Don't be silly, Florian. Who would set a trap for you, of all people?
Spurred on by that logical conclusion, I tentatively approached the gate.
I gasped softly. It was open. Not wide enough to notice from afar, but it was clear up close. There was an empty glass bottle on the ground, jamming the gates. It was no accident. Someone had put it there on purpose.
Was it left there for someone else, or did somebody know I would be coming tonight?
I decided not to question my good luck. Careful not to make the doors creak, I slipped past the gate and made my way to the fountain. That was my usual meeting place with Devereaux and my heart raced at the thought of seeing him again.
But as I got closer to the fountain, it became clear that something was terribly wrong. The smell of smoke lingered in the air, along with the thick animal scent of horses, and the cobblestones were unusually dirty.
I furled my brow and looked around the courtyard. I sucked in a sharp breath when I saw someone lying crumpled on the ground.
And then my heart stopped when I realized it was Devereaux.
Panic flooded me. I rushed towards him, urging my frail body to go faster. When I reached him, my knees gave out and I reached for his body with trembling hands. Another pang of shock hit me when I saw the streaks of blood across his pale face. From the way the blood was smeared, it looked like there had been a lot more of it before it had been hastily wiped away.
My breathing came out in quick, terrified puffs. Why was Devereaux unconscious? Why was he covered in blood?
"Devereaux? Are you okay?" I asked. My voice shook as badly as my hands. He wasn't waking up. I shook his shoulders. "Devereaux!"
He didn't respond. Desperate to do something, I gently pulled him into my lap and stroked his hair with a shaking hand. He felt cool compared to my hot skin. I felt sick. Was he usually this cold or was there something wrong with him?
I frantically looked around the courtyard, wishing somebody was around to help, but it was eerily empty. Where the hell were the guards? They had some kind of relationship with Devereaux, didn't they? Why weren't they here to help him?
At first I was shaking from fear, but now it was from anger. Anger that I couldn't do anything to help Devereaux, and that nobody else was around to help him either.
I looked down at his face, which looked paler than usual.
"Oh, Devereaux," I murmured, stroking his cheek. I didn't care that his face was covered in dried blood.
Actually, it wasn't all dry. There was newer, brighter red trickling down from beneath his blindfold.
I looked at the black leather strip of fabric. I'd never seen him without it and I didn't know what was underneath, but it didn't matter. I asked myself what I would do if Pascal was the one in Devereaux's situation. If my friend was unconscious and bleeding from beneath his eye patch, I wouldn't hesitate to remove it and help stop the bleeding. Pascal was self-conscious of what lay beneath his eye patch, but I held no judgement in my heart. He was my friend and he was beautiful no matter what he looked like.
It was the same for Devereaux. I imagined there was scarring or something similar underneath his blindfold. Whatever it was wouldn't stop me from loving him.
The sudden thought made my heart flip. It was so natural to think about him that way that it just slipped out. And the more I thought about it, the truer it became. The way I loved Devereaux was different than the way I loved my friend Pascal. It was intense and exhilarating and addictive. Whenever I was with Devereaux, I felt at home, and when I wasn't with him, all I wanted to was return to his side.
But I could think about all that later. What mattered right now was saving Devereaux.
There was no blood on his forehead or hair. It was all trickling down from his eyes. I wondered with gut wrenching sympathy what happened to him. My hand hovered over his blindfold. To get to his eyes, I had to remove it.
"I'm sorry," I murmured even though he wasn't awake to hear it. Putting down my cane and the breadbasket, I carefully undid the knot at the back of his head. It felt loose beneath my fingers, as if done in a hurry.
The blindfold fell away and I breathed a tense sigh, ready to face whatever injury was hidden by it—
And then I stopped breathing.
Devereaux had no eyes.
No, that wasn't quite true. He did have eyes. But they weren't the eyes I expected. They weren't closed human eyelids that covered human eyeballs.
Instead, Devereaux had two sapphires in his sockets.
It took me a moment to digest what I was seeing. I hadn't hit my head or eaten anything strange or done anything else to affect my consciousness. I was fully sober and awake.
To ground myself, I ran my thumb gently along the upper part of Devereaux's cheek. His flesh was cool but the blood trickling from his sapphire eyes was warm. I shivered.
