I didn’t hesitate. I hit the beast with the biggest blast of drowsiness I could muster just as his spiked tail came crashing into Stryker’s chest, tossing him twenty feet into the air.
My heart seized at the sight of Stryker being impaled but my magic had worked because the second it hit the beast, his eyelids drooped and his feet stumbled.
Come on, you bastard. Go down.
Keeping an eye on the drowsy but still very much awake shadow dragon, I ran for Stryker who lay motionless on the ground all the way at the other side of the meadow. I couldn’t see all of him, so I wasn’t sure how injured he was, but the fact that he wasn’t getting to his feet scared me.
Fall asleep.I encouraged the monster and he stumbled again. I pushed even more magic into him, feeling my legs go a little weak with the effort and his body finally crashed to the rocky ground, shaking the earth around me.
Ignoring the fallen beast, I ran faster and leapt over a log, stopping as I took in the sight of Stryker lying in a pool of black blood, unconscious.
No.Shock ripped through me at the sight of the blood, of his unconscious form, and it caused a wave of dizziness to wash over me as I begged my heart not to do this to me, just as I blacked out.
Chapter 20
Icame to and immediately sat up, panic spiking through me as I peered down at Stryker lying face up on the ground next to me. His chest was still rising and falling, but there were open gashes on his stomach that were leaking blood. Black blood. And a lot of it.
A quick check over my shoulder confirmed that the beast was still asleep, so I must have only been out a few minutes.
“Don’t do that to me again!” I beat a fist against my chest, scolding my heart for causing me to faint at such a time as this.
At the sound of my voice, Stryker’s eyelids fluttered open.
“Stryker, can you walk?” I asked, trying to press my hands onto his wounds to stanch the bleeding.
He attempted to sit up but fell backward moaning.
“No. You’re too heavy. Ineedyou to walk. We have to get out of here.”
I lifted one of his arms, sticking my head under it, and then with a grunt I stood, feeling the strain on my back as I pulled him to a standing position. Stryker groaned in pain and I winced, but I didn’t have time to be gentle with him. The shadow dragon was asleep,but since I’d never pushed my magic on an animal before, I wasn’t sure how long the effects would last. It could awaken at any moment, and then we’d be easy prey.
I’d just gotten Stryker back. I wasn’t about to lose him a second time.
We got a few paces and then Stryker’s legs gave out, which made me topple sideways. I barely kept us standing, but by some miracle managed to drag us forward. I was physically exhausted from swimming from the boat to the shore and then the mad dash to the clearing, and mentally drained from the amount of magic I’d forced into the beast. Every step we took felt like it could be our last, but I forced us to keep on going.
It took forever to get Stryker to the shoreline. His eyelids fluttered open and shut and blood flowed out of him like a broken ink pen. His hold on consciousness was tenuous, at best.
I was not equipped for this kind of thing. I had no idea what to do. And even if I did know how to suture and dress his wounds, I had no medical kit. My only hope was that there was something on the boat I could use to save his life.
Laying him on the shore, I swam out to the boat, which had mercifully drifted only a little with the tide. After climbing onboard I tried adjusting the sails and turning the wheel to navigate it closer to shore and then dropped the anchor.
I knew next to nothing about sailing, but I was just using my basic knowledge to try to get through this. My mind was a frantic, jumbled mess. I just needed to get Stryker on the boat and get those wounds closed somehow.
After getting back on shore, with little help from him as he went in and out of consciousness,I heaved him onto my back. I nearly buckled under his weight as I waded out into the water and rolled us both sideways onto the boat deck. Stryker hit the hardwood with a heavy thud and then I spurred into action to try to save his life. My legs shook with fatigue but I pushed myself to the limits.
Running into the little cabin under the boat a mere three feet high, I cracked my head as I tore through storage cabinets until I found some medical supplies. Relief flooded my body at the sight and I rushed back onto the deck. Small droplets of rain began to fall around us and I cursed the sky with shaking hands as I started to wipe away the blood. A sob ripped free from my chest as I saw at least seven deep puncture wounds an inch or more wide.
“No. You can’t leave me,” I whimpered as I began to shove gauze into the holes and then pulled out the needle and stitching thread. I was an expert seamstress, it couldn’t really be that different, could it?
It was. Piercing the skin of a man you’d fallen in love with was horrifying and I forced myself to do it over and over, pulling the gauze out of one hole to stitch it up and then moving to the next.
But there was so much blood. As it mixed with the rain it made the entire boat deck so black that it felt like we were floating in ink. Even in the shallow waters the boat began to thrash as lightning ripped across the sky and thunder shook the air.
Once I had the wounds closed to the best of my ability, I hoisted the anchor, setting us adrift. I knew it wasn’t safe to send our boat out in the storm, but it was more dangerous to stay moored near the island,and therefore the shadow dragon. I believed Stryker when he told me the beast would give chase and knew we had to get away from here.
After setting the boat free, I spotted the discarded crystal heart sitting on the slick deck beside me. The flashes of lightning reflecting across the gem’s smooth surface almost made it look otherworldly. Even though we’d come all this way for the magical jewel, I’d give it back to the shadow beast in a heartbeat if it would take away Stryker’s injuries.
The truth of that thought rocked me to my core because it revealed the depth of my feelings for the Ethereum lord. I might not have known him for very long, but in a short time he’d become more important to me than anything else. More than my own wellbeing and perhaps even more than my kingdom. And that scared me. But I didn’t have the luxury of examining those feelings right now, so I snatched the heart and shoved it into my discarded pack and slung it over my shoulder.
