“You,” Leo said. Yassen flinched and took a step back. “You saved her. Why?”
Yassen looked past him to Elena’s fading form.
“Because even though the desert does not claim me as its own, she does,” he whispered. “I took an oath.”
A medic came up to Yassen, fussing about his cheek, his shoulder, the blood, but Yassen waved him off. He bowed to Leo and followed his daughter. Leo watched him leave, watched the medics guide the hoverbed into the palace, watched Majnu dip his head to say something to Arish. A second hoverpod docked, and more medics rushed to it. Leo could only stare, his hands stiff by his sides.
Standing there, at the edge of the platform, he had never felt so small.
So powerless.
CHAPTER 29
ELENA
The Yumi, above all else, are loyal warriors.
—from chapter 16 ofThe Great History of Sayon
The royal doctor wrapped her shoulder with clean gauze and pulled. Elena winced. The pulse had only grazed her shoulder, drawing blood but ripping no muscle.
He said she was lucky. Elena tried to laugh, but the sound caught in her throat and came out more like a mewl.
The clean white walls of the infirmary overwhelmed her. She was in a small private room, but whenever the door opened, she caught glimpses of a hallway filled with bloodied guards and harried medics.
The doctor, satisfied with his work, clipped the gauze.
“The stitches will heal, but you’ll have to come back to remove the scar,” he said.
She nodded. She felt weightless, as if she could float away at any moment.
The doctor withdrew glass vials and a syringe from a cabinet by the door.
“For the pain,” he said.
The needle pierced her skin, but Elena did not even feel its prick. She felt detached from her body, as if she were watching herself from afar. Distantly, she noted that she still held her mother’s letter in a clenched fist.
“You might feel drowsy,” he said.
Her tongue felt swollen and clumsy. Her lips would not move. She heard a knock, and Yassen entered.
“Elena,” he said as he strode to her bedside.
Her blood caked his cheek and chest. His sleeve was torn at the elbow, and she saw his burn marks. Carefully, Yassen took her hand in his. Squeezed.
“How are you?”
Seeing him, feeling his skin against her, pulled Elena back. Rooted her to the present. This close, she could see worry cloud his eyes. The streak of dried blood above his eyebrow. She had the sudden burning desire to be held, to bury her head in his shoulder and weep.
“She’s still too shocked to speak,” the doctor answered for her. “But Her Highness has been graced by the Holy Bird Above. She will recover.” He pointed at Yassen’s arm. “What happened to your arm?”
She felt him stiffen.
“I burned it, months ago,” Yassen said.
“Let me see it. It could have gotten infected.”
Yassen hesitated, but she squeezed his hand.Go.
