Page 118 of Memory of Ashes

“Not yet, but the farther we travel, the less likely the illusion is to hold. They’ll be able to see our tracks on the ground.”

She glanced down at her body. Her top clung to her skin, soaked with blood. She tentatively touched the wound in her chest, wincing. The skin was sore, but she could no longer feel an opening where the dagger had pierced her.

She wasn’t in as much pain as she had been. What the hell was happening to her?

“Did you do this?” she asked Tharos.

“Do what?”

She gestured to her chest, but he struggled to see from his position.

“The wound, it’s healing. Why am I not dead?” She was so confused. “Did it not work? Did the rift not close?”

“It definitely closed. Or did you think that I’d chosen to live with the round-ears?”

Perhaps it had been enough to stop whatever power was sustaining the rift.

The city stood exactly as they’d left it, silent and deserted, its gates hanging ajar. No soldiers guarded its gates; no humans walked its streets.

Tharos dismounted and helped her down. “Are you able to stand?” he asked.

She nodded but continued to lean on him for support.

“Close the gates,” he ordered the men.

He was in charge now that Casyl wasn’t around.

Her heart sank at the thought of Casyl. Where was he?

The rest of the army filtered through the gates before they closed them. She counted approximately two hundred men remaining. The rest had either gone through the rift or turned to dust soon after.

“Can’t you hide the city?” she asked Tharos.

He let out a short huff. “You have a great deal of faith in my abilities,” he muttered. “If they get close enough to the city, I could hold an illusion for a while, but not indefinitely.”

“What will we do then?”

“I have absolutely no idea.” He shrugged. “Can you walk?”

She nodded.

The pain had mostly receded, but her body was still numb. They went into the palace, where Tharos helped her to a seat. He gestured to her wound, and she lifted her shirt to show him.

“I don’t understand,” she said, running her fingers over the smooth pink skin that had formed over the wound. “This should have killed me.”

His eyebrows pinched together as he considered her. “Fae heal cleanly. Humans slowly scar. You do neither properly.”

“What happened to those fae back there? Why did some of them perish, but others did not? None of this makes any sense.”

She thought of how they had shattered and crumbled to dust as the rift winked out, dragging their remains with it.

“I don’t know why you’d think that I have all the answers,” he snapped.

Why couldn’t it have been Ruven who was stuck here with her?

She glared at him with unhidden contempt.

His face softened, and she saw a crack in his demeanour. He remained in this world with her. He’d lost something too.