Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
Nicolas kneeled beside Jade, lifting the bottom edge of her mask to examine her wound. Concern and hatred fought for dominance over his features, his brow knitted and his jaw clenched.
“What are you doing here?” Jade asked in a shocked whisper.
He didn’t answer, continuing to check her for injuries. His gloved hand grazed the bleeding cut on her left arm where Reynauld’s knife had sliced her, and Jade hissed.
“How’s your head?” Nicolas ran a gentle thumb along her forehead before reaching his fingers around to the back of her head, apparently feeling for blood.
“Getting better,” she lied. Though Jade still couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that he was here. Maybe that came along with the confusion of the blow.
Nicolas removed his hand as he rocked back on his heels. “Can you stand?”
Jade nodded and lifted herself off the floor with the help of Nicolas, one of his hands holding an elbow and the other grasping her opposing hand. She got to her feet, but her head swam again, and she took a couple of unsteady steps back.
“Easy,” he whispered, releasing her hand to grasp her waist and help her regain her balance. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
The pressure of his hand on her waist took Jade back to the masquerade ball all over again, and a flutter rippled through her abdomen with the memory. But she banished the thought, coming back to her senses enough to reply, “I’ll be fine.”
Nicolas’s face had drawn close to hers—too close.
The lamplight only illuminated his most prominent features, including his lips.
Jade caught herself staring at them and lifted her gaze, hoping she could play it off as disorientation.
She met his eyes, even darker when bathed in shadow, giving them a strange, malevolent quality.
But when he spoke, the impression shifted, and his eyes softened with a tenderness that Jade had seen the last time she was in the bunker with him. “We have to get out of here. Reynauld won’t stay out cold for long.”
Jade glanced at the unconscious man at her feet.
The blow with the gun hadn’t been hard enough to leave a mark but was just enough force and perfectly positioned to knock the prince out.
The phantom stab of his knife against her throat sent Jade’s hand to the wound.
What had he said? Something about killing her employer?
So Reynauld thought she was the assassin, sent to kill him by someone seeking the throne.
“Let’s go.” Nicolas pulled her from her thoughts, handing her gun back to her.
Jade returned it to her holster and turned her mind to their escape. “What about the guards? They’re all over the grounds.”
“Stay close to me.” He grabbed her gloved hand to urge her forward, then picked up the lamp she’d left on the table.
The world spun, and Jade stumbled as she followed his lead to the secret passage behind the bookshelf, but his grip on her hand kept her steady. He whipped his head around to her, wordlessly checking on her, but Jade shook her head. “Don’t worry, I’m all right.”
With a quick nod, he stepped onto the top of the passage’s staircase.
Jade pulled the false door closed behind them, and she followed the light of the lamp down the spiraling staircase, praying she kept her footing the whole way down.
But when they reached the tunnel, she still felt like she was rotating, and the walls closed in around her.
Nicolas must have noticed, because his grip on her hand tightened.
Even so, her previously dislocated shoulder ran into the stone wall and bounced off, sending a bolt of pain down her arm.
Jade sucked in a breath through her teeth as Nicolas stopped and laced her left arm over his shoulders, supporting her with his arm around her waist.
“Keep going, Jade. We’ve got to make it off the estate.”
His words were too encouraging to be a command. Jade nodded, pushing her feet to take one step, then another, then another. The tunnel came to an end, and Jade rejoiced as Nicolas pushed open the door to the cabinet that concealed the tunnel and then the cellar doors themselves.
She gulped the fresh, albeit humid, air as if it were a healing balm. She couldn’t get enough.
Nicolas helped her up out of the cellar and into the staff yard, but three steps later, Jade’s knees buckled underneath her.
Why weren’t her legs working? Then she was looking up at the stars, white pinpricks of light dotting the night sky.
Except the night was foggy and overcast. Confusion muddled her mind, and she couldn’t make sense of up and down.
Somewhere in the distance, she heard her name, but her tongue couldn’t form a response.
The next thing she knew, she was hoisted into the air off her feet. Arms cradled her, one behind her back and the other behind her knees. The smell of leather and salt overwhelmed her senses, and she realized her face was pressed into Nicolas’s broad, strong chest.
“Don’t go to sleep,” he whispered into her ear. “Stay with me.”
