Dauphine’s head flung back against the cushions as she arched her back, her neck straining as she let out another muted sound of pain.
Aidon let the knife clatter to the floor and grabbed the rest of the shirt Cole had brought. He tied it quickly around the wound before pushing himself up, one hand pressing into the back of the couch beside her head and the other gently tugging the gag from her mouth.
“Breathe with me,” he murmured. Dauphine blinked away the water lining her eyes as she mimicked the exaggerated rise and fall of his chest, her breath hissing from between gritted teeth.
Aidon reached forward and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. He let thumb skim the side of her cheek soothingly as he drew his hand back.
“Fucking hells what is that smell?” Liam asked as he jogged down the narrow wooden staircase.
Aidon jerked himself to full height, his head swimming with the quick movement.
“My burning flesh,” Dauphine answered dryly.
Liam’s gaze darted between them. “Charming.”
“Any chance there are any healing ointments or tonics up there?” Aidon said, jerking his chin toward the second floor.
Liam shook his head. “I checked. Nothing but some forgotten spare clothes.”
Cole shouldered open the front door, a bucket of water in his hands. He paused on the threshold, his nose wrinkling in disgust. “What’s that smell?”
“Dauphine,” Liam replied with a wry grin.
Aidon’s lips twitched, but it was more reflex than anything. Now that the adrenaline that had been coursing through him for hours had begun to ebb away, all that was left was a bone-weary exhaustion that had every muscle inside of him aching.
Or perhaps that was the consequence of how little he had used his power today. He was starting to feel the difference in the way his body felt when he didn’t offset the pressure building in his well—when he ignored that roiling inside of him.
Aidon flicked his wrist toward the small grate in the corner of the room, filling it with Incend flame so Cole could boil the water.
“How is she?” he asked Liam. The Persi shrugged as he settled into an armchair. He grimaced at the state of it, but exhaustion kept him seated, his long legs stretching out in front of him.
“It’s hard to tell,” Liam answered. “Sheseemsfine, just…”
“Unconscious?” Cole supplied helpfully as he crossed hislegs, his brow furrowing as he stared at the pot, as if he couldmakeit boil.
Liam raised an amused brow. “Right.” He sighed as he let his head fall back, exhaustion heavy in his voice as he said, “I don’t think we’ll get Will to move anytime soon.”
“We can’t stay here long,” Aidon objected. “Even with Akeeta and Azul keeping watch outside, we’re too exposed.”
Silence fell over them, weighed down by exhaustion and grief and fear. They may have left the horrors of Sitya behind, but the ghosts of them lingered in the room, cold and haunting and bleak.
“Did you see the women go over the edge of the wall?” Dauphine finally asked them all, her voice uncharacteristically soft.
Liam let out a long breath, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. “For a moment, I thought one of them was Aya,” he admitted to the plaster.
Aidon’s stomach twisted, a mere shadow of the feeling that had wrenched through him when he’d caught sight of those bodies falling through the air. He had thought one was Aya, too. That is until he’d seen them hanging there, one holding on to seeminglynothingbut a divot created by her own hand in the wall.
Evie, he assumed.
The other had dangled from Evie’s leg for no more than a breath before the saint flicked her hand and sent the woman careening to her death, as if she was no more than a bothersome fly.
“I’ve never seen anyone catch themselves like that,” Cole remarked.
“She didn’t catch herself. She gouged a hole in the wall of the fortress with one hand,” Dauphine replied. “I’ve seen Zeluus break through cement like it was paper, but never like that. That looked like…”
“A god?” Aidon offered up.
Another full silence enveloped them.The demigod, Aya had called her. Aidon did not want to think what awaited them if Evie was, in fact, part god. The war’s devastation already seemed insurmountable without adding the immeasurable power of the Divine.
