Chapter 27
LYRAE
Gravelock’s threat was still ringing off the walls when I leapt over the baluster and landed beside Rooke.
“Neat trick. Is that…” another hard-fought, rasping breath, “Commander of the Dreadwatch stuff?”
“Stop talking.” I laid my hand on his arm, rage slicing through me as he shook from pain. “You’re bleeding out faster than I thought.”
“Don’t worry.” He tried to smile through blood-stained teeth. “It’s usually a lot worse.”
My panicked vision tunneled down to the sheer number of wounds, most of them not life threatening on their own, but layered over and over one another, all of them added together…
Gods. Gods.
Fae were hard to kill, but he’d already lost too much blood. He was covered in those deep cuts, he’d been lying on this freezing cold floor a long time, and there was little to no magic here, which meant he wasn’t healing fast enough to counter the blood loss.
I’d treated soldiers in the field who’d died from far less.
Gravelock was a fool, or maybe he’d been blinded by hate, but leaving Rooke alone like this…there was no way he expected him to survive.
Above us, a raven cawed, low and mournful, like he agreed.
I clamped my lips together, rolling him onto his back, stripped off his jacket, tearing the expensive fabric into long ribbons.
“I’m binding the deepest wounds first to slow your blood loss.
There will be some pain, since I’ll have to tie them off tighter than I’d like.
Do you have any Hazelwort? I can make a poultice that will speed up clotting. ”
Rooke shot me a look just short of scathing. “It’s the fucking middle of winter and I’m a prisoner in my own home, so…no, I’m fresh out of Hazelwort at the moment.”
“You’re wasting precious energy being a smartass, you know.”
“Ah, but how else can I die in your arms, commander, than with a smile on my face and a…” His coughing fit stole away whatever else he’d been about to say and I wrapped faster, reminding myself I’d worked with even less, and under far worse conditions.
At least the fire was still roaring, and the floor was comparatively clean.
The next ten minutes became nothing but muscle memory—tearing and binding, working as fast as I could, focused purely on triaging the worst of his wounds, and not the fact that every other part of the prince was as perfect as his sinfully handsome face.
Trying to ignore the fury slicing through me in vicious waves, the way I kept imagining my knife slashing into Gravelock’s desiccated body, or how loudly his screams would bounce off the stones before I ended him.
I was breathless from how badly I wanted that bastard dead, and I didn’t even understand why.
“How do you even know how to do this?” Rooke lifted his wrapped arm with an expression of befuddled interest. “Do they teach this…sort of thing at commander school?”
“Battlefield healing is the first thing you learn on the front lines, trying to keep your friends alive.” I plunged a handful of his torn-up shirt into the pitcher of water and started mopping crusted blood off his neck and face. “Be glad you’re not lying in a foot of mud and horse shit.”
“Ah, yes,” he murmured quietly, lifting his chin so I could get the worst of the dried blood. “Something to be grateful for, after all.” Rooke’s eyes never left me, something akin to curiosity sparking beneath the pain.
“Take the wins where you can, Kaden,” I said quietly, wiping off blood in long, even strokes, concentrating on the task at hand, not how close his parted lips were, nor the heat pouring off his body all of a sudden.
Heat I felt all the way down to my center, like ripples from a stone dropped in water.
“I’m…sorry there’s not more I can do. And I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him.”
Pitiful words for all this pent-up rage I was feeling right now, but what else could I say, really? Life was a shitstorm of bad luck and the caprices of fate and I was as much a victim of their whims as Rooke.
“No words of wisdom?” His lips curved into a pained smile. “No keep-your-chin-up speech from the feared Commander of the Dreadwatch?”
“No,” I murmured, twisting the cloth, wringing a steady stream of rusty red water back into the pitcher. “I’ve never been one for speeches. Words don’t…” I paused, rocking back on my heels, meeting his gaze. “Actions are the only thing that make a difference. Words just…muck everything up.”
“Oh, I’ll just bet you could make a pretty speech, if you wanted to.” Rooke’s eyes, clearer now than they’d been since before Gravelock, skimmed slowly down my body in seeming disinterest, but when they found my face again, I looked away from what was blazing in them.
Blatant, male lust. Gluttonous, almost.
Lust he took no effort to conceal.
That simmering heat inside me roared to life, welling up into crushing, honeyed need and my eyes found his again, a fragile, perilous bridge connecting us together, a bridge that had no business existing, not when we both sat in a pool of his still-warm blood.
In the aftermath of Gravelock’s cruelty.
If not enemies, little more than uneasy allies.
Certainly not friends.
“He would have killed you,” Rooke murmured gently, “if you’d jumped from that balcony. I hope you know that.”
“He could have tried,” I retorted, even though he was right.
“You really meant to take on Gravelock and fourteen of his soldiers? All by yourself?” He shook his head, and a fresh dribble of blood leaked out from the binding on his shoulder that I immediately dabbed away. “Nobody is that good. Or that arrogant.”
Ha. Someone who called himself the Dark Prince thought I was arrogant?
I rolled my stiff neck. “I’ve faced worse odds.” I dragged the cloth over his skin again, really, really trying not to notice how impossibly handsome Kaden Rooke was. How…sinfully attractive.
I definitely should have left more clothes on him.
“Not like this…you…haven’t,” he said flatly, that brilliant light dying out of his eyes, his body going limp, head tipping sideways.
“Hey.” I shook him until he sucked in a quick, panicked breath. “Stay with me, Kaden. I’m not losing the Dark Prince of the Shadowlands on my watch. Now keep your godsdamned eyes open and keep breathing until I tell you to stop, got it?”
