This is what you deserve.
The air burned.
“She’s going to be alright,” Almandine said, her voice shaking. Did she even believe herself?
Razer reached through the vinculum to steady Azriel’s slowly shattering mind. He grappled for the pieces and held them steady in his claws. “Get out of there.”
“I will not leave her.” Azriel spoke the words aloud without meaning to, pressing his wrist to her mouth a little more, thankful for the first time in his life that he didn’t possess thesame healing abilities as his wife. At least in moments like this, he continued to bleed. Continued to provide some semblance of life for her, even if it meant dripping it down the more indirect route of her throat.
Perhaps Phulan could sense his rising tension. Perhaps she knew him well enough to be able to tell when he was about to lose himself. Or, more likely than either of those, Phulan saw the way his grip on reality shifted at the very real possibility that Ariadne was justnot healing.
“Get out,” the mage said and pointed to the tent entrance.
Azriel snarled at her. “No.”
“We have blood we can use here.” Phulan’s voice remained firm and steady. “Now go back to the battle.”
“Iwill notleave her!”
Emillie looked between them with wide eyes but said nothing. Wise.
The next moment, magic erupted from Phulan. Her amethyst eyes took on an ethereal glow, and she stood, conducting the invisible strands of power through the air until it took hold of Azriel, throwing him back from Ariadne’s cot. “This ismyrealm, boy. I saidleave.”
Fighting against the magic, Azriel found his feet and tried to charge forward. Howdareshe try to keep him from hiswife? He would kill her.Killher for even thinking she could make him leave.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Razer snapped and gave his mind another firm tug, making him stumble towards the exit. “She will put you in the ground before you could ever touch her.”
“She cannot keep me from—”
“She absolutely can,” the dragon corrected. Another mental stab of pain, combined with a very physical shove from the magic, had Azriel slipping out of the tent flaps. “And you’re nowdistracting her from healing Ariadne.Back to the battle with you.”
With a rush of wind from above, Razer’s claw wrapped around Azriel and jerked him into the sky. The air punched from his lungs at the sudden yank upwards. “What thefuck,Razer?”
“You were going to kill our only qualified healer,” Razer pushed back. “You really are a fucking idiot.”
“I will killyou.”
Razer chuckled mirthlessly. “I could drop you right now and kill us both.” He paused. “Or I can fly us back into the battle where you can kill every Caersan soldier you see in retaliation.”
At once, Azriel hated and loved how well that damn dragon understood him. Sending back a confirmation, he added, “Let’s burn it all.”
Chapter 26
After watching Azriel being dragged from the tent without anyone laying a hand on him to do so, Emillie did not dare hesitate when Phulan gave her the order to get away from Ariadne.
“I do not needyouinterfering, either,” the mage said as she pointed to the far side of the tent. “Go tend to wounds over there.”
Emillie shoved off the cot to her feet and hurried away, returning to the patient she had abandoned moments earlier and continuing to wrap the dhemon’s arm with bandages. Though her hands moved and she smiled and spoke to the huge, horned man in a language he clearly didn’t understand, her mind and heart stayed with her sister.
As she tied off the bandage, she glanced over her shoulder to see Phulan’s brows pinched in concentration as a ribbon of coagulated blood was pulled from Ariadne’s wound with adelicately arched hand and an invisible stream of magic. Still, her sister did not move.
This was not the first patient for whom they had cared with salt in their wounds since nightfall. It was a clear act of aggression from the Caersan army. They wanted anyone with healing capabilities—vampires, high fae, and lycans—to suffer alongside the dhemons for whom they all chose to fight. The dhemons were unfazed by it, their healing being slower than the others, but it prevented the magic and salve from doing its job correctly. Phulan’s endless stream of curses directed towards the vampires not in the vicinity underscored just how much more she was having to work on top of her usual healing.
Before Emillie could become distracted once more by her motionless sister on the far side of the tent, the entry opened again to let in a pair of dhemons—one half-carrying, half-dragging the other. To her dismay, the one who appeared to be far more injured sported one ear that had long ago been cut in half.
Revelie looked up, her eyes widening at the sight of the dhemon whose head drooped and swayed as they moved. Her hands stilled from their stitching. “Jakhov?”
The dhemon raised his head slowly, red eyes dull until they found her. He sucked in a breath and tried to take a step, just for his knees to give out. The dhemon Emillie did not recognize who carried Jakhov cursed in their language as he nearly dropped the sudden dead weight.
