This deep, the cloudy light from the open sky overhead bled away to almost nothing. The scent of dried blood filled every pore, oppressive as any battlefield. The lowest level of the Pit was meant to disorient, to steal away one’s senses and strip them down to their basest self.
`If Veyka noticed, she did not show it. She turned to Isolde, her voice low even forty feet below eager ears. “What is wrong?”
Isolde clicked her claws together, her white braids trembling against her shoulders. “I… I do not think you should fight, Majesty.”
Addressed to me, not Veyka.
“What do you mean? Why not?” my mate asked anyway, as if I were not even there.
“I could be wrong.” The faerie could not hold back her trembling any longer.
Veyka lowered a hand to the tiny female’s shoulder. “I trust your instincts, Isolde. Tell us.”
Her gentle command seemed to calm the white faerie. At least enough to get the words out. “His Majesty, Arran,” she stumbled over my name. “You may not be fully healed.”
“What?”
“I am fine.”
Veyka’s eyes pinned me with accusation. I felt her presence in my mind as she wrapped herself around the golden thread between us and tried to search for some sign of weakness. The beast inside of me began to growl.
“I am fine,” I repeated.
“Then you will allow Isolde to examine you,” Veyka commanded. I wanted to throttle her. Or fuck her.
She did not flinch from the ire in my eyes, nor from the growing rumble of my beast’s growl.
“We need to know either way,” Veyka insisted.
Fine.
She nodded to Isolde, who lifted her hands to my chest. Veyka stepped in front of us, blocking the white light that emanated from Isolde’s hands so that the terrestrials above us could not see what we were doing. She understood better than most that perceptions were the first half of any battle.
For two agonizing minutes, Isolde moved her hands up over my shoulders, then back down to my abdomen and to my chest once more. I counted every second. Finally, Isolde dropped her hands. The light snuffed out, and Veyka turned back to face us.
The faerie wasted no time with her diagnosis. “You emerged too soon from the healing sleep on Avalon. Had you remained, perhaps the gaps would have closed.”
I had no words.
Veyka said one for both of us. “Gaps?”
Isolde nodded her sharp little chin. “It is not a precise description. But when my light touches your power, it is as if there are gaps in it where the pieces are not fully connected.There are suggestions of congruence; as if it was once whole, and now it is not.”
Gaps in my power. What in the Ancestors’ hell did that mean?
Nothing good, I thought. I did not know if my mate heard it. There was only silence in my mind. And a persistent bead of recognition.
“I had visions of Accolon while I slept,” I said slowly. “He showed me things—the past. The final battlefield of the Great War.” I swallowed. “And he told me that it was time to wake up.”
She needs you now.
Accolon’s final words echoed in my memory. I had not realized who he meant when he said it, all my memories of Veyka stolen from my mind in exchange for healing from the near-fatal blow. Accolon had known it was not enough time, but he’d also known that Veyka needed me at her side.
My mate watched me carefully, her eyes searching my face. But she did not press into my thoughts, giving me space to sort through my reactions.
She waited, expecting me to say more.
Sensing, without meaning to, that I was keeping something from her.
