Chapter 13 #4
“Like everyone else out there is helping her?” Jesstin found a pitcher of water on a nearby vanity and brought it back to Elloven.
He propped her up and used the blanket on the back of the bench to keep her warm until she could dress herself.
But as he did, he caught something he wished he hadn’t.
A mark on the outside of her thigh, the sign of Curia Duskmaw as it had been described over supper.
It looked almost like a star, bursting with an array of colors, but there was a dark blot burned over it. A brand.
The letter Q. Quinlanden.
Searing hot rage took hold.
“You’re reacting an awful lot like a lover would.”
That time it was Gennady. “Did you know about this?”
“You don’t think I wanted him dead?”
“I just want to get her out of here and be done with it all.” Jesstin covered her angry scar with the blanket. “With both of you.”
Gennady disappeared.
“I can help her, Skylark! Like I helped you in that carriage, if you let me in!”
Taven’s toothless demands continued. Jesstin wasn’t listening. He was too distracted by the brand of ownership the Quinlanden whelp had stamped upon Elloven’s thigh to erase her identity.
His only use for Taven had expired when he’d gotten to her first.
Her flesh was rosy and splotchy in places, and he could see bruises already forming, but there were no visible open wounds. He turned her head, which appeared free of trauma. Her pulse and breathing were both erratic but strong.
Divine intervention was the only explanation he could muster.
With a pointed glance away, he reached under the blanket for the remnants of the gold fabric and hurled the scraps across the room.
“Are you listening to me in there? I had nothing to do with this!”
Jesstin squeezed his eyes closed. “You brought her here, Considine.”
The door softly thundered when Taven shifted his weight against it. “I had no idea they were going to do that. I would never have allowed it.”
Jesstin had to sit for a moment. His ribs felt cracked in half. Fear had suppressed his pain until then, but it came on like a storm. “You comfort her with one hand...” He gripped his sides. “Pin her with the other.”
“What a foul thing to say about the person who loves her most in the world.”
“Her humiliation is a victory for you. Now you can comfort her, and later, you’ll remind her how badly things can go without your protection.
Not quite a reprimand, just a clear-enough warning that she’ll suffer without your guidance.
” Jesstin smoothed Elloven’s hair from her damp face.
Guardians, he was still so mad at her, but all he wanted to do was fold her into his heart, where he could keep her safe.
“I know what subjugation looks like, Considine. It’s in my blood.
It’s in the man who sired me and the man who raised me, and I suspect it’s in me too, but I won’t stand by while others practice it.
So, fuck off to your other conspirators. I’ll take care of Elloven.”
“You’re being daft. You saw her fall from the sky like a struck bird. She needs healing. I can heal her. If nothing else compels you to open this bloody door, let it be that.”
He wouldn’t open the door under threat of death, but if Taven had found them, the others soon would too, and though he couldn’t prove it, they were responsible for Elloven’s lapse in focus. No one would ever convince him otherwise.
“I don’t need healing.” Elloven’s head creased in pain as she tried to sit on her own. “Ow. Ow. What happened?”
“You fell.”
Elloven tumbling through the fire-filled darkness was crystal clear in his mind. In the heat of the moment, he’d been too astounded to think beyond getting to her, but now that she was safe, his fear was an open wound. “A tent broke your fall.”
Elloven shook her head. “No, no, no. I was fine, feeling the movements, just as they said, and then... No, I didn’t break the chain. I didn’t...” Her hands moved as they had in the show, retracing the memory. “Oh no, the others...”
“They’ll live,” Jesstin said, though he couldn’t know if they would. The bleeding man might not for long. None of it was her concern.
“I...” Elloven was starved for breath. “Everything was fine. It was fine. I don’t know what happened, why I...”
Jesstin reached for one of her hands, still suspended away from her body. He wrapped it in his palms and leaned in so she could see him. “Count, El.”
Her bloodshot eyes met his.
“Count. Count on my hand.” He demonstrated with his own fingers. “Count with me.”
At first she shook her head, but it slowly became a dazed nod. Her fingers stirred against his hand. One twitch, then another, until there was a cadence.
“Five, six, seven.” He whispered the count to keep her focused. “Nine, ten, eleven, yes. Twelve.”
“She’s awake?” Taven yelled. “Ellie!”
