Aeryn.
Aeryn’s face flashed in my mind. I remembered the desperate prayer I’d made two years ago, begging the council to send a healer when the darkness first began to take root. No one had ever come.
“Why are you here?” I demanded, voice sharper than I intended. My fingers dug into the blanket, bracing against the ache in my chest. “What’s your name? Did you come here because of my brother?”
Confusion clouded his gaze, followed by something softer—sadness, maybe. “I don’t know about your brother,” he said gently. “I’ve been in the cells below the castle for… a long time.”
I sank back against the pillows, chest heaving. Was he someone’s brother? Was he trying to save someone too? I saw myself reflected in him—trapped, cut off, powerless. “We could help each other,” I said, the words rushing out before I could second-guess them. “We can escape together.”
His eyes lifted to mine, the firelight catching on their edges. “You don’t understand,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to leave.”
“What do you mean you don’t—”
“I have things to finish here.” His voice was steady, unyielding. “And you’re in no condition to leave. You’d tear yourself apart.”
I turned my head to the side, the firelight flickering shadows across the room. “I need to leave,” I whispered, the words barely audible at first. “I need to save him.”
I hadn’t come because I thought Nyxarra would spare me.
I came because staying would have killed him just as surely as leaving might kill me.
Hayat trained me well enough to survive almost anything in Synnex.
That had to count for something out here.
The hinges moaned, and the air thinned. Cold rushed through the room, raising gooseflesh along my arms.
My body remembered before my mind did. That same pressure in my chest, that same golden flicker at the edge of the dark—him.
The firelight faltered as he stepped inside, shadows bending toward him as if pulled by a tide. The air thinned, colder with each unhurried stride. His eyes traced the distance between us—slow, measuring, and the corners of his mouth curved when the last of the warmth seemed to leave the room.
"I apologize," he drawled, his voice thick with amusement. "I didn’t mean to get you all…"
He paused, locking eyes with me as his grin deepened. "…hot and bothered."
The realization hit hard. He knew. Somehow, he knew my dream—Hayat’s hands on my skin, his mouth at my throat, the hunger I hated myself for wanting. My chest heaved, bile stinging the back of my throat. I felt skinned, laid bare. Violated.
“Malachi, it has been five days. She needs to eat in order to heal.”
When Malachi turned, the easy curve of his mouth leveled out; the room seemed to hold its breath. The healer flinched, but the shadows binding him pulled taut, silencing whatever words had gathered in his mouth.
Malachi stepped forward, his presence swallowing the distance between us. His eyes skimmed me with cold precision, lingering on the bandage across my chest.
"You're still breathing," he remarked, his tone devoid of emotion. "Good."
Confusion curdled into anger, burning hotter than the ache in my chest. “Why does it matter to you?” I demanded, my voice rough.
Malachi didn’t so much as blink. “It doesn’t matter to me, necessarily. But it does to our prince. As for myself—I could care less,” he replied flatly.
“Couldn’t,” I shot back automatically.
A beat. He tilted his head, not quite a smile, not quite a threat. “I didn’t misspeak. The more you talk, the less I care.”
My pulse pounded in my ears, and I glared at him. “Who are you?” My voice was ice, but it didn’t faze him.