Chapter 44
DAVID
David stood beside Sean, utterly still other than his steady breathing.
His gaze had frozen on the burning pyre in the middle, the one with Kywyn’s body, now engulfed in flames that glowed with Luster far brighter than any he’d ever seen.
It was the Great Mother, Nish had said, returning the Light to the ether for redistribution.
It was hard not to believe him when it shone so brightly that David couldn’t see the figure beneath the flames. When it was done, apparently nothing of the body would remain. Everything was given back to the Mother.
“I keep wondering if there was something I should have done differently,” Sean murmured.
“You did what you could,” David answered, still mesmerized by the Luster floating into the air.
With a heavy sigh, Isobel turned away from them. “I can’t listen to this any longer.” She bade goodbye to Nish, who stood at the other end of the dais, and left in the direction of the Tree.
“She’s just upset,” Autumn said in the wake of Bel’s departure, her tone defensive.
Sean side-eyed her, unsmiling. “I caught that.”
“These past months have been a rough transition for her, Sean.”
“I don’t think they’ve been easy on any of us,” he replied.
Autumn’s honey gaze found David, and she widened her eyes as if to say You need to fix this!
But he didn’t. He had no prerogative to fix anything at all. If Isobel wanted to act this way, it was on her. David had known from the moment he’d met her the sort of rancor that lived in that woman’s heart. It wasn’t his responsibility to make Sean unsee it.
Autumn gave up on him and faced Sean. “I know she can be difficult, but her heart is in the right place. She just…”
Sean raised a brow. “Wants to keep me in a bubble for her own safety?”
Her bare smile extinguished entirely. “I’m going to check on her.” She kissed his temple and whispered something into his ear. He nodded and squeezed her arm before she slipped away.
Sean returned his attention to the pyre, the Light gleaming in his eyes. The two of them stood alone on their side of the dais, and though gazes from the crowd occasionally flickered their way, no one approached, likely out of respect for Sean’s loss.
“Nish says they’ll need to coronate me as soon as possible,” he muttered after a moment.
David’s mouth tightened, but he nodded.
“I know you don’t want the crown,” Sean continued, “but you’ll have to take it. I won’t take mine without you.”
He crossed his arms and dropped his gaze to his feet. “They’ll hate me more with a crown on my head.”
“For a while,” Sean said, tone even. “Until they start confusing you for me.”
David winced internally, imagining it—a crowd of people looking at him but seeing Sean. “We’ve still got a while for that, I think.”
Sean’s answering smirk lacked any shade of warmth. “You think?” He leaned David’s way, matching his stare. “I talked to Anna earlier today, and she did the oddest thing.”
He refused to react, though his heart picked up its pace at the mention of Anna.
With a deep sigh, Sean said, “She called me by your name.”
David’s mind went blank. “She…what?”
“She didn’t even realize she did it.”
Ugh. He didn’t like that. Not at all.
“So then I started thinking about Anna,” Sean said, voice low. He took a moment, his gaze returning to the pyres even though he didn’t seem to actually see them. “She’s…emotional. Even more than you.”
David made the connection at once. Anna had no ice, no shield. If she stepped foot into Viterra, the Indies would hunt her just as they’d hunted him. “Fuck,” he said under his breath.
“Yeah,” Sean said. “She’ll turn into prey the moment she enters Viterra, and the idea of her as prey to those fuckers makes me…angry.”
As the horrid image of her at the mercy of Indies cascaded through his mind, David locked himself up, but it was useless trying to hide from Sean.
How had it not occurred to him how Anna’s magic would drive the Indies mad? A single slip of his ice brought an entire horde down on them. If his own undiluted magic was a shiny lure, then Anna’s would be a fucking feast laid out in the middle of a famine.
They’d crawl over themselves to reach her.
David narrowed his gaze at his soulmate. “Angry, huh?”
Sean lifted a shoulder. “It’s Anna,” he said, as if that was all the explanation necessary.
And it kind of was.
Despite what David had done to her, despite that he’d destroyed everything that existed between them, he couldn’t deny that part of him that still whispered mine when she drew near. If an Indy tried to take her, if anyone tried to take her, he’d put his long-lost skills at torture to good use.
Sean rubbed his face. “If I try to keep her from going to Viterra the way she’s been training to do, she’ll maim me.”
“I’d rather you maimed than her dead.”
A humorless laugh answered. “She’s going to fight me on it every step of the way.”
David looked at him like Are you stupid? “You just tell her no. It isn’t that hard.”
Sean raised his brows and looked away. “Maybe not for you.”
He faced Sean full on, though Sean seemed far more reluctant to brave David’s gaze. “What does that mean?”
