Whoever the words were directed at moved with quick steps, their gait far too short to be any adult. There was a child nearby, then. Why? Children didn’t belong in war. Even his father hadkept him sheltered from it when he and Madan had first been brought into the mountains.
Azriel’s lids shuttered again, too heavy to keep open for long. Shifting in the soft bed, he groaned as pain lanced through his abdomen and shoulder. Injuries. Injuries from who? Why had he been fighting at all?
So many questions, and yet his tongue felt like lead, unable to form the words necessary to gain the answers he so desperately needed.
“Keep still, boy.” Phulan’s words were soft, yet commanding. Gentle hands held him in place. “I healed you the best I could before moving you, but you’re annoyingly good at reopening your wounds.”
“Where?” The single syllable was more than difficult to force out, and his voice sounded odd. While he knew just how gravelly it was typically, there was a rasp to it as though he hadn’t had a sip of water in quite some time.
Weight settled on the bed beside him, and a hand cradled the back of his head, lifting it from the pillow with careful precision. The edge of a mug bumped his lower lip as Phulan answered, “We are back inAuhla. Have been for about two days now.”
Water slipped over his tongue, an effervescent bubble to it that he associated with wine from the Vol Isles. Rather than warm him like alcohol would usually, a coolness spread through his torso and branched out through his limbs all the way down to his fingertips and toes. In response, his body heaved in a massive breath as though it was his first gulp of air granted by the gods.
Within a handful of heartbeats, a phantom weight lifted from his chest, and his eyes fluttered open with ease. The darkness gave way to the familiar turquoise glow of Phulan’s mage fire, and his friend’s face swam into view from where she sat at the edge of the bed.
Then everything returned. A flood of memories his sluggish mind had hidden from him crashed through the barricades and slammed into focus. Waking from his illusory potion haze in a dark forest and nearly killing his own brother with his bare hands. Mounting Razer and taking off toward Laeton, where Ariadne needed him after she left to marry…
Heart racing, Azriel shot up in bed, body screaming in protest. His wife had married another. His wife had left him. His wife…had a massive bruise on her face. Beside him, Phulan cursed, grabbed his curling horn, and yanked him back to the pillow with more strength than he’d given her credit for.
“Ariadne, she—”
“Ariadne is safe,” Phulan said, pinning him to the bed. “But you won’t be if you continue to ruin my progress.”
Biting back a growl, Azriel glared at her. “Where is she?”
As though summoned by his panic, the door at the far side of the room swung open. He froze, swiveling his attention to the woman sweeping across the threshold like a celestial haloed by the golden light shining in from the corridor behind her. Dressed in a simple gown of pale blue and silver and hair braided into a crown around her head, Ariadne appeared to be nothing short of divine.
“You’re awake,” she breathed, the colloquial use of contractions unfamiliar to Azriel when coming from her. Though her complexion had always been fair, it held an ashen pallor he had not seen since the nights following the Vertium ball when she drifted about the Harlow Estate like a ghost. Deep circles under her eyes spoke volumes more than her follow-up words. “I have been so worried.”
At first, Azriel did not know how to respond. Last he’d seen her, she’d been fighting against Valenul soldiers in a destroyed wedding dress, her face purple and blue from the blow she received from her…husband.
The thought churned Azriel’s stomach, souring his panic into that same anger he’d felt on the banks of Lake Cypher when Razer and Almandine had connected them through their respective vinculums. Anger and frustration that she hadn’t stopped to think that what she’d planned to do would put her in more danger than if she’d just stayed in the cave.
Sensing the tension, Phulan released Azriel’s horn and stood. “I’ll leave you to talk.” Then she rounded on him. “Stay in this bed or so help me, I will flay you.”
Azriel grunted in affirmation, not taking his eyes off his wife. The mage muttered something in her ancient Algorathian language before disappearing from the room, shutting the door behind her.
“You are still angry.” Ariadne did not move closer, and the distance between them made Azriel’s heart ache.
Sighing, Azriel wove his arm between the curves of his horns and draped it over his eyes, blocking out the room in a vain attempt to stifle the emotions choking him. When he considered himself to be under better control, he croaked, “Are you evenmywife anymore?”
Footsteps brought Ariadne closer in a rush of florals. The mattress whined as she took Phulan’s place on the bed, where, instead of holding him to the pillow like the mage had done, she peeled his arm off his face. She searched him for a long moment, her lips parted. “How could you even ask such a thing?”
In retrospect, it’d been a stupid question, and he knew it. Still, the bond clawed at the back of his mind, scraping through the worst of his memories and dredging forth the words he couldn’t unhear.
He is a monster.
“I love you more than life itself, Azriel,” she whispered before sinking further onto the bed, resting her head on the pillow beside him, and curling her body into his.
He swallowed hard. “You promised you wouldn’t leave me.”
With gentle fingers, Ariadne tilted his face toward her as much as he was able, given the way his horns stood out from his face. Her eyes glistened, and she chewed her lip. When she spoke, her words were softer than he’d ever heard them before. “My heart never did.”
A beat of silence stretched out between them as he wrestled with that horrible side of him still attempting to poison his thoughts despite the way it purred with satisfaction at her close proximity. Then Azriel nodded. “I know.”
Azriel’s shoulder ached as he reached across to stroke her cheek, the memory of her swollen and broken face twisting and merging with that of her decapitated head in the worst of ways. “He’d hurt you.”
To his horror, she nodded. “Yes. But he willnevertouch me again.”