“Yes, commander,” he slurred, the words barely a whisper.
Maybe this was for nothing, but I kept going until every wound was tied off, every minor injury cleaned, and everything was a blur of exhaustion and blood-soaked rags. At least the strips of fabric were black, so I was spared the gruesome sight of red against white, but the smell…
The pungent smell of Kaden’s blood would stay with me for a good, long time.
“That’s all I can do,” I apologized, rousing him from the semi-conscious state he’d fallen into. His eyes were half-lidded, not a speck of color in his face, and a chill slithered through my veins.
As many injuries—as many soldiers as I’d treated in my lifetime—I couldn’t look him in the eye right now and tell him he’d survive this. “Kaden, I’m…”
“Thank you, Lyrae.” I shivered when my name came out of his mouth in a husk of sound.
“It’s been a long time since anyone…” Rooke’s long, elegant fingers shakily brushed my cheek, then his blue eyes drifted over my shoulder and a second later, Varian and Ryland burst through the door in a flurry of freezing cold air and muttered oaths.
Even worse, they’d dragged…something inside with them.
A throbbing, pulsing something that made the air contract, made my chest hurt.
I picked up my knife, bracing myself, half expecting Gravelock to be behind them with an army of those guards.
“We got them.” Varian doubled over, chest heaving, looking like death warmed over. “We found the room, bypassed the wards, had to fight three of those fucking guards, but…we have the Triune.”
“Two of them, anyway…” Ryland, who had been stalking toward us, stopped. “What the fuck happened? Are you hurt? There’s blood…everywhere. All over you.”
“I’m…surprisingly unhurt. Gravelock happened. His magic happened.” I waved my hand over the absolute mess of Rooke and his shredded clothing. “The fucker nearly killed Rooke out of spite, while his soldiers tore the castle apart, looking for us.”
Indeed, Frostveil was a mess. Besides the copious amounts of blood, furniture was overturned, tapestries shredded, glass broken. Scorch marks scarred the stone walls; some of the tapestries were smoldering piles of ash.
“But you’re okay? You’re sure?” Ryland grasped my hand and dragged me to my feet, his fingers smoothing over my cheek, even the tips coming away red. For one second, fear blazed in his eyes—fresh and hot and primal—then his breathing went wonky.
“Whoa, steady there.” I cupped his face, forced him to look at me as he swayed. “None of this is mine, it’s all Rooke’s.”
Ryland didn’t look convinced, his gaze flipping between the two of us, a quiet anger brewing on his face. Anger that changed to guilt when Rooke weakly asked, “You truly have them?”
“Well, two of them, at least. May I present…the Thorn.” Varian produced a thin, wicked-looking dagger, not like any weapon I’d ever seen. Made from pure gold, it emitted some of that dark, pulsing power that echoed inside my chest.
The feeling was awful, suffocating, and I had no idea how Varian actually held onto the weapon without dying.
“And this.” Ryland produced what could only be the Mirror, no bigger than my palm, but like the Thorn, the thing pulsed with some innate rhythm, as if the relic was a living, breathing organism.
Where the glass would be, the artifact had a smooth, shimmering plane that rippled like water, shifting with a myriad of colors.
“Holy shit.”
“Uh,” Varian set the Thorn down on the table—very, very carefully, I noticed—to come stand over an unmoving Rooke. “He’s not…dead, is he?”
“Fuck.” I dropped to my knees, fingers fumbling over cool, slick skin before I found Kaden’s pulse, breathing out a silent sigh of relief.
Thready, but there. Barely.
Then my fingers slipped, accidentally brushing against the thin silver cuff on his wrist and a bolt of lightning shot through me, a jolt of energy that had me seeing spots. My lungs froze, muscles turned watery, pain flashed, sudden and violent.
I yanked my hand away and the pain slowly ebbed away, leaving the ends of my fingers stinging.
What the fuck was that?
“He’s not dead, is he?” Varian crouched beside me, worry in his golden eyes. “That’s a lot of blood, Ly.” I reached out and dabbed at a fresh dribble, staying clear of those silver cuffs, feeling more helpless than I had in a long time.
“Not yet, but he has so many injuries…that Bloodsinger magic is…” I shuddered, rubbing my hand on my leg, feeling like I’d just been burned.
“I’ve seen a lot of shit, but what Gravelock did was terrifying.
We can’t ever let him get control of the Triune.
He would slaughter his way to Tempeste, then kill everyone there. ”
“We need to get him upstairs,” Varian eyed the staircase. “Let him heal, as much as he’s able. Sleep helps. I don’t want to unbind any of those wounds, since you already stopped the worst of the bleeding, but in the morning, I’ll use the rest of my salve to help speed up the healing.”
That silver cuff…I looked from my still-tingling fingers to the gleaming metal, now glowing like it was…lit from inside.
Was this how Kaden was imprisoned?
Were those cuffs more than just…decoration?
Yes, they had to be. Parts of this castle were marked with that same magic, I noticed—silvery ward-glyphs cut into every lintel and threshold, a web of bindings that kept him inside the walls and leashed his magic to the pale stone.
I pursed my lips, then looked between them, noting their expressions of guilt, the blood on Ryland’s side, a scrape down Varian’s cheek that on closer inspection looked like it could be a burn.
“Where, dare I ask, is the Crown?”
A dark look—and another twinge of that burning guilt—passed between them.
“Once we get him to bed,” Varian jerked his head at a still-unconscious Rooke, “we’ll tell you what happened. Including how Ryland lost the Crown.”