For a second, I can only stare.
I’ve been trained for this—for the unexpected. I’m a soldier. A hunter. A street fighter. I’ve seen so many accidents and deaths that by now, they all blur together.
But this?
This fuckingbreaksme. It feels like someone reached into my chest, smashed through my ribs, and ripped out my beating heart.
“No!” I surge forward, leaping over rubble and around the lumbering dead, and fall to my knees at Folke’s side.
He’s breathing. But it’s strained. Wracked with choking sounds.
Blood stains the front of his shirt like a poppy flower blooming.
“For…fuck’s…sake…Basten,” he chokes out. “Leave this…old…man. Get…the…gods.”
My eyes go wide. I clasp his hand, unwilling to let go. I can’t tell from here how bad his injuries are. It doesn’t look good, but with care, there’s a chance he could make it.
Only, how the fuck is he supposed to get to a healer in the middle of a siege?
“Tòrr!” Sabine’s weak voice croaks from the wrecked square. Weakly, she reaches out a hand toward the monoceros. “Tòrr, come!”
I realize three things at the same time:
One, Tòrr’s no longer rampaging. Folke’s stunt with the water tank shocked him out of his craze.
Two, the falling water tank broke his solarium horn, which hangs now by a small shard.
And three, Sabine isn’t using her inner voice. The one she’s always used to communicate with animals, especially Tòrr.
I look around at the wreckage.
It’s…not good.
Be a king, Basten.
Tòrr nuzzles Folke’s shoulder, firm and urgent, as if demanding the man get up. Gods help me, I could swear that bloodthirsty beast, who has never cared about any mortal in its thousands of years, feelsguilty.
Sabine calls to him again, and Tòrr swings his head around, and after giving Folke one more look, rears up on his hind legs and charges down a side alley.
Gone.
“Hang in there, old man.” I squeeze Folke’s shoulder, then stagger toward Sabine, lifting my sword to block a walking cadaver who lunges at me. I slice him clean through, leaving two steaming halves on the broken cobblestones.
Rian leans over Sabine, picking glass shards out of her bare skin. Silver blood pools beneath her, but her wounds are already healing.
It’s wrong, somehow. That within seconds, my perfect goddess, my warrior queen who has been to hell and back, doesn’t have a scratch on her.
In seconds, her skin is once more smooth, flawless.
Cheeks perfectly flushed.
Lips so full they glisten.
She grabs my shoulder and pulls me into a tight hug. “Basten, I can’t—can’t use my fey. There’s nothing left.”
She lifts a trembling hand, but her fey lines are faded to a ghost of themselves, barely pulsing beneath her skin.
Without hesitation, I tilt her close to my jugular, my arms tightening around her weakened body. “Drink. That’s an order. Every gods-damned drop.”