Since she didn’t have to walk anymore, Jade focused all her energy on doing just that. Her head lolled against Nicolas as he carried her across the grounds of Lesseine. But where were the guards? How had they not come across any?
“Look at me, Jade.”
Her name came off his tongue like moonlight glistening off a lake. She obeyed, finding the hard line of his jaw.
“Keep your eyes on me. I’ll take care of you.”
His words stirred her heart, and even in the heavy haze that threatened to drag her down into sleep, she knew he spoke the truth.
Jade remembered being lifted onto a horse, riding through the night with Nicolas behind her, and arriving at the farmhouse.
A few times, she had come close to nodding off, but Nicolas had made sure to prod her back to consciousness.
When they reached the farmhouse, he’d carried her inside and down into the tunnel to the bunker, not bothering to cover her eyes this time.
It didn’t matter, because she wasn’t aware of her surroundings enough to notice where they went.
He laid her on the sofa, propping her head up with a pillow and offering her some water. She drank, and he disappeared through one of the doors off the main room. The sounds of drawers opening and Nicolas rummaging through them reached her before he reappeared and came to her side.
“You need to rest, but before you can, your injuries have to be seen to.” He pulled one of the armchairs closer to the sofa and sat, placing an assortment of items on the table beside him.
Jade looked over the items—a small box with a needle, thread, and antiseptic, a small jug of water, and a stack of cloths and bandages—and then up at him.
Nicolas gave her a weak smile. “I apologize in advance.”
A chuckle escaped Jade’s lips as she shook her head. “No, I’d rather you do it. Then I don’t have to worry about anyone on base asking questions.”
He tilted his head with a quick raise of his eyebrows, as if to say That’s true, then his eyes flashed back to Jade. His throat bobbed with a swallow before he said, “You’ll need to take off your jacket.”
“Oh.” Jade sat up, a rush of heat creeping up her neck and into her face, but her head didn’t swirl as badly as it had before. “Right.”
Her fingers worked the buttons, and she attempted to shrug off the jacket, but the torn fabric was sticky with blood and had adhered to the tender skin around the wound.
Jade gritted her teeth and tugged at the messy sleeve, pulling it free and but reopening the wound.
She dropped the jacket beside her on the sofa, now in her white undershirt, then turned to plant her feet on the floor, her injured arm facing Nicolas.
“I don’t think I have to warn you that this is going to hurt,” he murmured as he rubbed antiseptic over his bare hands.
“Believe it or not, I’ve suffered worse. And it’s not like I’ve never been stitched up before.”
Nicolas picked up a cloth and dipped it in the water. “I have some leather you can bite down on, if you want.”
Jade scoffed, but then she caught the glimmer in Nicolas’s eyes and she became suddenly aware of her heart beating in her chest. Still, she managed to roll her eyes at him. “I’m not a farm animal.”
Nicolas forced down a smile, though the corners of his mouth still tipped up. “Never said you were.”
He ran the soaked cloth over her bloody wound with care, cleaning the surrounding skin before wiping the gash itself. Jade inhaled sharply through her nose at the contact of cloth against open flesh. And this was the easy part.
Nicolas rinsed the cloth and returned it to her arm a few times before retrieving the antiseptic and a new cloth. He doused the cloth and looked up at her with creased brows.
“Try not to anticipate the pain. Put your mind elsewhere.”
Jade closed her eyes and thought back to her night in the Fellsrin home. She hadn’t found what she’d been searching for, and after being caught by Reynauld, she couldn’t return any time soon. He’d likely have guards stationed at each set of doors that led to his bedchamber.
The guards . . . He’d called for them, but they hadn’t come. After they left the tunnel, her memory was foggy at best, but she didn’t recall coming across any outside either. Where had—
“Blazing hell!” Jade cried out through clenched teeth.
She lifted her face to the ceiling and puffed out a breath.
The sting of the antiseptic ripped through Jade’s skin and muscle all the way down to her bones.
Her toes curled in her boots, and her hands balled into fists.
She tapped a foot against the floor, waiting for the pain to subside.
Nicolas hadn’t gone light on the antiseptic, that was certain.
“At least it should help prevent an infection,” he said matter-of-factly.
Jade exhaled twice more before returning to face Nicolas. “I think you’ve killed all the good stuff, too.”