“Fuck!” He lets out a pained expletive as he falls to his knees, hands clutching at the arrow in his side.
Now I’m the one wide-eyed and likely looking a bit crazed. “Oh my gods,Bastian.” I drop to my knees in front of him, my gaze darting between his face twisted in pain and the wound.
“You need to go,” he grunts out.
“No, not without you! We’ve already been over this,” I cry out, the warmth of tears working their way down my cheeks.
He grunts nonsense at me once he comes to the conclusion that I really won’t leave him here and arguing about it won’t do us any good. He moves to position himself again between the threat and me. I follow his line of sight and this time I do see the assailant. There’s a dark figure lurking in the depths of the forest.
Bastian drops his hand away from the wound and with a flick of wrist, the shadows from the trees begin to warp and twist.
Is Bastian doing that?
They race across the forest floor, wrapping themselves around our attacker before tossing them into a nearby tree. The attacker drops to the ground in a limp pile. I hold my breath, waiting for them to rise back to their feet and continue the assault. When they don’t rise after a few heartbeats, I figure it’s safe to turn my attention back to Bastian. I’ll have to worry aboutwhatexactly he did later.
“Can you walk?” I ask, dropping down beside him, rocks and twigs digging into my knees but I barely notice. I worriedly cast my gaze to the wound in his side.
“I’ve survived worse,staellara,” he says with a breathy chuckle as he starts to rise. I mirror his movements. When he reaches his full height, he sways on the spot, and I have to reach out to steady him.
“You sure about that?” I give him a wry look.
“I’ll be fine,” he says, taking a step out of my arms, but he stumbles a bit as if he’s had one too many drinks at the tavern.
I dart to his side, taking his good arm and wrapping it around my shoulders for support. I snake my arm around his waist, careful to avoid the arrow in his side. “Let’s go.” I scoop up the rucksack he dropped.
We stumble along, me supporting much of Bastian’s weight. I’m just glad he stopped fighting me about how he wasfinewhen it’s growing increasingly clear he’s not in good shape.
We’re still several feet from the faerie ring when I hear the change in his breathing. It’s shallow and I’m having to support more of his weight than before. I grit my teeth as I pull him along with me. “We’re almost there. Hold on.”
We’re only steps from the portal when another arrow lodges itself in the back of my upper thigh. I yelp in pain as I stumble, pulling us both into the faerie ring and falling.
Falling.
Falling.
As we stumble out the other side, his body weight drags me to the ground, causing pain to radiate through my leg as it’s jostled.
I roll to my side so I’m facing Bastian and avoiding shifting the arrow. His chest barely is rising and falling. His face entirely too pale.
I sit up too fast, the world tilts for a moment and my vision goes black and spotty. I don’t even wait to recover before I’m crawling to hover above him.
“Bastian?” I run my hand across his forehead, brushing his hair back. His eyes are squeezed shut and his jaw is clenched in pain. His forehead is damp, slick with sweat. “We need to get moving. Can you move?”
All he offers up is a grunt in response. I’m starting to feel panicky and dizzy from blood loss. I glance around the snow-dusted clearing we landed in.
I don’t recognize anything around us.
The portal outside Grimhallow was that same dreary, overcast as the rest of what I’ve seen of the Unseelie lands.
This is… not that.
The sky is a deep violet, with streaks of blues and greens that sway and move as if they were clouds drifting. The trees are massive evergreens, coated in snow.
It almost looks like the glade from Fleur’s vision. But how the fuck would we have ended up there?
A soft groan of pain draws my attention back to Bastian.
Looking around again, I don’t even know where to take him. At the edge of trees, I can see what looks like the base of a mountain. I’m hoping if we head that way I can findsomething. But we need to get out of the elements, and I need to get the arrows out of his body. Mine too.