Her breath faltered as she glanced toward the door.
Jesstin turned her face back toward him. “Thirteen. Fourteen. No, look at me. Fifteen. Say it with me.”
“Seventeen.” Her voice was shaky. “Eighteen.”
“I can hear you both!” Taven banged on the door.
“Forget him, Elloven.” He listened for her counting, waited to make sure her fingers were still moving. “Forget all of them. Two things, that’s all you need to do right now. Breathe and count. Breathe and count.”
“Twenty... eight, twenty-nine, thirty.”
“Thirty-one,” he said. “Thirty-two.”
At fifty, Elloven withdrew her hand and settled back with a slow breath. “Okay. I’m okay now.”
“It’s all right if you’re not.”
“I just... I don’t understand how it happened.”
“It’s not your fault.” He had to physically bite his tongue to keep from saying more. “It’s theirs. All of theirs.”
“I could feel them, feel the moves, and then it was so fast. It happened so fast.”
“Ellie, tell him to let me in right now!” Taven banged on the door with an exasperated shriek.
She shook her head.
“She says no,” Jesstin called. “Make yourself useful and tell the others she doesn’t need them either.”
“I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth, Skylark.”
“Then hear it from mine. I need to be alone right now.” Elloven straightened and took her deepest breath yet, but she was far from composed.
“But you’re not alone. He’s there.”
Taven’s hesitation forced Jesstin’s irritation back to the surface. “Do you ever respect her wishes, Considine? Ever?”
“I love her.” His feeble half-answer was muffled. “If you want me to leave, Ellie, then that’s what I’ll do, but I need to hear you say it.”
“Leave.” She held her head high, almost in pride, despite that Taven couldn’t see her. “Leave, Taven. Please.”
“Very well.” Taven’s disappointment resounded. He was clearly trying to sound pitiful, and he was, just not the way he’d intended. “We’ll speak later, my love.”
Elloven’s self-possessed gaze dissolved as the echoes of his boots became memory.
“Elloven, look at me.”
Jesstin had one hand on her shoulder, light and uncommitted, like someone who had no experience dealing with the emotions of others and would rather be anywhere else.
But that wasn’t fair of her, because he had helped her. He’d taken her somewhere she could be calm and safe. He’d counted with her. He hadn’t tried to stop her like Taven would. He’d kept her focused on the numbers until she could return to the moment.
“Your face,” she whispered. Blood trickled from a gash on his cheekbone.
Jesstin reached up and drew his hand back. “Ah. Right.”
She’d done that. Whatever chaos she’d rained on the amphitheater had caused him actual harm, and how many others? “Let me clean it for you.”
“No need.” Jesstin flexed his neck with a tense squint. He wasn’t worried anymore; he was angry. “We need to talk about what they did to you out there.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, knowing they were the wrong words, divisive words designed to push him even further away.
She’d learned the tactic as a means of self-protection, because nothing good in her life ever lasted.
He wouldn’t be there at all if she hadn’t required an escort on a night that had come to belong to another lifetime, another Elloven. Another Jesstin. “You can’t.”
Jesstin’s hand returned to his lap. “I’d wager you can’t either.”
Elloven’s head lifted in surprise.
He smirked, but not like Taven would, filled with condescension. It was a more generic disgust. “What are we doing here, Elloven? Really?”
“You know—”
“Really.” His jaw ground, and his neck ridged from the tension he was so obviously holding back. “How much of what you’re ‘feeling’ is what others put in your head?”
Elloven was speechless. He thought so little of her, he couldn’t conceive she could think for herself? “I don’t expect you to understand, because none of this is a part of you the way it’s a part of me. You shouldn’t be here at all. You wouldn’t be here if not for...”
“You? I haven’t forgotten.” He scratched at the faint stubble along his chin.
“Yet, see, there’s a whole barrel of shit you don’t know, shit they’ve kept from you.
I am supposed to be here. All of it—the wooing, the spectacle—it’s all a scheme, designed for both of us, and we’ve played right into it. ”
“You’re supposed to be here? Do you hear yourself?” He didn’t know what he was talking about. He couldn’t know. Arguing about what he could never grasp was more than she had the heart for. “Do you realize this is the most you’ve said to me since I saved you in the woods?”