One strikes the floor, but the other…
Oomph.
Shock freezes me to the spot.
I stare down at the stem protruding from my stomach, sensing the blood trickling from the wound.
She shot the stem into me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Alexei’s horrified shout meets my ears as I collapse.
He catches me as I fall, his big arms a welcome pressure around my back, supporting my head and neck. “Tansy!”
In the distance, Mother Kadris’s quickly blurring figure screams another spell, and Alexei’s upper arm swings in her direction, clearly against his will.
One of the rubies zips out of his hold before he clenches his fist, trying to hold on to the others, supporting me with one arm while his other is stretched beyond endurance.
He clenches his teeth, clutching on to the stones and me at the same time.
“You can’t die here. It’s forbidden.” He forces sound between his teeth. “This can’t be happening…”
I fight the pain and the threatening dark, straining upward to reach for his arm, wrapping my fingers around it.Lock.
His fist closes, holding the rubies tightly, but it’s taking everything left in me to maintain the spell.
Mother Kadris shouts, “She can heal herself if she stops fighting me, Alex. If she doesn’t, nothing will save her. It’s her choice.”
I try to catch his attention. “I can do this. I can hold on.”
“What’s more important to you, Alex?” calls Mother Kadris. “The rubies or her life?”
“I can do it,” I whisper again, my vision blurring, Alexei’s gray eyes fading from my view. “I can…”
His voice reaches me through a wash of pain. “I can’t lose you, Tansy. My light. My sunshine. I don’t need the rubies. I need you.”
My heart is breaking. How can he need me if he doesn’t love me?
I sense the power growing around him, the power he used to drain mine before. It steals into my torso and arms, into my mind, drawing my own magic away, weakening the lock on his arm…
My grip loosens. I try to hold on, but he bends his head, pressing his lips to mine, a terrible distraction.
The lock breaks?—
His fist opens, and the gems fly right into Mother Kadris’s waiting hands.
He deliberately let them go.
She smiles and shuts off the pain spell. The emerald light fades.
Alexei drags me into his chest, closing down his power, whispering to me, “Heal yourself.”
The healing spell rises to my mind, golden words as clear as if they were written in the air in front of me. I give him a nod of permission, screaming as he wrenches the stem from my stomach.
Words quickly slip from my tongue, and my healing spell glows around us, lighting up the worry in his eyes before I sense my wound knitting together.
He drops his head to mine, pressing a kiss to my forehead, but as the pain recedes, I realize…
