Ignorant to the deeply jealous turn my mind has taken, Rooke watches each soldier draw his bow and fire, resulting in more rows of perfect shots to prove the first set weren’t a fluke. Kytan joins Tauron in the assessment, the two of them discussing foot placement despite the winning shots.
When the silence stretches between us, Rooke turns back to me with those same assessing eyes before she extends her hand to me. The slit up her sleeve opens to reveal the length of her forearm. She moves slowly, prepared to stop if I protest, but my eyes get stuck on the golden hue of her skin, the same color that’s slowly fading from her face with each passing day in this winter-bound kingdom we share and away from the Seelie sun that kissed her in the first place.
There's a tiny flash of light at her elbow, the smallest pop, and then in her hand is a bow only an inch or two shorter than she is. Carved out of golden oak with sunbursts decorating the shaft, it boasts letters painted in blood-red down the length of it that I can’t decipher, and the string catches the sunlight with its golden shine, the material unknown to me. Her hand fits perfectly in the grip and the lower tip of the weapon rests against her boot in a tiny indent I never noticed before. The weapon was clearly carved for her alone, a thing of beauty and not just a simple tool of war as her sword is.
Her fingers flex around the wood as though she’s enjoying the feel of it in her hands after a time without it, and then she meets my gaze and holds it out to me. My own hand dwarfs the grip, and I find it far heavier than I'm expecting. There’s nothing light or flimsy about it, but when my fingers pull back the string, it moves with ease.
Cautiously at first, when I don’t protest, she adjusts my grip and form with confidence. She’s careful about not touching me as she moves the base to rest on my boot as it had hers and then she adjusts my stance until she's happy with it. The bow is veryobviously too short for me, but with her tweaks, I can test the weapon affectively.
At her nod, I let go of the string, and it snaps perfectly back into place, as though it was never pulled. The ease of drawing it back doesn't affect its power, the design of it masterful to say the least. Such a design would level the advantages of the high fae over the fae folk on the battlefield, growing the numbers of the Sol Army in their darkest stretch of the war.
Roan's eyes meet mine across the courtyard, his eyebrows raised at the bow, but I ignore him as I hand it back to Rooke. Her fingers rub the hand grip, as though petting it lovingly. When the light pops at the inside of her elbows once more to stash the bow back to that unknown place where she hides a small portion of her secrets from the world, she sighs deeply before settling back against the stone wall to watch the soldiers.
Her face stays carefully blank, and curiosity eats me, a frustrated sort of madness at not knowing her every thought. "What do you think of them? Tell me which ones you would send back to basic training and which you would move forward to sentry duty."
She looks at me from the corner of her eye for a moment, apprehension in her movement, but when she finds no deception in me, she turns her attention back to the sparring. Murmuring quietly in the old language, she offers me her opinions on each of the soldiers.
When all I offer her in return is a curt nod of acceptance and limited questions, she grows bolder and points out more. She even critiques Kytan's footwork, pointing out a weak point in the soldier that not many would pick up on, much less dare to bring attention to. When I accept her opinions without argument, she casts a careful look at me before giving me a warning of Tauron’s temper, the way his movement become rash when he’s goaded inthe right way, and the blind spot to his left when the fury takes his over.
All of this from the healer who never wanted to take up a sword in the first place.
Terror.
Ice-cold, vicious,consumingfear that blinds me and robs me of my senses, I don’t know where I am or what horrors I face, only that I face a fate worse than death if I don’t escape this nightmare. I’m frozen by the panic drenching my sweat-soaked body, my limbs splayed out in a rigid formation as though I've been staked out naked in a blizzard as a sacrifice to the Fates for their mercies.
The thunderous sound of my racing heartbeat drowns out any sound until the sharp knock against my chamber's door fractures the silence of the room, wrenching me out of my paralyzed state and leaving me disoriented.
