My heart rate picks up as the sound of people chattering just outside of the door reaches us, and I pull the knife from my pocket, slashing deep into my palm. On hands and knees, I start painting a line outside of the plant life, mirroring the charred ring we’re used to seeing. Each time the blood starts to slow, I open a new gash, near frantic now. The small blooms suck up the offering like they’re dying of thirst, living sponges that keep taking more and more, everything that I have.
When I’m finally done, I’m a shaky mess, but still, I mirror my pose of when I created it, on hands and knees like a desperate prayer, willing to bleed myself dry to get us out of here. Shutting my eyes despite the door starting to crack open, someone ramming their shoulder into it, I push.
Everything I have left, every drop of dwindling energy that I’ve managed to cling to, I pour into the ground. I’m not even aware I’m screaming until my voice cracks, blind to everything happening around me. There’s a lurching in my stomach, and if I hadn't already puked my guts out, I would have lost the battle now. My flesh burns, far worse than when we were being branded. Every nerve ending feels like it’s being split apart, one by one, as my skin strains to hold itself together, like my blood wasn’t enough and the ring wants to stake a claim on my entire being.
I thought I’d known agony before, but it was nothing compared to this. There’s a popping sensation in my head, and suddenly, it doesn’t hurt anymore. I can’t feel a single thing, and when I open my eyes, it’s pitch black.
“Dorian?”
There’s a heavy beat of silence as fear starts to settle in as he doesn’t reply and it becomes clear that I’m completely alone.
Chapter 14
Dorian
––––––––
Iturn to the sideand vomit as I start to get feeling back into my body, and not a single part of it is pleasant. It was like I was being split apart and all of the jagged shards were jammed back together without rhyme or reason, leaving pieces of me scattered behind. Nothing at all like the rings we’ve been using.
“Atlas?”
He doesn’t respond, and I shake my head in a bid to clear it, attempting to get stock of our surroundings though it feels like I just woke up from a decade long nap. When I start to get my wits about me, the first thing I’m aware of is that there’s no added weight, that my arms are empty.
It helps snap a bit more sense into me, whipping my head to the side, and then promptly regretting it. Clutching my temples with a groan, I try again, slower this time and sighing in relief when Cambria comes into view. Atlas and Lucien though, are nowhere to be seen.
“Shit.” Glancing around, it’s clear we’re in some forest on the light court side. “I wonder if it’s like, opposite sides of the world, or some magical barrier between courts,” I muse aloud, looking up at the blended, rich colors of sunset. Naturally, she doesn’t answer, though it’s not like she’d even know in the first place.
She’s stopped bleeding profusely, so whatever searing agony we went through in that ring, at least it cauterized our wounds, lapping up our blood like an offering for passage. That’s not to say either of us are miraculously healed; it’s just less likely we’re going to bleed out now, especially since I was already in far better shape.
Gently, I brush the hair back from her face. Bruises have already started to form, and her breathing is shallow. Beneath the blood, her stomach is a mess of burns, from a lighter I’d guess, and massive, deep gashes. Her back and arms aren’t much better, and the bullet hole is clear through to the other side of her thigh, but her shorts are still in one piece, thank god.
Though I don’t feel much like singing anyone’s praises for that small mercy with the state she’s in. Her normally silken hair is matted with blood and sweat, and she’s so goddamn pale.
But she’s still alive, and I intend to keep her that way.
Though my back is a tattered mess from the whip and I feel like I could sleep for the next year, I haul her off the ground, adjusting my grip so I don’t aggravate some of the worst wounds. She doesn’t so much as whimper, let alone flinch.
