She gazed at him through the rippling sheen of pain, like heat waves. Blood dripped from her lips, down her chin.
“Your cousin is better looking than you,” he remarked.
Lavana’s hands fisted. “She won’t be very good looking when she’s dead.”
He lifted his shoulder in a shrug, his gaze drifting away as if he was bored. He had been there before. She remembered his voice now, the lackadaisical drawl, his accent leaving his words slightly clipped. She’d never heard anything like it before. Through her wavering vision, she zeroed in on the strange fabric of his trousers.
She spat more blood onto the floor. “Leather?”
This drew their attention back to her.
Pixies did not wear leather.
Lavana sneered and turned to the goblin. “Now, do it.”
“Wait,” the blond stranger said. “Give me a glove.”
He held out his hand. The goblin snatched up the ichor-gold gloves from a chair. They were the same ones the guard had worn when opening her cell. She’d seen him hand the gloves over after they’d dragged her down the hall into this room. It had not been far from her iron cage, but was deeper underground. There were no vents to the outside—no way for her to tell just how long she’d been in this room. Hours, days, pain warped the time.
The goblin held up both gloves. The stranger took them, frowning, and flung one of them down.
“I saidaglove, singular,” he said.
“Forgiveness, master,” the goblin muttered, bowing and backing up.
“Now the iron,” he said coolly, pulling on the glove. The golden metal tightened around his hand, magically conforming. “The small one, there.”
The goblin snatched up a nail, long and slender, and held it up to the stranger.
“Thank you,” he said, plucking the nail from the goblin’s knotty fingers.
Then he turned back to Magda, smiling gently down at her. When he did so, even through the pain, she could sense it.
“You’re Lavana’s Prince,” she said.
He crouched before her. Behind him, Lavana glowered, retreating back by the door.
“I amaPrince,” he said. “My name is Endreas.” His gaze slid down her. “You look in quite a state. Let me help you.”
With a graceful twist of his fingers, a sweet-scented breeze swept around her. When it dissipated she was clean, blood and filth gone, rips in her clothes mended, even the tacky sweat sheeting her body had vanished. Though all of her wounds remained, the pain still shattering through her, the simple sensation of cleanliness brought tears to her eyes and choked her scream-strained throat.
He smiled more broadly—beautifully. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
It was better. So much better.
“Magdalena...” he said, brushing the sweep of her bangs from her eye.
Her hair was clean too, no more wet-dog tangles. Silken strands slipped against her skin, causing another sob to rise into her chest.
“I’m looking for something,” he said, “and I think you can help me.” He rose up so that he was eye to eye with her. “And if you do, I can help you.”
She pressed her lips tightly together, though they were swollen and aching, but she couldn’t take her eyes from the impossible depths of his. They were so dark and lovely, like the black valleys between the white peaks of the stars.
“I know you’re hurting,” he said, close enough that she could taste the warm honey of his breath. “I can make it stop.”
He ran the backs of his cool fingers down her cheek. From his touch, a flood of relief washed down her face, healing her aching lips, eroding the top layers of pain, soothing it away like the ocean cleans marks carved in the sand. She gasped, her eyes slipping shut, tears trickling down her face. But too soon, his fingers left her. The pains reared up again, each one reasserting itself as if new.
A low whimper left her, a desperate pitiful sound that only seemed to make each patch of burned skin ache all the more.
