What sort of cruel, twisted game was she playing?
Anger curdled in my stomach. But when I glared back at her, the Lady of the Lake’s eyes were unreadable once again.
“What have you done to my mate?” My voice was steady. I knew she would recognize that calm for what it truly was—lethal.
But it was not Morgyn who answered.
“He is in an enchanted sleep,” Isolde said.
I bit down hard on my lower lip to keep it from trembling. “Why?”
“To heal,” Morgyn answered. She did not even smirk. Cold, unfeeling creature.
“He is healing, Majesty,” Isolde said quickly, before I could start screaming at Morgyn again. “Look,” the faerie implored.
I did not want to look. I did not know how I would survive it. Not without Arran at my side to catch me. Not when Arran was the one lying there…
“The edges of the wound have smoothed, the damage giving way to healthy tissue,” Isolde explained.
I forced my eyes down.
It was better than it had been in the clearing… I shivered. Shivered, shook, trembled.
Arran had once promised to cleave open his own chest to find that golden thread between us, to use it to find me if I was ever lost to the void. In the end, I’d done it for him. And nearly lost him in the process.
I pressed my eyes closed, focusing all of my energy on the bond in my own chest. I could not see it. But I could feel it there.
A shaking exhale. “How long?”
I expected Isolde. Got Morgyn instead. “We cannot predict. It is mighty magic, as will be the price.”
All magic had a price. Cyara’s aching wrists after she used her flames to build my fire. Lyrena’s catatonic sleep after quieting the flames that consumed the human village. I’d take a missing limb or a natural disaster or whatever terrible cost the Ancestors demanded. Anything, so long as he lived.
I turned to Isolde, those magical white hands now folded behind her back. No glow in sight. “Can you help him? Heal him faster?”
I watched her eyes fill with tears, knew the answer before she spoke it. The shake of her head was so small, her tiny white braids hardly moved.
“My magic is different here,” she said. Whether her sadness was for me or Arran, I felt the weight of it settling in my chest.
“What if I moved him? Brought him to our camp using my power.”
Isolde’s braids did move this time. “I am afraid he would not survive the journey.”
So was I.
I did not know what the void would do to him in this state. Rip him apart, but then find there was not enough of him left to put back together? When I’d moved with Lyrena during the succubus attack in the forest, she’d been injured, but not so gravely.
I sank down to my knees, the vomit I’d spewed up earlier magically enveloped by the unnatural green grass. I kneeled on the edge of the granite, the sharp corners digging into my knees, and let my head fall forward against the cool stone.
“He is safe here,” Morgyn said.
I did not believe that for a second.
9
VEYKA
I kneeled there for hours.
