AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Gods, Anaria, you’re…Where did these burns come from?” I shoved him toward Tavion.
“I’ll explain while you heal him. The Mistress…whipped him apart. And she used a knife.” When Raz just eyed my battered face, I gripped his hand and set it on Tavion’s chest. “Now, Raz. He’s going to die if you don’t.”
Tavion writhed in pain when Raz ran his hands over the wounds, finally tearing off his bloody, shredded shirt, and then the world crawled to a stop. Everything after that seemed to be happening to someone else.
There was a single, frozen moment when everyone stared down at Tavion’s brutalized body with the same horrified, furious expression.
Nobody spoke. Not Torin, not the owl shifter landing on her shoulder, and I was too far gone to do anything but try to keep breathing over the roaring in my head.
My eyes met Tavion’s; that one glance held a thousand things we’d wished we would have said
but never had the courage.
Then Raziel swung into action, healing as he went, mending every deep wound, every burn, every lash mark. So fucking many. There were so many I wanted to demand Torin take me back to the Citadelle so I could kill the Mistress all over again.
At some point, Adele settled beside me and took my hand, stroking her thumb across my knuckles, bruised and raw from my fight with the Mistress.
Zor ran his hands over my legs, pausing on my shins, but I barely noticed as Raziel rolled Tavion onto his back, his eyes flashing up to mine for a brief second when he saw Tavion’s sigil.
I shrugged.That’s not the half of it, I wanted to say.
With a curse, he went back to work.
I didn’t know if it took minutes or hours or days, but Raziel finally rocked back on his heels, his face pale. Then he was pressing my back to the dirt, right beside Tavion. “You are injured almost as badly as him. Stop fighting me on this.”
“I’m not hurt that bad,” I protested, mostly because it seemed like Ishouldput up more of a fight.
His hands hovered over me, warmth already spreading through my body with an alarming mix of sedation and healing strength. “They were a lot worse…before.” My lips felt ten times their normal size as the full effect of his magic sank in.
Oh…I liked this. It felt like flying.
“Stop talking, princess, and let me work.”
“Hmmm. Okay.” I closed my eyes. I didn’t feel like talking, anyway.
He worked on my face for a long time, fussing over one side more than the other, until my cheeks didn’t pull tight every time I talked and that seared meat smell faded away.
“Take a look at that wound, Raz,” Zor muttered, and I managed to crack an eye open, long enough to see the worry on his face.
I squinted dazedly, wondering if that was bone glinting through the encrusted blood on my left leg. My weaker one, thank the gods, or I would have never gotten Tavion on his feet. Across that room. Down the stairs. I turned my head to check that he was still breathing.
Something settled inside me when I saw he was.
And for the first time, I didn’t care. I was tired of fighting this. Tired of pretending there was nothing between us when there had always been too much.
Julian’s death. Our false marriage.
And every moment after.
I closed my eyes and focused on Raziel’s gentle hands tracing the still-seeping wounds, putting aside those feverish, foolish thoughts. Tavion might have told me he loved me, but he also thought he was dying, and people said the dumbest things when they thought they were crossing over to the Great Beyond.
I’d be a fool to put too much weight on Tavion’s dying words.
“Where did these come from?”
It took a minute for Raz’s voice to penetrate my floating bliss and realize his voice was no longer worried. He was terrified, one shaking hand gripping my thigh as he motioned to Torin. She drifted closer, hissing at whatever she saw.
Adele swallowed, squeezing my hand in a death grip.
