The injured stumbled about, clutching wounds, while the more serious cases called loudly for help or their mothers.
More than one person today would leave here permanently disfigured. For some, the wounds would be obvious: a missing limb or the loss of hearing or sight. For others, the wounds would be deeper, unnoticed by the naked eye; nightmares and hot flashes in the middle of the night, memories creeping up at the most mundane of times, creating sweaty palms and panicked breaths.
“Shall we help?” my mother asked, gently tucking a wayward curl behind my ear.
I opened my mouth to respond, but inhaled sharply when I heard a cry I would recognize anywhere. A voice that made my heart skip a beat while also thundering in my chest.
“Faylinn!” That voice called in desperation again, and I scrambled off my mother’s lap, crawling through the mud and blood to reach him.
Rohak.
Chapter One Hundred Nineteen
Rohak
“Faylinn!” I screamed again, uncaring for the desperation that contorted my voice.
I needed to find her, hold her, never let her go.
With the Bond opened, I pushed every ounce of fear, of longing, of love down it, blindly following its pulse in my soul as I crawled through the muck and mire in search of my love.
“Rohak!” Her desperate, raspy cry was close, and I looked frantically about.
All I saw were corpses—bodies in various states of death, some with eyes wide open and expressions of incredulity, as if they didn’t expect to enter the ether today, while others were resigned, almost peaceful.
None of them were my Faylinn.
A sucking sound came from my right, and I whirled on my knees to see my beautiful love clambering over a stack of bodies to reach me.
I fell back against my heels, the water seeping through my pants to saturate them completely, but I didn’t care.
With a sob, my hand came to cover my mouth, shoulders shaking with my relief.
Objectively, I knew she had survived—I was alive, after all—but thinking it andseeingit were two completely different things.
“Rohak,” she rasped quietly, her voice thick with emotion and beautiful hazel eyes rimmed in red.
I reached out with dirty hands, grasping her by her thin shoulders to pull hertoward me, immediately encasing her in my arms and nestling my face against her throat.
Faylinn scrambled, desperately trying to get closer to me, even though our bodies were pressed as flush as possible, like she wanted to crawl beneath my skin.
We sat like that for minutes, hours, days, breathing in each other’s scents and feeling each other’s heartbeat. They beat as one, thumps slowly de-escalating until they reached a normal cadence.
My hand wound through her curls at the back of her skull, holding tight and pushing her face further into my neck.
I just wanted to feel her breath against my skin, relish in her as I held her warm, supple flesh against my own. My grip tightened as I thought about how she was nearly ripped away from me, and I felt my breath catch in my throat once more.
“Never again,” I rasped. Faylinn tensed as if expecting a reprimand, but I was so far past that. “Never again will we be separated.”
I pulled her head from my neck so I could look into her eyes, so she could see the depth of my sincerity.
“We were always meant to be as one. And from now on, we will be. You do not leave my side, and I do not leave yours. I am so, sosorrythat I tried to make you stay in Vespera, Faylinn. You were never meant to stay behind like some precious treasure. You are a fierce warrior, a wicked protector, and you were always made to be at my side, with me.”
Her eyes filled with tears, a few escaping down her cheeks, but she said nothing. Just pressed her forehead against my own as we inhaled each other’s air.
“I love you, Rohak,” she whispered against my lips. I delicately pressed my mouth to hers, not wanting to start worshipping her, for I feared that if I did, I was wont to take her right here in the blood-soaked mud.
“I love you is not enough for the depths of what I feel for you,” I admitted, kissing her chastely once more. She tasted of salt from sweat and tears and the coppery metallic that only blood could produce, but she was still wholly mine.
