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“Gods, woman,” he muttered, wincing as he got to his feet and wobbled his way over the edge of the bathtub. “No wonder the guards let you in, you’re terrifying when you’re like this.”
“Sit down.” I snapped.
Rook wrapped the towel around his hips and sat down on a padded bench at the end of his bed. He leaned back on the bed with one hand, and sucked in a breath as the wound poured more blood.
“You need a healer,” I said.
Rook waved me away again. “No, I don’t trust them. They’ll try and poison me or something.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I grumbled, and looked around the room. On top of an armoire there was a wooden box with glass bottles in it, and I walked over to inspect the contents. It was haphazard, but I found marigold tincture, gauze and linen bandages.
“Regular little witch, aren’t you?” Rook joked, wincing as I set about stuffing the wound with the gauze soaked in marigold.
“Isn’t that what you said to me when we first met?” My eyes flickered up to his. “I had to be on the battlefield. I can at least stop you from bleeding out, which is important right now.”
“It’s not just you Fae that heal fast, you know.” He sounded almost indignant. “In fact we Night Demons probably heal even faster than you.”
“Not fast enough like this,” I scolded him. He sucked loudly on his teeth as I jabbed more gauze into the wound. “And now is not the time to be competitive.”
I worked in silence, and he gasped and winced a few times before I finally wrapped the linen bandages around his torso to keep the gauze in place. “There now,” I said, kneeling at his feet. “We at least have some hope that you won’t die on me today.”
“Yes, there’s been enough of that today,” he said, and his eyes were filled with sadness as they met mine. He lifted a hand to my cheek. “Near deaths too, enough to last me a lifetime.”
I clutched his hand to my face, turning to press my lips into his palm. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, shaking my head. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know why I was so stupid.”
“Yes you do. You know exactly why you jumped into that Pit. And so do I.” He sighed, gazing out the window at the darkening, stormy afternoon. “I understood it. Which is why I jumped right in after you.”
“You understood it?”
He looked back down at me. “Yes.” He curled his fingers around mine and lay our joined hands in his lap. He gazed at them, his brow furrowed. “I told you, I had a wife once.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Celeste,” he said softly. “It was an arranged marriage, but it didn’t matter. We were good friends, had been since childhood. It didn’t bother us to be husband and wife.” He ran a finger along my knuckles. “She was a good wife, and she would have been a good queen.”
Thunder rumbled softly in the distance, and I shifted my legs to the side so I could sit properly at Rook’s feet.
“After the Peyrusian army left,” Rook went on, “it didn’t take the Velesians long to invade Isambard. The battle was over in less than two days. We didn’t stand a chance. They’d robbed us of our power, there was nothing we could do.”
“Your power?” I asked.
“The Umbra Furorem. Dark Fury.” He scoffed. “One of the few paths of magic Theron managed to corrupt. Without it, we were defenseless. So the Seraph stormed Isambard, and claimed the city. Within a day, they’d signed the Accord, making us a restricted race. Limiting our movements. And -” He swallowed hard. “And decreeing that no further Night Demons would be born.”
I felt a shiver down my spine. “Oh Gods.”
“That first night, the Velesian forces made their way through Isambard, slaughtering any Night Demon they found that was with child, any infant that was under a year old.” His gaze moved back to the window as lightning flashed. “The screaming, it was terrible. I’ll never forget it.” He clutched my hand harder. “Celeste was, oh Gods, days off giving birth to our first child. I tried to hide her in the castle. My mother, she tried to smuggle her out, tried to protect her. But…”
I tried not to breathe too loudly even as my heart thundered in my chest. I had suspected that the story of his wife was a terrible one with a sad ending. Tears bit at my eyes as Rook’s face contorted with pain.
“They caught them,” Rook said. “The Velesians, they discovered my mother and my wife. So they laid my father and I in chains, and forced us to watch as they killed them.” He took a shuddering breath. “They were screaming for us. Celeste was begging them to spare her for the - the baby’s sake.” He winced. “But they killed them both.”
“Oh Rook,” I said, my voice cracking, “I’m so sorry.”
“They chained me to a wagon,” he went on. “A wagon which contained Celeste’s body. I walked behind that wagon, all the way from Isambard to Veles.” He clenched his eyes shut for a moment. “I cannot even begin to tell you the tricks my mind played on me, the number of times I was sure I saw her breathing, that I was sure she was whispering my name, begging me to help her. I heard her voice, I still hear it in my nightmares, telling me that it hurt. That everything hurt.” He shook his head. “But of course she was dead. And then we got here, and I was taken to the dungeons, chained to the wall.” His eyes met mine. “And my wife was taken to the necromancers.”
My stomach dropped. “They did the same thing to her that they did to Keir?”
Rooks’ thumb traced circles over my knuckles. “They came to the dungeon door, I could hear a strange sound, I couldn’t place what it was. And they held this tiny bundle up to me. I didn’t understand at first, but then I saw it. The black curly hair, and a tiny little fist, flailing about as this little bundle cried.”
