Over and over I breathed for him. Right up until the moment I couldn’t breathe for myself.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I awoke to the beeping of the machine. My eyes wanted to roll back in my head. Everything was swimming. My throat was raw. I made a noise, a low groan, and my hand was squeezed.
‘Stacy?’ It was Robbie’s voice and my eyes flared open to stare at my fiancé.
I was still in the Common, and as such I could only see him as humans could. He didn’t look like an ogre. He looked … skinny, like an athlete. Modest and almost unremarkable. His hair was a meeker shade of brown, and I missed the tusks that usually dominated his silhouette.
This was his camouflage, I realised. And it was deadly. People would underestimate this man, and he could tear them in two with his bare hands.
Then I remembered everything.
The Domini. The battlefield. Jingo. Reed.
‘Troy?’ I asked.
‘He’s in intensive care,’ Robbie confirmed. ‘But the witches say he’ll make a full recovery. They have him in a healing coma. You saved his life.’ His eyes turned flat, and here in the Common realm, his eyes were merely blue, and I missed his stunningly rare liquid silver.
‘Kate?’
‘She’s fine. Upset, but fine. Her sister Beth is with her.’
I coughed, throat rasping, and that was it. I was bent over, coughing hard. I gestured to my neck, hoping he’d understand my plea for a drink. Thankfully, he did.
He held out a cup of water and guided the straw to my lips.
I pulled on the water gratefully.
‘The battle,’ I said when the coughing fit had gone. ‘Is everyone okay?’
‘Okayis a bit of a stretch,’ he admitted. ‘But it does not look like any will die from their wounds, though some were severe. Ivan lost an arm.’
I closed my eyes. ‘God, that’s awful.’
‘He is in pain, but he will survive.’
Guilt ripped into me. He’d lost an arm fighting to protect me. I’d dragged him into a trap, and it had snapped around us more thoroughly than I’d been braced for. I’d been cocky, arrogantand—
‘Channing?’ I asked urgently, pushing myself up.
‘He’s fine. Just knocked out.’
I slumped back onto my cushions. ‘And the Domini?’
‘Oh, they suffered fatalities. A lot of fatalities.’ His eyes were fierce on mine. ‘I sent them a message. You are not to be touched.’
‘Did you send them an actual message? Or did you mean you implied a message with all of their deaths?’
‘Implication can be misconstrued, and I’m not a barbarian,’ he said primly. He smiled, and even in this form, it was feral. ‘I wrote an actual message, of course.’
Hanlon snorted, and only then did I realise he was present. ‘In entrails. He spelled out the message with their entrails.’
‘There are a lot of entrails in one person, and I didn’t have a pen and paper handy,’ Robbie explained.
I didn’t know how, but I shook my head and offered a shaky laugh. ‘God, Robbie.’
Hanlon nodded at me. ‘You were something to behold. You blew out their flames with ease, and we waged war on them with joy in our hearts and blood on our hands. Thank you for protecting us, hersmóðir.’
