Kerlan’s coup had begun.
Sorsha beheld Ana through narrowed eyes, licking her lips. “The blot magen,” she crooned, her voice soft with desire. “The most coveted magek of all.” She brushed herself off and straightened. “I’ll finish this later, Blood Bitch and Brother Dearest.”
Without another word, she turned the corner and disappeared.
Only then did Ramson let himself slump against the wall, panting. He swept a hand to the wound on his shoulder. The iron splinter Sorsha had pierced him with was still there, and his fingers came away sticky. His blood, he realized, had spread all the way down to his elbow.
A rustle of fabric; Ana came to stand next to him. Droplets of rainwater clung to her dark lashes as she pressed a hand below his injured shoulder. “Deities,” she murmured. “That’s a lot of blood.”
Ramson’s chuckle was rough. “I thought you enjoyed seeing me bleed.”
“Only when I’m the cause of it,” she said, deadpan.
“Careful, Witch. You’re starting to have a sense of humor.”
She threw him a glare and ignored him. Her fingers were cold against his skin as she deftly peeled back his ruined shirt. She smelled of wind and storm and sea, and he was giddy in a way that he couldn’t tell whether it was from the blood loss or from her proximity. “This is going to hurt.”
Without warning, she pulled the shard of iron from his shoulder. Ramson’s head grew light with pain; the floor tilted beneath him. He was aware of her arms around him, catching him as he swayed, gently propping him back against the wall.
“Mmf,” he grunted, feeling warmth drench the sleeve of his shirt. There was a tingling in his shoulder, a warmth in his veins as Ana placed a hand over his wound. Blearily, he cracked an eye open to look at her.
Her irises were crimson, her brows furrowed in that look of concentration he’d come to treasure, and she worked on his wound, utterly unaware that he watched her.
He could have stayed like this forever, drinking in the sight of her and knowing that he’d almost lost the chance to ever see her again.I see the way you look at her,his father had said.Love makes usweak,boy.
His thoughts swirled, sluggish. There was a truth buried deep in the most cowardly parts of his heart that he simply didn’t want to see yet. For love, as his father had always taught him, was something to be destroyed. There was no room in love for selfishness.
And Ramson had always vowed that he would live only for himself.
As though she’d heard the turbulent mess of his thoughts, Ana looked up at him from beneath her lashes. “I’ve stopped the flow,” she said. She pushed back a strand of hair from her face. “You’ll still need a healer, though.”
“No time for that.” He tested his shoulder gingerly. The pain was fresh but beginning to recede into a dull throb. The world around him steadied. “We have a coup to stop.”
He peeled himself from the wall and limped down the corridor. Ana followed, picking her way through the rubble and mess of iron. “She took off her collar,” she remarked.
Ramson was about to reply, but the words stuck in his throat. They’d reached his father’s chambers.
Ana peered in through the open doors. “There is a lot of blood in there,” she said quietly.
From this angle of the hallway, Ramson could see beyond the guards’ bodies through the slightly ajar door into his father’s study. “Give me a moment,” he found himself saying as he straightened. As though in a dream, he crossed over the hall to his father’s chambers.
Details he hadn’t noticed earlier now flooded his mind as he swept his gaze around the room. The walls were the exact shade of maroon as they had always been. The dark cherrywood desk that he’d sat before so many years ago no longer seemed to loom; it came up to the height of his hip.
It seemed like both a lifetime ago and no time at all that he’d thrown his mug against the wall, looked upon his father as both god and monster and sworn to never become like him.
Ramson knelt by his father’s body. There was a pool of blood around him, spreading on the floor, but all that Ramson saw was the strange bend of his arms and legs, the way his eyes stared and his mouth was still open in surprise.
Lying on the floor like this, he looked less like the monster in the shadows. He was simply a man, one who bled and died all the same.
Ramson reached over and closed his father’s eyes and mouth. In death, the Admiral’s facial muscles had relaxed, and for the first time Ramson could recall, his father looked at peace.
A sudden movement across the room caught his eye. At the windowsill, petals from the small white flowers fell, like snow. They twirled in the air for an ephemeral moment before landing on the floor.
I loved your mother, too, you know.
“You loved her, too,” Ramson muttered, the words tasting strange in his mouth.Too.
It was a possibility he had never considered—that he could stop thinking about himself for a moment to care for someone else. That he could put someone else’s needs before his.
