“No!” Rykr’s voice split through the ringing in my ears and the sound of metal clanged as my friends drew their swords.
A strangled breath gargled in my throat, my consciousness swimming as a swirl of torches drew closer, my body convulsing as Rykr held my shoulders, keeping me upright.
“Seren!” Panic was on that handsome face. He snapped the shaft of the bolt. “Seren, look at me. Gods! Fuck. I’m going to slit his fucking throat.”
His eyes scanned mine desperately, but I blinked slowly, my brain unable to form words.
Fine. I’m fine, I wanted to tell him. But my tongue was thick, pushing against the roof of my mouth like some swollen, useless thing.
Two sets of firm hands grabbed me roughly under my arms and by my legs, wrenching me from Rykr.
A grating shriek sounded as a gate lifted at the end of the alley. What is happening? Are they fighting …
Dizziness washed over me, my eyes closing. I must be in shock.
But it didn’t explain the way my thoughts felt so sluggish.
Or the numbness traveling through my nerves.
A disconnect seared through me, one I couldn’t understand, almost as though I was drunk. Aware, but barely able to comprehend. Sounds became muted, the passage of time disturbed.
I couldn’t open my eyelids now, darkness consuming me. Somewhere in the deepest recesses of my mind, I saw myself plunging, falling deeper and deeper into a pit of darkness. Wisps of gold, whirling and twisting like lightning, reached for me.
Rykr.
Every instinct told me to hold on to him. But I kept falling, faster, and harder, out of his reach.
Darkness swallowed me whole. The cold of the alley, the sting in my chest—gone, but not gone enough.
My body rests on the cracked ground of a wooded glade of greys and black.
The scent of blood still lingers. The faintest echo of Rykr’s voice drifts on the wind. Seren?—
Golden embers swirl from barren tree branches in the woods around me, dancing, drifting through the inky black.
A flash of blue tears through the darkness.
Someone shook my shoulders.
“Seren!” Rykr’s voice was in my ears. “Seren, please!”
I pushed my heavy eyelids open. My tongue drew over my lower lip, where the taste of blood seeped into my mouth.
Rykr touched my brow, his eyes searching mine. “Your skin is ice cold.”
“I can’t,” I rasped. “Pain …”
Gods, the pain was excruciating. My body felt as though it was being ripped apart from within.
Rykr’s fingertips drifted to my lips. “Don’t speak. Save your energy.” I could see nothing but his face. His lips dipped against mine. “Stay here with me, Seren. In this space we share. I don’t care about the pain. Give it all to me.”
I’m back in the glade.
The tendrils of golden magic swirl closer. Rykr’s trying to get in, to break past my thoughts. I shudder and nod, despite the excruciating pain that flares through me.
“Steady now.” His voice fills me. Shimmering transparent leaves appear on the trees. “Don’t look at anything or anyone. Just give the pain to me.”
A flash of agony radiates from me, and I see it in wisps of blue flames that curl into the golden waves pushing forward, through cracks in the earth, from the spaces behind trees. A dance of fire and ice that seems to burn us both.
