“Let me.” Thyra tried to pry my right hand off my left, but the motion made me scream. She let go.
“Rynni!” my sister commanded. “Help her.”
“Give me your hand.” The dragon-fae was there in an instant, and although it felt as though my bone was being cut with a dull knife, I offered her my shaking left hand.
I focused on the healer, and despite my vision going in and out, the confusion on her face was plain.
“Nothing is wrong other than it’s red from where you gripped it tightly. Did you bang it on something?”
“This is not from a bang. Something is wrong. Inside.”
Everyone circled around me. Expressions of worry and puzzlement lined each of their faces.
Rynni exhaled a breath, noting how I trembled, how it made no sense. “Maybe you should go to the Master Healer?”
“Don’t be an idiot, Rynni.” Thyra spoke harshly, an indication of the panic that likely bubbled inside her. “We can all see that nothing is wrong with her hand. Something else is . . . what in the nine kingdoms?”
I gripped the chair with my good hand as another wave of fire, the worst yet, washed through me. I gritted my teeth, riding it out.
“Did you all see that?” Thyra asked, a note of fear in her voice.
No, I hadn’t. In fact, my vision had just gone white. I blinked, trying to see again.
Breathe in. Breath out,I thought, lowering my heart rate one breath at a time. The old trick worked, and second by second, my vision returned. Bits and pieces of Thyra’s face, as pale as the moon, came into focus.
“What?” I asked. “Tell me.”
My sister’s chin wobbled ever so slightly before she composed herself once again. “Your soulmate marks. They flickered.”
I glanced down at my finger, still throbbing, but the pain had lessened. The marks did appear somewhat duller than before.
I gasped as the most horrible reason why that might happen struck me. “Does this mean Vale is dead?”
“No,” a raspy voice spoke. Lord Riis’s voice. Sometime during my pain, he’d woken from his stupor and sat up. He stared at me with red, grief-filled eyes, his face haggard as if he’d aged 100 turns in just hours. “If he died, the mark would disappear, and you would be on the floor from the agony in your heart.”
Much like him. Fates.
“Then what?” I spoke the first words I’d willingly spoken to him since his betrayal came to light.
“You might sense his pain. Like some mates can speak mind to mind, and others can sense emotions, some can feel when another is injured. I can’t be certain that’s what’s happening, but that is my best guess.”
Cold seized me, a sensation a million times worse than whatever I’d experienced. If that was what was happening, why was Vale hurt?
I twisted to find Aleksander but his eyes were still shut.
“Let him work,” Thyra said. “He’ll find something. I promise.”
“Vale could bedying!” I hissed. “And you expect me to sit here?”
“No.” She placed both hands on my shoulders, as if trying to ground me. “If your hand is fine, I expect you to wait here with me. To be my rock, as I will be yours. To know that we’re taking the smartest path to find the males we care for.”
“Care for? I love him with everything that I am.” The words choked up my throat. “If he dies, Thyra—I don’t think I can keep going.”
A world without Vale would lose all color. All meaning. I didn’t want to consider such a horrible place.
“I think I can understand that,” she whispered, and her inflection struck me as so sincere that I fell quiet.
Aleksander opened his eyes and turned to us, calm and ignorant to what had been happening in the room he sat in. “I have news.”
