HE DOES NOT LIE
Amira
Iwoke up with a start, my mind racing with panic while my body felt strangely disconnected like it was floating. The air was humid when I gasped in a lungful so I knew that I was no longer in the mountains of Thíva.
“She is awake,” noted a vaguely familiar male voice.
“Paws off!” Ornella warned him, and the sound of her voice brought everything suddenly back to me.
I groped desperately for the tethers that connected me to both of my mates, but there was nothing but silence in the place they usually lived. The last thing I remembered was Ares and Helena going up in flames, an awful crunch that altered my world, and then Riordan screaming.
Orion.I could not unsee the way he had fallen limply into the damp leaf litter at Ornella’s feet.
“Please tell me…” I began, my voice choked off by a sob I could not hold back. “Please tell me that you didn’t just leave him lying there in the dirt.”
I held my breath in the silence that followed because every inhale felt like razors in my rib cage.
“Who?” asked the male voice.
“Orion,” I wheezed, his name like a knife in my heart. “Sofia. Helena. Ares. Please just tell me that you didn’t leave their bodies lying in the dirt!”
Another telling silence finally broke me, and I curled uptighter when it seemed like I might split apart from the anguish bursting in me. The thought of Riordan finding Orion left like that invaded my mind, and I could not stop a wail of utter grief from erupting out of me.
“Oh, enough! We did not leave them there in the dirt,” Ornella spoke up in exasperation. “Your companions were given a message for Riordan. And Orion ishere.”
“What?” I choked, finally lifting my head to see that they had brought me to a tent. I was lying on grass under a canopy made of dark animal hide, and the only furniture seemed to be a table and chairs on the left. But it was the wall of darkness in the other corner, wavering in the lamplight, that drew my eyes. Now that all of my senses seemed to have returned, I noted a hint of a metallic tang.Blood. My intuition said that people had been tortured and likely killed in this very spot.
I looked around but did not see Orion until the male fey waved his hand at the wall of shadows in the corner. They dissipated and darted under the table and chairs.
“Orion!” I gasped, surging up toward him. But I was jerked to a stop by the vines I had not noticed tethering me to the ground by my ankles and wrists. I could not pay any more attention to that though because Orion was alive and just out of arm’s reach from me. Except…
He was shaking, and when he raised his eyes to mine, there was a world of pain in them. I was unsure what was wrong until I saw his wings.
She broke his wings.
The gorgeous feathered limbs lay on either side of him in bloody, mutilated angles that made acid rise up the back of my throat. That had been the horrible crunch in my mind, theshatteringof his wings, which must have been so fucking painful that he had instantly passed out. And the whole situation suddenly reminded me of another prison when I was chained and forced to watch as Jade levelled a knife at Riordan.
I turned to Ornella, magic surging defensively under my skinonly to be diffused by whatever magic had to be muting my bond to Orion. But she only looked satisfied by my fury when I glared up at her.
“Now you know a little of how it feels,” she told me.
“Is that all you know how to do? Inflict pain on others when you have been hurt?” I snarled at her.
She surged forward so fast that I had no chance to dodge before she seized me by my throat. She lifted me effortlessly to my feet, but then she hesitated like maybe she was realizing the truth of my words. Then she pushed me back down to my knees and away from her.
“Yes,” she said bitterly. “I should not have to tell you after all this time that I am not a nice person.”
“I don’t believe that! Heal him!Pleaseheal him!”
Ornella raised her head with a familiar stubbornness to look at me down her nose.
“I wonder what those monsters are doing to my mate. How ishesuffering right now?”
“Hurting Orion does not mean Sage is hurting less! Please, Nell!” I cried at her, making her blink in surprise at the affectionate nickname that I’d given her in spite of her distaste for it. “Heal him!”
She narrowed her eyes on me before looking at Orion. Her nose scrunched as she took in the miserable state of his wings as if maybe she was considering how painful it must be for him. Then she finally rolled her eyes and marched over to walk around him. He was in too much pain to notice that she was there as she knelt to hover a hand over his trembling wings. They began to shift across the grass and back into their natural form as the bones were realigned. But his sharp cries of pain almost made me regret demanding that she heal him. His hands dug into the earth, arms shaking and shoulders tensing as he grit his teeth to weather the agony. I thought he might pass out again, but he managed to stay conscious until his wings were fully healed.
Ornella stood and stepped back around him like it had meant nothing to heal him.
