The faint blush of a bruise is blotted along his strong jawline. It’s darkened along the tension slashed down his cheek. And around the edges of a shredded line of flesh, his complexion is purpling.
Samick loosens the smallest, slightest breath that’s too close to a sigh, like my existence is back to annoying him. Then he looks away from me. Lifts his chin and his frosty stare starts sweeping the corridor.
His gaze snags on faces for a beat, lingers, then swerves onto the next.
I rethink it.
Less like a right hook, it’s more like he turned his cheek to the hail…
I blink, and I remember the sudden pressure of his cheek against my temple, like he was using his face as a shield to protect mine.
He took the strike of hail that would’ve otherwise clocked me on the face. And it would have done more than left a bruise and a cut.
If hail that can do this much damage to Samick struckmeon the face…
I frown up at him.
And the moment I do, with his profile unmoving and chin still lifted, his gaze slides down to me—and the frost starts to shift.
I watch the hue of his eyes tint with the faintest green, like the inside of an apple.
For a beat, we just stare at each other.
No thoughts settling in my mind, it’s a cloud over my brain—and all I see is him.
Then a sudden shout bounces off the walls.
I startle and throw my wide stare to the general.
But I can’t see her.
Not through the cluster of warriors, standing taller and thicker than her.
All I can make out are a couple of those creepy as fuck horses sagged against the far walls, as if finding a place to catch their breaths.
The general must be close to them.
Sounds like her voice is coming from that direction, a foreign shout I pay no attention to.
I never know what she’s saying.
I look down the stretch of the long, concrete corridor. It’s cold with damp spots staining the walls, metal-barred cells in a row all the way down to the furthest wall.
But my attention snags on Mika.
Halfway down the corridor, near the grey steps that arch up to a doorway, Arwyn holds her in his arms.
She’s limp as a noodle.
Her arms dangle, her head lolled back, mouth agape—and black blood streams through her glacier hair.
The stone of Arwyn’s face matches the ice in his eyes, utterly cold. But I see the worry in other parts of him, in his hands that flex and regrip on Mika’s body, as though he’s nervous and impatient, getting angsty about the general talking for morethan a moment, and his gaze is shifting all around the unit, from face to face.
Searching for the healer.
I don’t doubt it.
Samick’s fingers tighten on my wrist before he’s dragging me down the corridor.
