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His ire crackled in the air, electricity around us. Everyone shied away from him and the power that spread away from him in waves.
A servant appeared, looking terrified.
“They posed as messengers, Your Highness,” he said in a trembling voice. “Only a handful of them, with word from Palgia. When I allowed them in, they overran us with the rest of them coming through. The warriors were all locked up in their quarters until one servant could set them free. A few escaped through the windows.”
“What? Locked up?”
“It seems to have been carefully planned, with an inside man, Your Highness,” the servant said. “A thousand apologies.”
Rainier shook his head. “They came for a reason.” He looked at me. His eyes filled with emotion—fury because of the attack, but concern, too. They changed color, as they’d done before, going from glacial blue to cerulean in an instant. I felt him, his feelings, as I had many times before. He reached for me through a connection I now knew I wasn’t imagining. It was the first time he actively responded to me through this invisible pull I had to him. As if he realized it, he shut it down again. He withdrew, and his anger rose to the surface again. It masked his concern. “And that is to take you out.”
“Me?” My blood drained from my face, and my mouth ran dry. “How do you know?” I demanded.
“You were the person they came for. They knew exactly what they wanted and where they were headed.”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t the only one out here.” I looked up at Nylah.
She nodded, and Dex looked grim. He clenched his jaw, and the murderous look on his face suggested he wished there were more of them to kill off.
“They’re all dead,” Rainier said, looking around him at the carnage we’d left behind. “Pity. I would have loved to question someone about what this was all about.”
He scowled.
I started feeling lightheaded at the sight of all the blood. I’d fought a lot before, but I’d never killed. This was gruesome. Gruesome and somehow my fault.
“Come with me,” Nylah said. Her voice was gentle but urgent, and she put her hand on my elbow. She helped me up and steered me out of the arena and away from the devastation we’d created. “You need to be healed,” she said while we walked to the cathedral. “Let Ren and Dex take care of the aftermath.”
I was happy to let her take me away. Did I need healing? I hadn’t even felt the wounds on my arms and hands. They were only tiny nicks and cuts, but now that the adrenaline had faded, they stung and burned.
“We need tea,” she told a servant who appeared when we walked into the cathedral. “Very sweet. She’s in shock.”
We sat on the couch in Nylah’s living room. She asked another servant to bring her a tray with different salves and potions, and with magic and the aid of these pots and vials, she healed my wounds.
My mind kept spinning. I flashed on the dead bodies all around me, but the most prominent in my mind was the way Rainier and I had connected with each other.
“How do you fight when you’re all in each other’s heads?” I asked.
“What?”
“I can’t even think straight when I’m alone in my head in a fight like that. To have someone else in there is exhausting.”
Nylah stared at me. “What are you talking about?”
“Ren…feeling him when we fight. Knowing where he is and what he’s going to do, so that we can all work together.”
Nylah’s expression looked more and more confused as I spoke.
“Doesn’t everyone have that?” Until now, I’d thought it was a Fae thing, that more of them could feel each other. I’dfelthim. We’d fought together like a team, completely in tune with each other.
“That’s not something we do, Ellie,” Nylah said.
She focused her attention on my wounds again, but her concerned expression stayed in place.
“Is it a bad thing?”
She hesitated before shaking her head. “Not at all.”
I wanted to know what it meant. I wanted to know why she’d reacted so strangely when I’d asked about it. I didn’t have the courage to ask more questions. Not now, when everything around me felt shaky, like my world would fall apart.
