She needed to focus on something other than the fact that she didn’t know what she would do without him.
“Keep talking, Phoenix,” he ground out, his voice a rough rasp as Adara stuck the needle through his skin.
“What?” she asked, though she did not pause her work on his wounds.
Dominic’s fingers curled into fists, muscles tensing as she continued, and Adara got the sense that this was about much more than his physical injuries. The scars on his back . . . He’d said they were from his father, who must have been what he’d seen in the desert that she could not. He’d been reliving all the excruciating pain of his past.
“Tell me something—anything. Just distract me,” he demanded, yet the way his fingers reached out to softly caress her hip as she knelt next to him felt like anything but a demand. It felt like a plea.
Adara turned her head away so he wouldn’t see her grimace. It deeply disturbed her to see the Thief of Hearts so fragile, so broken, so desperate.
Apprehension choked her, forcing her breaths to mimic Dominic’s shallow, anguished ones. “Tell me a story,” he said with a wince. “You’re good at that.”
Adara swallowed her protests, recalling how at peace she’d felt hours ago with her friends before she realized they weren’t real. The Ruins marred the way she saw them, shifting them into some wretched beast. She would not remember them like that.
Their stories deserved to be told. Their memory deserved to live on in more minds than hers.
Chapter 41
Ashudderedbreathcameinresponse to his request, and for a moment, Dominic thought Adara would make him sit in silence, focused only on the ache of her stitching him back together. On the sharp sting of the cuts. On the bruises that had begun to turn black and blue. On the nausea that curdled in his stomach, his blurred vision, and the throbbing in his head. On the icy claws of his powers scraping along the inside of his skin and bones. As if it could claw its way out of the dark, empty void inside his chest—where it resided in place of his heart—and return to the light.
The pain was becoming so unbearable he thought he might fall unconscious again. But as sweet and painless as that oblivion would be, Dominic worried he wouldn’t wake from it. He needed her to distract him, and her stories always piqued his interest. She’d tell of a faraway world he’d never known, of unheard-of gods and powers and kingdoms—all of which she claimed to be true, yet he’d never heard anything like it.
Her eyes met his, full of grief and longing.
“In a land long since forgotten,” Adara began. Her nimble fingers worked expertly to mend his wounds. He sighed and closed his eyes, lying his cheek against the couch. “There lived a princess, whose only dream was to light up the world.”
Another piercing stab of a needle had Dominic wincing, but it soon faded as he focused on Adara’s melodic voice.
“Her kingdom was beautiful. A stone castle set high up on a verdant hill, turrets so tall they grazed the stars. A mote of lava flowed around the castle, though the rulers kept the drawbridge down, arms open and welcoming to those that dwelled in the city below.”
Dominic imagined the glorious land. A palace of stone lit by the firelight at the darkest hours, starlight raining down on the castle, leaves rustling in the breeze, and city lights twinkling in the town set at the bottom of the hill.
“They’d made peace with the other kingdoms . . . all except one. The one they’d thought had been constrained centuries ago.”
Dominic drew in a sharp breath, lips pressed together as the needle continued to weave through his back.
“A seer told of a prophecy that claimed the princess would be the savior or the destruction of their continent. The kingdom did their best to keep the princess in hiding, afraid of what others would do with the prophecy’s information, but it was no use. Their heir was stolen by the shadows, no trace of her left behind.
“The ruler of Zenura had discovered the prophecy and planned to take matters into his own hands, determined to be sure the princess would be everyone’s destruction.”
Dominic remembered the Kingdom of Zenura from Adara’s other story—the one about the goddess she was named after—and how tyrannical the ruler was. He recalled that Adara said the goddess left the kingdom in ruin and disappeared into the mountains, leaving the other five of her friends to build their own kingdoms. Perhaps, an heir of Zenura had survived and rebuilt the empire.
Adara finished stitching one of the lacerations, applied a healing salve, and began the painful process all over again. He looked at her expectantly, patiently waiting for her to continue.
She bit her lip and glanced at his wounds before speaking again. “She was more powerful than they imagined, her magic running deep and strong. They intended to break her down, yet what they didn’t know was that the years of torture she endured only made her stronger. There was not a single part of her that had not been destroyed in some way, but she chose to take those broken pieces and make herself into something to fear. She let the innocent princess she’d been born die, and became the monster they turned her into.”
Suddenly, this story wasn’t merely about some young princess in a faraway land, Dominic thought. When he imagined the story playing out in his head, all he could see was Adara in her place. Cut and torn into ribbons, bones shattered into pieces, skin marred with scars.
Those jagged scars on her back flashed in his mind.
“Eventually, Zenura captured the heirs of the other four kingdoms along with a rebel leader they rooted out of their own empire. They used the heirs against each other, tormenting them in different ways. Sometimes, they made the others watch. Sometimes, they’d have to sit in their rusty, dank cell as onewas dragged away by a guard. They’d hear the screams and the crunch of bones, smelling the blood all through the night while wondering if their friend would return alive.” Adara shuddered, drawing in a deep breath from her nose, taking in the musty air.
Dominic wanted to reach out a hand to caress her cheeks that were flushed with fervent emotion. But the callousness in her eyes had him straining to stay away, worrying that she’d use that needle for something other than his sutures.
“Somehow, they’d found a way to get inside the heirs’ minds—the shadows.
“They’d made the princess believe she had slaughtered her friends, burned all the kingdoms to ash. Little did the heirs know, it was all some sort of sick experiment to build the ultimate weapon. Why destroy a continent when you could enslave one for your taking? All their physical suffering had been a way to make them invincible.
