My heart feels wrung out.
I try to slip away, but I feel Asmo’s eyes on me as I leave. Just like the first day we met, when I felt him watching me as I left the terrace.
Cally’s bedroom door is cracked open, and a soft light from within pulls me closer. I nearly drop to the floor when I peer inside.
She’s awake, propped up on the bed against a stack of pillows. The sickly pallor is gone, replaced by healthy, rosy cheeks. Her hair is no longer matted, damp curls now resting on her shoulders. Her cheekbones are still too sharp, her frame entirely too small.
But she is alive. And awake.
I push the door open. She grins when she sees me, and my knees nearly buckle with relief. I was so scared I’d never see her smile again.
“Hey,” I whisper, terrified that speaking any louder will somehow shatter her.
Her smile turns soft and her eyes turn glassy. “Hey.” The first word I’ve heard her speak in over a month. I swallow the thick lump that’s formed in my throat. Tears well, and I force myself to breathe, to hold myself together.
“Ivan said you were still asleep. I didn’t realize…I didn’t mean to…” I thought he meant she was stillasleep, still on the edge of the death, not just taking a nap. That salve… I inhale a shaky breath. What would have happened if we didn’t have Ivan? What if he had never heard of that salve? What if Asmo and I couldn’t find it?
Cally scoots closer to the wall, freeing a space on the bed. She pats it in silent command.
“How are you feeling?” I ask as I perch on the edge of the bed.
“Better.” She pulls her shirt up, revealing a pink—but healing—wound the size of my thumb. Gone are the red veins spreading from it like sprawling fingers. Gone is the smell of death.
“How did it happen?” I ask.
She lowers her shirt and pulls the blanket up to her chest. “I don’t know. It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out, and I was trying to get to you, and there were these freaky monsters in the crowd, grabbing people and ripping into them. I think I caught a knife, maybe? Thenthey dragged us all to the dungeons, and it just kept getting worse.” She stares at her hands, now wringing in her lap. “What happened that night? I remember you walking down the aisle, Marik laughing…and then it all went to shit.” Her voice is a whisper, as if she’s scared to learn the truth.
I tell her everything—what Marik did, Cora pretending to be Willa, nearly dying from her lightning. Then I tell her about the witches and the Cursed, Elle pretending to be me. She stares at me in mute horror the whole time.
“This is…” she trails off, raking a hand through her damp curls.
“Fucked?” I offer.
“Yeah. That’s a good word for it.” She reaches behind her and winces as she tries to readjust the pillows.
“Here. Let me do it.” I grab another pillow from the end of the bed and place it behind her. “Better?”
She settles back against the stack and nods. “Thanks.”
I sit back at the foot of the bed and gesture toward her stomach. “Does it still hurt?”
She frowns. “Yeah, but it’s better than it was. Thank you for getting that salve, by the way. Ivan told me what happened when you went. You shouldn’t have gone. It was way too risky.”
I wave my hand in dismissal. She shouldn’t be thanking me. She should be cursing me out, screaming at me for allowing her to be thrown into a dungeon, for almost getting her killed. “It was my fault you were down there anyway,” I grumble.
She scoffs. “It was your fault you were tricked by a thousand-year-old witch and her boy toy? Please, Mae.” She nudges me with her foot. “Hey, I mean it. Thank you. You saved me.”
But I didn’t, did I? I’m the reason she was sent to the dungeons, and Asmo was the one who got her out. I know a part of me will always blame myself for her being there in the first place. My shoulders slump as regret returns.
“Where were you? Last night?” she asks. A subject change, for which I am immeasurably grateful for, even if the question isn’t exactly what I want to talk about.
Getting the hope beat out of me with a bat named Torben. Then Asmoand I…
My cheeks warm, and I stare down at my hands. “We left Ursidae and got stuck in Canis for the night because of some town-wide curfew.” If Cally notices my blush, she doesn’t say anything.
I fill her in on the visit to the other two courts, leaving out the part about my night with Asmo. It doesn’t feel right to share. Not yet at least. Not until I know what Asmo and I are doing.
“Well. Shit,” Cally says after I tell her about Torben She stares past me, gaze fixed on the empty wall. “What the hell do we do now?”
