I forced myself to focus on the communication crystal in my hand.
I muttered the incantation quickly, sighed with relief when the crystal began to glow bright white.
I felt Arran’s sharp intake of breath, then the slower release as he caught himself, trying hard not to move me even a fraction of an inch for fear of causing me pain. Brutal Prince, and overprotective skoupuma mother. High King of Annwyn… and my love. My mate.
Cyara’s tentative voice spared me that line of thought.
“Veyka?” she said into the darkness of the cave, the crystal quivering with light. It didn’t do much, illuminating our thighspressed together. The light did not reach past my knee—thank the… whoever. I did not want to see the mess Arran had had to sort out.
Nor did I allow myself to look up at his face.
“Yes, I am here,” I said, fingers closing tight around the crystal. “As is Arran.”
Several beats of silence. “And everyone else?”
Arran made a sound low in his throat. He wasn’t the sort to shift about under the weight of other’s judgment or expectations. But I could tell from the way his muscles tensed that he was uncomfortable.
And I could not resist needling him. It was almost as good as kissing him.
“We are alone,” I told Cyara.
“And you are contacting me?”
Arran’s chest contracted as he stifled another groan.
“We are trapped in a solabear cave,” he said.
Several months of silence passed. I heard the soft sound of Arran opening his mouth, but the words came directly into my mind, rather than my ears.Will she hear everything we say?
Are you worried?I shot back.
Before he could respond, I spoke aloud. “We will be out by the time you can send help from Eilean Gayl.”
There was no pause in Cyara’s response this time. “Why can’t you get yourself out using the void?”
Shit.
Now I was the one leaving long, heavy pauses.
“She is injured. But she will be fine.” Arran spoke with such certainty—as if he had not been begging me to wake mere minutes before. I had barely let myself believe it, the yearning in that plea that had echoed in my heart in the half-conscious moments before opening my eyes. It almost sounded as if he…
Nope. No way. I could not allow myself to go there.
Maybe there was something resembling trust beginning to grow between us again. Mutual respect, perhaps. But not love. Not yet.
I fought back the sob that rose in my chest. “See,” I ground out. “If Arran says I will fine, you know it is true.”
Arran tensed—recognizing the strain in my voice.
If Cyara did as well, I could not tell over the chastising. “In all the time you’ve been in my care, you have never once been injured. As soon as you leave me behind, you are trapped in a cave and hurt.”
I did not remind her about the Joining, where I’d fallen through the void, crashed onto the floor of my bedroom, and broken nearly every bone in my body.
“You asked to stay behind to monitor Percival and Diana,” I said. “And a handmaiden is not the same thing as a nursemaid. Though we could have used your harpy to fight off the solabear.”
“She is a harpy?” Arran asked sharply. Reprove, disappointment.
I had not meant to keep it from him. But there were so many things that we’d shared, it was impossible to remember them all, to apprise him of them all. I did not want to remind him. I wanted him to remember. I wanted my mate back. Suddenly, I wanted to jerk away, to sit by myself, even if it meant shivering all night. But my blasted leg held me in place.
