AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The medic sucks in a horrified breath and touches my back on either side of my wound. “I’ll do whatever I can…”
She pauses, and a tickle of warmth flows through my flesh. The power inside me quivers in resonance with her magic, but it isn’t clamoring for me to use it anymore.
An ache that has nothing to do with my injuries forms in my stomach.
The medic’s next remark sends the ache burning deeper. “The cut doesn’t go as deep as I thought from looking at the amount of blood. Somehow it didn’t quite puncture her lung.”
She stands. “I’ve patched her up well enough that she can be moved. We need to get her to the infirmary for the rest of the treatment.”
“Will she make it?” Alek murmurs.
There’s no mistaking the confusion in the medic’s voice. “I think… I think she will. You must have found her just in time.”
My eyelids flutter shut again.
Stavros’s hand slides to my shoulder. “I’m going to be as careful with you as I can be, Ivy. You can curse me out later for however much it ends up hurting.”
His tone has gone oddly tender. I’d wonder about that or the gingerness with which he lifts me into his brawny arms, but behind my closed eyes, my mind is whirling far beyond even the throbbing agony of my partly healed wounds.
A chill has wrapped around my abdomen. I was dying, but I survived. My magic seems satisfied.
What under the gods’ gaze have I done?
And who paid for it in my place?
Thirty-Four
The next time I wake up, I’m definitely not in the infirmary.
I’m lying on my side in an expansive bed, tucked into silky sheets under a thick quilt. Dark wooden posts rise from the corners of the frame to form a latticework canopy overhead.
A gilded leaf pattern decorates the wall across from me, where a matching wooden wardrobe stands. Next to it hang a pair of paintings: a stern middle-aged man with a craggy face and a similarly aged woman with a piercing gaze and familiar dark red hair, both in military uniform.
At the sight, the pieces click together in my head. I don’t know who those could be other than Stavros’s parents, and I don’t know whose bedroom would hold paintings of the late esteemed generals other than Stavros himself.
Why am I in his bed?
I shift tentatively to roll over. The stirring of the bed covers wafts a tickle of smoky pepper scent into the air that only confirms whose room I’m in.
A dull pain wakes up between my ribs at my back, and a fainter ache seeps through my skull where the knife hilt whacked me. Both sensations are far more tolerable than what I was feeling the last time I was conscious, so I’ll call that a win.
The bedroom door has been left open. At my movement, two figures appear at the doorway as if they’ve run over.
Casimir steps in first, his gorgeous face holding a mix of hope and worry. He hurries to the side of the bed and then hesitates. “How are you feeling?”
Alek ducks in after him, coming to a halt at the bed’s foot. His dark hair droops across the top of his mask to obscure his eyes, but his mouth twists tight as he waits for my answer.
I wet my lips and ease my hands across the mattress—which is even comfier than the sofa Stavros gave me, damn him and his fancy quarters. In a careful motion, I push myself into a sitting position.
The pain in my back flickers and settles back into its previous dull state. Nothing else hurts. That seems like some kind of miracle.
The thought of miracles brings a lump to the base of my throat.
“I think… I’m all right,” I say, testing out my voice. The rasp in it clears after the first few words.
“The medics fully closed your wounds,” Alek says hastily. “They said there shouldn’t be any permanent damage—it was lucky your attacker didn’t strike you with more force.”
I remember the slam of the blade deeper into me, the sear of it through my lung.
