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His brother stumbled over and dropped next to him. Aeyis tugged at his arm with hot, electric hands, but they were both too weak to stand back up. Was this it? Was this where all the Murfells perished?
Hass appeared seconds later, wiping blood from the knife he’d retrieved from the fallen hunter. “Maybe fill me in on the entire plan next time, huh?”
He swung Renton’s arm up over one shoulder and Aeyis’s arm up over the other. Then he lifted them off the ground.
All Renton could focus on was the aura of dark magic surrounding his brother. “How?”
Aeyis’s smile was solemn as he withdrew the transportation orb.Chaos found me the day Mias took me to an institute. That’s how I got out without a restrictor. A gift. It’s been a gift for me.
Renton peeked back at Mias’s body, acid rising in his throat.
Anyone who considered Chaos a gift wasn’t sound of mind.
Chapter24
Tenah
Tenah spent the day climbing the plateau in the city center—and pretending not to be upset by Renton’s disappearance. Thoughts of Renton and the Void were supposed to be banished today. Lingering on either subject would only bring about anxiety.
She wandered back to the villa on lighter feet, her mind more organized than when she’d woken to an empty bed that morning.
At her bedroom door, Tenah heard a raspy cough from down the hall. Pivoting, she took in the ghostly figure dragging a larger shadow along, and her heart plummeted.
Renton.
She ran to him, her wicked mind dredging up the pain from Ames’s death. Not again. She couldn’t lose anyone else. One hand went to Renton’s lower side for support. He winced at her touch, and she snapped her hand back, coated in warm blood.
“What happened?” Her eyes roved over him, seeking wounds. Featherlight, she touched his side again. Her fingers dipped in farther than they should.
His breaths were too quick, as if he couldn’t suck in enough air to satisfy his body’s needs. “Ribs.”
“A healer’s been summoned,” Aeyis assured her, but he couldn’t mask the fear etched into his face or the aura of dark magic clinging to his form.
Her vision blurred, her nostrils flaring as addiction for Chaos itched in her channels.
“You’re not well, Aeyis.” Her voice sounded weak and far off in her ears.
Renton sagged in his grip, and Tenah rushed to hoist him up by his arm, though her effort was in vain. To witness him unable to stand, unable to breathe…
A trickle of cold horror worked through her body. She couldn’t do this again.
“Go sit down before you collapse too,” Tenah ordered, pointing Aeyis to a chair on the terrace. In reality, she needed the temptation of dark magic as far away as possible. “I can handle him until the healer arrives.”
Aeyis’s throat bobbed as his brows knitted together. But he didn’t argue, his feet dragging as he moved to the chair and sagged into it. She planned to tear into both of them later for whatever stupid act they had committed to result in these wounds. Right now, her main concern was getting Renton to her room to lay down.
He didn’t budge as her muscles strained against gravity.
“Why do you weigh so much?” she complained.
“Don’t.” He tried to swat her arms away.
“He’s been fighting us all the way back from the Boglands,” Aeyis said quietly.
“Us?” Tenah’s nose scrunched. She hooked fingers into the top of Renton’s chest piece and brought her face level to his. Even in pain, his eyes glinted with carnal interest. “What exactly were you doing in the Boglands?”
And how had they traveled there so fast?
Tenah clenched her teeth, loathing the broken pieces of her mind that shaped an ugly thought. What if Renton was still consorting with Boedworth? What if he still planned on turning her in?
