Page 35 of Secrets of Ruin

Wrinkling her nose, she tried to shut out the smell, but it was an ever-present thing that wouldn’t let her go. She’d give anything for a shower.

“I should change his dressing,” she murmured.

“I did it half an hour ago,” Sahira said when Kaylia started to rise. “Sit and rest. He’s not the only one who endured a lot.”

Kaylia hovered nervously over her chair as her gaze went from Brokk to Orin and Sahira, and back again. Finally, she settled onto her seat again.

“What happened to your hand?” she asked Orin.

The corners of his mouth twitched toward a smile. “You aren’t the only one who was gone for three months. We only returned a few days ago and were preparing to go into Doomed Valley to search for the two of you. Thankfully, you found your way home instead.”

“Thanks to Brokk,” she whispered as she caressed his cheek.

She’d bathed him the best she could when he first came to the infirmary. She’d taken away layers of dirt and blood, but she still smelled the dungeon all over him too, and his shaggy beard, a product of their time in that shithole, remained.

Her fingers itched to shave that reminder away, but she wouldn’t take it from him while he slept. It was his decision to make.

“Is there something between you two?” Orin asked.

“Yes,” Kaylia said.

“That’s why he didn’t feed on the nymphs.”

“Yes.” Kaylia lifted her head and looked pointedly at their joined hands. “And I’m guessing three months away changed the two of you too.”

“In so many ways,” Sahira said.

“Are you going to tell me about it?” Kaylia waved toward Orin’s missing appendage. “And the hand?”

“We were trapped in the Cursed Realm.”

Kaylia didn’t speak while listening to their story, which was as brutal and awful as hers. By the time they finished, she didn’t know what to say.

She never would have believed Orin could be selfless in any way or he would ever care for another the way he did for Sahira. However, love filled his eyes whenever he looked at her.

“I’m sorry for all you endured,” Kaylia murmured when they finished.

“I’m sorry for all you endured, too,” Sahira said.

“And no one is sorrier about it than me.”

Kaylia turned as Lexi entered the room; she pushed a silver cart laden with food.

Lexi stopped the cart beside the bed and lifted her sorrow-filled eyes to look at them. “All of you were in those awful places because of me.”

“That’s not true,” Kaylia said. “We were there because Amaris betrayed and nearly killed you. We were there because we chose to be; we knew there were risks when we left here.”

“You didn’t know about the ophidians, and they didn’t know the Cursed Realm existed.”

“I would do it all over again,” Sahira said. “It was awful and terrifying, but something fantastic came out of it, and I would never change that.”

Orin lifted their joined hands and kissed Sahira’s knuckles. “Neither would I.”

“And neither would I,” Kaylia assured her.

Because, despite every awful thing that happened over the past three months, some good had come from it. She had Brokk now, and she was never going to let him go.

And, like everyone else in this room and so many outside it, she would do whatever it took to keep Lexi on the throne. She was the true queen of the realms and the only one who could handle the power of the arach throne without being driven mad by it.