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“What if we can find a solution? I understand you have been driven to extreme measures to stay alive, but our healers are far greater than those in Tithe, with access to magic your realm has been severed from.”
A spark of hope curled within me. I feared to recognise it for getting my hopes up would be detrimental. “If I let you try to help, you must promise me that Faenir does not find out.”
“Only if you promise to tell him if I fail.”
I bit down on the insides of my cheeks until all I could taste was the sharp tang of copper. “If we are going to make a deal, then I have something I will require from you if I die. My sister Auriol… I cannot stand to leave her in this world alone. Promise me you will watch out for her.”
Myrinn dropped my gaze, and the hope diminished in a single breath. “If you die before the Joining with Faenir, much like Gale, then your sister will find the grace we have given her will be taken from her. There is nothing I can do to stop it.”
Adding this knowledge atop of everything else was too much. I buckled under the weight, falling back into the white-sheeted bed the healers had ushered me into.
“I have failed my parents… Auriol. Myself.”
“Arlo, you cannot think like that.”
I buried my head in my hands, the light of the room suddenly becoming too much to bear.
“We can fix it,” Myrinn added, fingers gripping onto me with urgency. “Together, we will find a solution.”
Sighing through my anxiety, I recognised the way my breath trembled. “I have tried to fix it… for once, I understand that is no longer an option for me. I’m broken, Myrinn, with missing parts.”
Noise sounded beyond the room; heavy footsteps followed by the thundering of a guttural growl. Faenir. He had found the dismissed healers loitering outside. Even from beyond the door, I could hear his fury; it shook the very walls.
Myrinn stood abruptly. She angled herself before the door, stance wide, as though to stop him herself.
We had run out of time.
I reached forward, bed creaking beneath me. Scooping up a shard of glass, I brought it to my now exposed chest and sliced it downward. Skin split, blood gushed out over my hands. A rush passed over my mind like a cloud. Somewhere in the distance, as the pain registered and unleashed its scream within me, Myrinn had called out my name.
I blinked, seeing through eyes now filled with agony. Myrinn had torn the glass from my hand just as the door kicked open. She held it behind her back.
There was no time for questioning why I had done it to myself. Faenir had to believe the blood he had seen was my own. That Samantha had caused it.
In my haste, I placed faith in the promise that Myrinn’s healers could save me, at least from bleeding out on the bed. And if they couldn’t… well, I would die soon anyway.
FAENIR
I felt the fibres of the wood beneath my hands. They cracked and splintered, breaking under my grip, yet I could not let go of the chair’s armrests for fear of what I would do. I could take my anger out on it instead of the human slumped in the chair in the heart of our circle.
“Speak, human. Exercise your own free will or be forced to answer,” Queen Claria croaked from her throne.
I admit Claria forced just enough concern into her voice to make me believe she wished to know the motives of the human. If I had not glowered across the space towards her, I would not have seen her disinterest deepening the wrinkles across her face.
The human’s silence persisted; lips sealed shut as though forced by other means. And perhaps they were.
“Samantha,” Haldor said, sitting on a grand chair to my side. He leaned forward; amber brows furrowed over his tortured eyes. He did not care for the human, but more for the knowledge of what was to happen next. “Tell me. Be truthful and I promise to keep you from harm.”
I would punish Samantha for her crime against Arlo. Haldor knew that, and he grieved the reality even now. If Samantha died, it would remove him from succession, which made one fact clear.
Haldor was not behind the attack.
Part of me wished he was. I longed to unleash myself upon him, an excuse was all it took. But even in the storm that raged within my mind, I understood Haldor would not purposefully forfeit the only grasp he had on the throne.
Someone had ripped it from his hands.
Who?The question filled my head like a parliament of owls.
My eyes fell back upon Claria and the wood beneath my left hand completely caved in. The snap was so sudden that it made the human gasp out of shock. It was the first sound she had made since the attack.
