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“We spelled her to sleep while we did the mending,” the wind-wielder said, watching with hands on her hips as the other healers retreated. She seemed to be their leader.
I should probably know the name of the chief healer at my court; but I couldn’t summon the will to care. Everything I had was focused on the female laying prone in the bed.
“Which means?” I felt the tug in my chest, the compulsion to be nearer to her. But my emotions held me in check. I loved her—I’d loved her before I understood the meaning of that bond between us. But the force of the feelings inside of me now was enough to give me pause. At least, some parts of me.
Entirely against my will, I stumbled forward.
Fucking Ancestors.
The bond was strong.
“It means that when she will wake is impossible to predict,” the healer said matter-of-factly. “It is dependent on her body’s level of exhaustion, her hunger or thirst, her own desire to sleep or wake… and her personal well of power.”
The healer knew.
It physically hurt to drag my eyes away from Veyka. But I did it, pinning the healer with a look that said everything—promise, threat, and more.
She inclined her head once more. “I shall come tomorrow to remove her bindings. Send for us sooner if you have need.”
Then she was gone, closing the door to the bedroom softly in her wake. Cyara gave me one glance, another to Veyka, then disappeared into the connecting rooms she’d once shared with her sisters. I didn’t know what was in there now, but I knew she wouldn’t retreat to the suite of rooms she shared with her parents while Veyka was bound to her bed.
And then I was alone with my mate.
I took one unsteady step forward, then another. Until I reached her bedside and my knees crumpled beneath me.
9
ARRAN
I had no notion of time passing. My knees stopped aching after the first hour. I rested my head against the edge of the bed, unable to drag my eyes up to look at her but also unable to move away. I couldn’t leave her. The bond wouldn’t let me, neither would my beast.
I would stay at her side until her eyes opened. I couldn’t lay beside her on the bed and hold her hand the way I had in those painful hours after the Tower of Myda. But I could stay right there, waiting.
The fog of my own mind was a dangerous place to be.
The Void. Prophecies. Mates. High King and Queen.
One word overlapped another, the feelings summoned by each bleeding into the others until I couldn’t parse them.
Fear.
In three hundred years, I could count on one hand the number of times I had truly been afraid. Never on a battlefield. Only in those early years, when my power had spiraled out of my control—like it had in the throne room.
I waited for the lives of those I had killed to flash before my eyes, but they did not.
Which said something even worse about me.
Veyka had been taken from me. I would never let it happen again.
I repeated the vow, let it seep into my soul, fill the crevices of fear. It didn’t stop the pain, but it eased it slightly. Enough.
The door cracked open, the sound followed by careful, feline footsteps that could only belong to one female.
“The healers report that she will mend soon,” Gwen said from the doorway.
Wise, not to try and approach my injured mate. Always so fucking wise, was Guinevere.
I didn’t say anything.
