~
Avalon was somewhere far, far away. A distant and obscure place where neither touch nor voices could reach her. Pain was the only thing that was real. Blistering pain, as if her flesh was being picked at by starving birds, or a branding iron glowing red was being shoved, inch by inch, under her skin. She tried to scream, but if a sound escaped her lips, she wouldn’t have known.
She slipped briskly away, into a darkness from which she might never recover.
~
Sable’s eyelids fluttered as she slowly came awake.
The room she was lying in was aglow with the light of a fire. She was warm—almost too warm. It was nothing like the nights she spent in… In—
Each breath she took was a gasp as she remembered. As the reek of the forges and the tang of blood filled her nostrils, threatening to send her spinning back into oblivion. She tried to sit up, but pain lanced through skin and muscle, and she drew in a sharp hiss through her teeth.
“Easy,” said a smooth male voice.
It took her a second to find him, for the room was spinning. But there he was, seated in the plush armchair beside her bed, his handsome Elven features betraying as little as usual. Sable knew that face well enough to gather that he was disappointed with her. Angry, even. His sculptured mouth was set in a firm line, his thick chestnut hair sticking up in every direction, as if he’d ran a hand through it one too many times. Two days’ worth of reddish stubble covered his jaw, and dark circles were etched into the skin beneath eyes that were a bright jade.
“Hunter,” she whispered. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d uttered his name, the last time she’d greedily drank in the sight of him. Hunter Northridge, Balthazar’s Captain of the Guard, and the man responsible for seeing to her intensive training here at the House of Ice.
“Sable.” Though her name came out sharper than he’d clearly intended it to, his voice was laced with just enough relief that she knew he was happy to see her, regardless of the set of that mouth she’d often daydreamed of memorizing beneath her own. The longer she stared at him, the harsher his features became, and her heart skipped a beat as she waited for the lecture that she was sure to receive.
“Are you angry with me?” she whispered.
A muscle ticked by his eye. “Do you have any idea how long you’ve been gone?”
Honestly, she didn’t, so she simply shook her head.
His next words were practically a growl. “Nearly two months.” Holy gods.
She forced a sheepish smile. “I survived,” she declared.
Hunter gave her bandaged back a pointed look. She could feel that the gauze was damp with blood, and even the slightest inhalation invited a pain intense enough to make her sick. “Barely,” he muttered, his eyes burning with as much concern as there was anger. He opened his mouth to say something else, but stopped, his attention now fixed on the footfall in the hallway.
There was no knock before he entered. But he was her brother, so why should he knock?
Killian flung open the door and strode into the room. “Hunter,” Killian said, nodding once in the captain’s direction. He stopped at the foot of the wide bed, studying the bandages wrapped around Sable’s torso. His voice was thick with emotion as he said, “Sable. It’s been a while.”
Sable’s throat felt like it was closing, and tears burned her eyes. “It has,” she agreed.
Killian didn’t look at Hunter as he said, “Leave us, Captain. I promise not to take up too much of your precious time.”
As he left the room, Hunter threw Sable a backward glance. She gave him a small smile, but she wasn’t sure he saw.
Killian eased himself into the chair and propped his feet up on the edge of the bed. He studied her for a while before he spoke. “I know I made you promise to come back with an impressive scar, but I didn’t mean fifty of them.”
“Twenty-four,” she corrected.
Killian huffed. “Looks more like fifty.”
“How are you?”
Her brother snorted a laugh and ran a hand through his hair. “Better than you, dear sister. I’m always better than you, because I don’t go trotting off into enemy territory with every intention of becoming supper.”
“I’m still in one piece,” she argued.
“I suppose you are.” He looked her over, his eyes darkening with ancient sadness. He thought better of what he was about to say and changed the subject. “Plenty has happened since you left. I’ve spent days and nights practicing how to use my Shield.”
“And?”