“Just—there’s—” Sean swept a hand through his hair, further mussing the black strands already curling around his face. “I want to give that girl everything she wants.”
David froze.
“And I think,” he continued, finally turning toward David, “that’s coming from you.”
A muscle in David’s jaw twitched, and he barely stopped himself from rubbing it away. “Have I mentioned how much I hate this soul-bond thing?”
“You have way more self-control than I do, David. She’s…in my head. I don’t know why you broke her, but all I want to do is fix it, which means I know you do, too. You’re just ignoring it.”
“That’s what the ice is for, you fuckwit. Use it.”
Sean scowled. “I don’t like the ice. All I’m saying is if I try to tell her she can’t do this thing she wants to do and she argues with me with those blue fucking eyes, looking all sad and save me—my heart is broken like she does now, all that’s going to happen is I’m going to cave.”
“You’re so weak,” David said, shaking his head.
“It’s Anna,” Sean said again.
He let out a heavy breath. “This is going to get very complicated.”
Sean’s fist clenched and unclenched, and his voice lowered to something barely audible. “You want her too much. It’s…distracting.”
“I could say the same about Isobel.”
A caustic smile appeared on Sean’s face. “Could you though?”
Well…
Maybe not. Isobel was all acid and fabricated heat, a counterfeit version of the golden shine surrounding Anna. Was that how it felt to Sean, too?
David was afraid to ask, and Sean merely stared, both of them silent, neither of them willing to breach the impasse.
A moment slipped by.
Then another.
And then an explosion of terror detonated inside his magical core. His every sense shrunk back from it—copper on his tongue, black spots in his vision, char in his nostrils. Hysteria and pain collided in a maelstrom that grew bigger by the second. He knew those emotions.
Anna’s emotions.
He leapt from the dais before he’d even made the decision to move.
The mourners around him gasped as he shoved them out of the way, aiming straight for the vortex of Anna.
He followed her emotions the way a dog tracked a scent, magic locked onto hers.
Within moments, he was pounding up the steps to the nearest temple, Sean just behind him.
The door swung open, and at first David saw nothing. The place was empty. But then a dark heap caught his attention.
Anna.
A crimson lake seeped from her body. Starling hair fanned out behind her and covered her face. His knees cracked against the stone floor as he fell next to her, rolling her to her back. “Anna!”
She gasped.
Still breathing. Still alive.
“What the fuck happened?” Sean demanded.
Soft blue eyes fluttered open, and she pressed her hand to her abdomen—two bloody rips in the fabric of her shirt. “Knife,” she managed.
Knife?
Had…had she done this to herself? No, that couldn’t be.
“Who—who did this?” Sean asked, horror dripping from his voice.
“He left,” she said.
“Sean, we need Isobel,” David said. “Now!”
“Right.” Sean rushed to the door. “Get her back to the Tree if you can. The infirmary!”
When he left, David scooped his hands beneath her slight frame, ignoring the blood soaked into the stones beneath.
Anna’s blood. His Anna.
All thoughts disconnected from his body. He stood with her cradled in his arms. Pained eyes landed on his face, pleading. He felt that gaze like a sucker punch to his soul.
Her teeth chattered. “I’m cold.”
“You’re not cold,” he said at once, lacing his voice with magic. “You’re warm. It doesn’t hurt, love. It doesn’t hurt at all.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she slurred. Her eyes fell shut, and the tiniest smile appeared at her mouth.
No. Wait.
Wake up.
Wake up!
“Anna?” he demanded, using every bit of self-control to keep from shaking her. She didn’t stir.
Warm blood seeped into his shirt, eliciting a jagged sort of terror that tore through everything. Emotions rumbled behind the ice, shaking loose, but he couldn’t lose it. Not now.
Go, David! Sean’s voice shouted down the connection.
Cradling the precious cargo against his chest, he sprinted from the temple. People fell out of the way as he ran, some screaming or gasping at the scene he’d created. His lungs burned as he ran, but David called on his soulmate’s strength, his speed, forcing his own legs to move faster.
Agonizing minutes later, he’d reached the infirmary, ignoring the handful of people who followed. The spaes shooed them away, ushering him to a private room. Eyes followed them, but he paid them no mind. His gaze latched on Anna’s chest, watching the slow rise and fall—proof she lived.
“What happened?” asked the no-nonsense spae once he’d settled Anna onto the cot.
“I found her like this. I think she was stabbed. Sean’s getting Bel.”
The spae lifted the hem of Anna’s shirt to reveal her bronze skin caked in blood and two deep wounds still bleeding.
The ice took over, freezing him from the inside out.