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We burst into the clearing, hit instantly with the stench of silver and garlic. Lucien was lying against a tree, a sword driven straight through his left shoulder.
Fillian leapt for him, shifting mid jump, landing in front of Lucien on all fours and crawling towards him. I shifted, my eyes fixed on the two of them.
It wasn’t the sword, or the twin red rivers that ran down his cream shirt from his wounds and pooled around his thighs that stopped me in my tracks.
It was how they had left him.
Dread clawed me as Fillian’s hand landed on Lucien’s chest, running up his neck, past his black hair, damp with blood. His fingers met the crimson blindfold that tightly bound his eyes.
“Where is she?” Fillian asked, high-pitched, shaking, his panic nearly consuming him as he pushed at the blindfold, tearing it from his eyes. “Where is she, Lucien?”
“Gone,” he choked out. Lucien’s skin was pink from how tightly bound he was. He pushed back his head, his eyes snapping to mine instantly.
His breathing was too slow, he’d lost too much blood. The forest would keep him alive, yet it meant nothing if there was no blood left to run.
“Gone?” Fillian echoed, his energy flaring around us, frayed and frazzled. “What do you mean ’gone’? How can she be gone?”
Lucien was gasping, heaving breaths into his chest, wincing at the slightest movement. But we needed the full story.
“She’s fucking gone, Fil.” His head dropped, avoiding his eyes. “Some Vermillion Knights showed up with a bunch of hunters, gave me this present, and she left.”
“No…No…” The silk blindfold, decorated in tight gold threads, trembled in Fil’s hand as he lowered it to his knees. “She wouldn’t do that to us. She couldn’t... Lucien…” his shock was too much. His wide eyes fixed on Lucien, searching for answers. “We’re her mates…” He was shaking, close to losing himself again. “She loves us... She wouldn’t abandon us.”
“Wouldn’t she?” Lucien spat, lifting his head to glare at him, blood running down his chin. “Because that’s what it fucking looked like to me.”
Lucien’s eyes shot to me, hard, dark, full of malice and spite. “She tricked us, Val. All that love was just a fucking sham. The moment she could, she took off.”
“No!” Fillian shouted. “Ruby wouldn’t-“
“Quiet!” I barked, silencing him instantly. I needed to think. I couldn’t do it with Fillian so close to breaking.
“Fillian,” I said, my voice hard, stepping towards him. I reached for his upper arm, encouraging him to rise. I had to give him something to focus on. We might lose him forever if he lost control now. I only barely brought him back the last time.
He shook his head, his eyes clenched. His body dropped in my grip, folding under the weight of the realisation that was hitting both of us. His chest heaved as he looked up at me, pleading. “Valko, where is she?” A trembling hand held the blindfold, his head dropping to the precious silk.
I had to shake his arm to get him to look at me. He was pale, his pupils blown, eyes still yellow from the shift.
“I need you to fetch the medical supplies from the trunk in the kitchen.” I stopped as Fillian turned to leave, too numb to argue with me. “All of them, understood?”
He nodded hurriedly before darting off towards the den entrance. There were knives, tongs, and saws in a brown leather bag next to standard potions and bandages. It would take more than comfrey salve to heal Lucien.
“She ran the second she had a chance,” Lucien snarled, coughing. He wiped his right arm across his mouth, soaking up some of the blood. “I’m a moron, Val. I thought…I really thought…”
My heart was breaking and soaring. She wasn’t dead; she was still breathing, still living, just waiting for us to come and find her. I was sure of that, because why else would she leave? She knew we would look for her.
But that was her compulsion talking. My witch had wound herself so deeply inside me that hope still reigned.
“I have to go.” I picked up the faint scent of hunters and scanned the clearing to find which path they had used.
“Oh, yeah, sure, go after her, see how well that works out.” Lucien tipped his head back, rasping, the effort of speaking making him weaker. “She doesn’t want to be followed, Val. She wants revenge. Who do you think tied me up like this, forced the blindfold on me?”
I shook my head. “We still have to try. We don’t know the full story.”
“Are you sure? By my thinking, you were right all along. We should have left her to rot in that dungeon instead of falling in love with her like fucking idiots. Every single thing, Valko,” he choked, his body rattling, his voice breaking as he held in his tears. “Everything was a fucking lie and -”
He bit his tongue, pulling himself back. We all loved her differently, we had changed with her, but I saw how much of himself Lucien gave to her, and how she responded to him - to all of us. I wasn’t about to let that go, not yet.
“Can you instruct Fillian?”