“Prince Soren? Your Highness, it’s Mistress Rooke?—”
I’m off the bed and halfway across the room before the words form meaning to my addled mind, flinging the door open to find Firna’s panic-stricken face as she wrings her hands at my threshold. She blanches as the door bounces against the wall at my vehemence and I’m out the door before she recovers to scramble after me, tripping over her own tongue in explanation.
“She’s screaming, the same when she was here healing from the witcheswane, but none are allowed to enter her chambers because of Mistress Thea. The guards didn't know what to do, I didn’t know what to do?—”
The guards posted around the castle drop their gazes as I stalk through the hallways and down the flights of stairs and Firna is forced to jog to keep up with me, a jumble of words still spilling from her lips, but by the second set of steps I can hear the commotion of the panicked onlookers in the hallway outside the healer’s quarters. I don’t know what look was fixed on my face before, but as we round the corner and see the crowd fretting at the edge of Tyton’s sound barrier, a growl rips out of my chest, so loud that the crystal chandelier hanging above us rattles. Firna’s answering gulp rings in my ears.
As one, the guards and maids all turn toward me only for the maids to blanch and drop their gazes and scandalized gasps to break through the murmurs of concern. It’s then that I realize the keeper’s reaction was probably at my state of undress and not the fury with which I barreled through the door. Not one to routinely stalk through the castle naked, I don’t feel the chill of the early winter night even covered in sweat from the nightmare, and the marble floors might as well be a plush carpet, for all that my bare feet register.
After a fraught pause, as though no one wishes to attract my attention and find themselves bleeding out at the unreasonable ire of my Unseelie mated nature, Firna finally snaps out orders to the maids and they scatter without a word of what they’ve heard from behind the closed door. Reed and the other soldiers recover from their stupor at my appearance and bow deeply, their backs to the solid oak door and their eyes firmly downcast.
Tyton scrubs a hand over his face, not a sound to be heard through the shimmering wall of his magic, and he says in the old language, “I swear on our bloodline, cousin, she’s unharmed and sleeping. It’s the same terrors as Yrell, but with Thea in there with her I didn’t know what else to do.”
He flicks a hand at his magic, his words drenched in despair, but it clears some of the haze from my mind. That magic is allthe protection he could offer her but it’s no small gesture. The shame and horror that rolled off her in waves at Yrell when she found us all watching churns my gut, the thought of her feeling that at this crowd has another growl inching its way up my throat.
When I stride forward, Tyton tugs at his cloak until the thick swathes slide from his shoulders, and he flicks it onto mine and pulls the lapels together, securing it there. My shoulders are wider than his, and it doesn’t sit well but it stands up to the task well enough.
With a careful look, he murmurs, “If Thea wakes… better for you to have something covering you. No telling what trauma she bears.”
When my cousin steps away from me, Reed glances up to meet my eye, hesitating before lifting up a small vial of selkie-salts. “Prince Tyton sent for me.”
I pluck it from his fingers and breach Tyton’s sound barrier before anyone else can speak up to delay me further. Every second wasted out here eats away at my sanity, but the true test of my endurance hits me only as the magic envelops me within its confines.
Rooke’s screams almost take me to my knees.
Blood curdling terror, sobs wrenching from her chest that rattle her bones with their ferocity, and misery slides over my skin at the desperate cadence of her pleading. I can barely make out any of the words, half of them in languages I don’t speak, but there's no mistaking the fractured mind of a soldier thrown into memories of battles long-since ended.
I unlock the door and ease it open with care, aware that Thea could wake and be startled at any moment, but there’s a frantic edge to my movements. The room is dark, only the small stove casting a little light, but I find Thea sound asleep on a pallet by its warmth, while Rooke’s writhing form is tucked into thesmall bunk carved into the back wall. The innate mated reaction within me at sound of her sobbing is like nothing I’ve ever felt before, blind rage and desolate misery warring within my chest, and my hands shake as I reach for her.
What in theasheshappened to her in that cursed war?
