Something just feels off. Not only about the dagger …
But the searing throb in my thigh.
I stare down at the dirty strip of fabric ripped from my tunic. I’ve wrapped it around my leg as tightly as I can, but already, blood has seeped into it. I need to go. I need to move. Somehow. But I’m hot all over—sweat drenching my clothing. Each shiver makes my leg hurt even more, my vision filling with white spots that float in the cave.
How in hells did I get here?
My eyes wander to my hand, a black stone ring on my finger.
A flash of bright green eyes fills my memories. A severely burned face and sadistic sneer. I remember. She was taking me somewhere—to a healer? But for some reason, I knew I needed to get away from her.
“What happened to your face?” I’d asked. Just to see how she would respond. Somehow, I don’t remember if she answered, but I do remember glowing yellow eyes and fire erupting from another woman’s hands. My captor had been burned. Suits her right, probably.
I groan through my teeth as I somehow manage to push myself to my feet. Staring at the ring again, I force myself to think. This ring … it had been hers. I snapped her wrist to get it. And I’d ended up here. I slip it off my finger and into my pocket.
My first step sends lightning through my thigh. “Fuck,” I grit out. I take a few more steps, teetering like a newborn foal.
Newborn foal legs.
An image slams into me. Curly hair and compassionate brown eyes. Warmth pours into my chest. It isn’t feverish but … my heart leaps. A feeling not too unpleasant until it sinks with inexplicable sadness. I try to hold on to the image, to this breathtakingly beautiful face, but it drifts into the back of my mind like a distant memory.
I’m shaking all over as I leave the cave and step into the night with the dagger tucked firmly into my trouser pocket. At this point, I’d probably laugh if it sliced into my leg. But I want to live.
For whatever reason. I need to keep breathing. I need to keep walking.
My ankle gives way as I step into a particularly uneven part of the forest ground. I go down hard, disparaging laughter ripping from my throat as I lie there in the mud. I shift and pain ripples through my ankle, through my bloody thigh again. I scoot backagainst a tree, leaning my head back before I’m swept into a daze.
Magnificent, rolling black hills stretch out before me, the sun rising from the ocean in the distance. I reach my hand out, basking in the feel of the warm rays against my skin. No pain lingers. There are no Zenith members to taunt me, no Royal Brigade to answer to, no wars to fight, no fear …
Then I feel her shadows—dark but never frightening. Cool but never frigid. Like refuge from the burning rays of the sun. Like shelter from the striking raindrops of a storm. Her soothing voice is a blanket around me. “Tiernan…”
I reach out, but there’s nothing there.
“Keep fighting,” the voice says. “Keep fighting for me. Be brave. Don’t break.”
My chest swells painfully. Those words sound familiar. I shield my eyes against the blinding sun and look around, blinking a couple of times. There is nothing else around me. Nothing to ground myself in. Nothing that feels like home.
Keep fighting for her.
Too bad I don’t know who she is.
Pain brings me out of my trance, bright spots obscuring my vision as soon as my eyes fly open. Soft hands press myshoulders down as I try to rise. “Don’t move. Relax,” says the woman.
I swear I’m on fire.
Gods … I struggle to breathe, but even that hurts. I blink, expecting brown eyes and the faintest dusting of freckles to be looking back at me.
Instead, there’s a pale face, a white hood drawn over a mess of platinum blond hair. “I’m so sorry to startle you,” the woman says. Her eyes are like pools of translucent blue. “You’re severely injured.”
A flash of pain fills my mind along with a taloned hand slamming a dagger into my thigh. A second before I’d ended up at the cave … and then somehow here.
“Sweetheart, can you hear me?” says the woman. “Keep listening to my voice. Try to stay awake.”
I blink up at her, my eyes blurry.
“Can you tell me who you are?”
I remember the voice from the dream. She’d called me something. “Tiernan,” I say.
