But when I hear Vivian scream Fiona’s name, I whirl to find she’s been hit, and my tower of pride turns to dust.
I rush to her side. Vivian’s moved her to a pew. With her hand pressed over the wound, all I can see is blood seeping through her fingers, but I don’t have to see the injury to know the poison is in her. I need to get her to Morwyn.
But she’s smiling—smiling as bright as she did the last day we were together. “We’ve got to quit meeting like this.”
She leans toward me, and I’m there, cupping her facein my hands and kissing her. Creator, I can smell him on her and I hate it. I desperately want to make love to her, to mark her as mine, to reassure myself that I am not too late, that he didn’t damage her in any lasting way. But she’s hurt, and that will have to wait.
I pull back and say, “Fiona, as many times as you can dress up in these hideous dresses and pretend to marry this guy is the number of times we will meet like this.”
“Considering he’s dead, I think this will be the last.”
I try to pry her hand off the wound in her arm to see what we’re dealing with. “Let me see.”
“I’m fine,” she says, searching my face. “It’s already feeling better. We should just go.”
“It’s not fine. Order weapons are viciously poisonous. We need to get you to Morwyn’s to clean out the residue so it doesn’t get infected.” I tug on her wrist. “Come on. Let me see.”
Vivian moves closer, her hands hovering near the wound. “Let us take a look, Fi. Maybe we should bandage it before we leave.”
“You helped us before,” I say because we’ve never officially met. “In France, thank you.”
Fiona squeezes my hand. “Connor, this is Vivian.” She looks at her friend. “Vivian, this is Connor… my mate.”
“Yourmate?” She eyes my wings. “You’re a dragon like Donovan?”
“You know Donovan?” I ask.
Fiona’s eyes go wider. “Oh my God. Donovan. He’s here, Connor! In the dungeon. They’re draining him. We have to get him out of here.”
“Draining him?”
“I can show you where to go,” Fiona says.
Vivian pales and has to sit down. She has serious bruises. I don’t want to know how she got them. Not yet. First I need to get everyone somewhere safe. We can process the trauma of what happened to them then.
A shower of gunshots comes from the other side of the wall and then a scream.
Vivian covers her ears, her eyes filling with tears. “What is that? Are they coming for us?”
“That would be Seb, Remus, and Ellison. Sounds like they’ve incapacitated the guards, which means they’ll join us soon.”
“You brought backup,” Fiona says, followed by a relieved sigh. Her gaze drifts over the wound in my wing and she winces.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I tell her. “Now let me see your arm.”
Carefully, she peels her hand back and spreads the rip in the dress to give me a better view. “See, it’s not even…”
We all stare at the pink pucker in her biceps. Her dress is stained with blood, there’s blood on her fingers, but the actual wound isn’t bleeding at all. In fact, it looks like it’s healing at an accelerated pace, already knit together and slowly fading. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I gape in confusion.
She looks up at me, her brows rising. “I guess it’s not as bad as I thought it was.”
Seb chooses that moment to push through the side door into the chapel. “This is cozy in an I-worship-the-devil sort of way.” He scans the room. “I see you’ve taken care of public enemy number one. Just so you know, we probably want to get the fuck out of here just in case one of the guards we took down called the cops before they passed out. Plus the real Judge Burk isn’t going to stay asleep forever.”
“We’ve got to get Donovan,” I say.
“Donovan? Here?”
Fiona stands. “I’ll take you to him.”
