A cold trickle of water touched her lips.
Alora gasped weakly. A waterskin pressed against her mouth carefully and she drank a deep gulp before it was pulled away. She blinked up at a small face staring down at her. Golden brown hair. Wide gray eyes. A boy. Eleven, maybe twelve. He was a stranger, yet he looked so much like Laurent it made her ache.
“Hello,” he whispered. “Don’t scream.”
She stared at him feebly, her dry lips parting. “Rihan…?”
The boy nodded.
Her brother.
Herdeadbrother.
He reached for her bindings, and the aching pressure on her limbs lift. Then the crystals clattered on the floor when he tossed them aside.
“You’re alive…” she rasped.
“My mother faked my death,” Rihan said as he quickly tapped her enchanted bindings with a pale blue stone. Thebindings flickered and fell apart from her body like crumpled reeds, their magic snuffed out. “Once she learned that Eldrik came for our bloodline she feared for me and hid me away. To protect me.”
Alora now realized the laughter in the dark halls had never been a phantom. “You’ve been hiding in the walls…”
“Shhh,” Rihan whispered, glancing at the door. The fighting was growing closer. “I have to get you out of here before he returns. Can you stand?”
She spotted the secret doorway in the wall where he had slipped through.
“Mother said everything will be all right once Calveron leaves, but…” Rihan’s eyes returned to her and her injuries, full of remorse. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your doing…”
She tried to get up, but the pain made her whimper. Her limbs wouldn’t lift. Rihan helped her off the stone slab, but she was too heavy. She couldn’t feel her legs. It’s no use. She was already dying.
“Leave me…” Alora panted, head lolling against the table.
Rihan’s brows furrowed. “We can still escape.”
“No.” She tried to reach for his hand but barely mustered to brush his sleeve. “You must run and hide…”
He shook his head. Alora’s heart warmed. He was a sweet boy, but she had to protect him, too.
He was Argyle’s future.
“Rihan—”
“I won’t let them torture my sister,” he said, voice trembling. “What do I do? How do I save you?”
Alora looked up at the glyphs.
She had forgotten his name and his face. But not the importance of that possessive presence roiling in her mind. It was dark and so full of rage, and so desperate to reach her. Sucha terrifying presence and yet she knew he was the one place she was safe.
And exactly what he needed.
“My … husband …is outside…” Alora mumbled faintly, and her heart weakly leaped. “But the spell impedes him from entering…”
The glyphs above her hummed, glowing so bright they made her vision water. The blinding light thwarted the shadows, but only if she let them.
Her fingers trembled on Rihan’s wrist where he had painted the glyph for invisibility. “What is the… first rule of spell casting?”
He took a shaky breath, focusing.
