My head thunks back down, my battered body going limp enough to meld with the floor. I have only two more return journeys left. Two more chances to reach the hourglass.
But after what just happened, I know they won’t be nearly enough.
Chapter 10
I’m sitting at my window an hour later, studying the hourglass outside and probing at my injury, when the door flies open.
My head jerks around. Amriel bursts into the room, his pale hair flying, his brows pulled low over burning eyes. “What’re you doing back already? Don’t tell me you used the?—”
He pulls up short. Stares at my ravaged leg. Stares at my leg some more.
Heat paints my cheeks, and I push my skirts down to shield my skin from view. My injury isn’t as severe as I first suspected, and I’ve mostly cleaned it up with water from the bathtub, but still, itstings. Just…not as much as the fact that the fae king has now seen more of my body than any other man in existence.
“You’re bleeding,” he growls.
Accusation laces his tone, making me bristle. Ishanna’s blood, he can’t be serious, can he? Does he truly thinkI’mat fault? Because he just tore my life to pieces. If not for him, I’d be back in Aethrolia right now. I’d have spent my day as a dedicant, instead of running for my life in a creepy, magical labyrinth.
I hobble to my feet, my body angled to hide the ruined half of my skirts. “Of course I’m bleeding. That’s what happens when you getkidnapped, tossed into a cursed forest that only goes in circles, and chased by a rabid goblin.” I hurl the words with force, each one like a dart aimed at Amriel’s vital organs. If he even has any.
Doubtful. If I could dig beneath that golden skin, I bet I’d find nothing. Just a cold, empty hollow where a soul used to be.
His jaw grinds, his entire body tensing. “My Shadow did that?”
A scoff rises in my throat. “Of course. What else would it have been?”
“Any number of things, really,” he snaps, but his words lack their usual bite. If I didn’t know better, I’d say blood has rushed to his ears, staining their pointed tips crimson. “Let me see your wound,” he demands.
“What? No. Absolutely not.”
He takes a threatening step, then stops, as if rethinking that decision. “I need to see how bad it is. How much time you’ll need to heal.”
I reflexively back away, one hand splayed to keep him at a distance. “Just leave me alone. It’s not that deep. I can take care of it myself, unless one of your fancy magic-machines is for healing people.”
He jerks his head in the negative. “We don’t have healing magic. It’s one of the things we haven’t been able to engineer yet. Nowlet me see your wound.”
A hiss jets from between my teeth. “No.”
That angers him enough that he comes storming toward me. “Yes.”
I scurry away, but my weak attempt at escape is no match for his ground-eating strides. He reaches me in moments, maneuvering me toward the bed, setting me on the edge. When he kneels, I push at my skirts with balled fists, trying to keep my hems on the floor. But Amriel cages my wrists with ease, sweeping them aside with one hand, peeling back my shredded dress with the other. His gaze paints a hot line up my leg before coming to rest on the claw marks scored into my thigh.
I twist against his grip, but he doesn’t let go. He doesn’t even seem to notice, fixated as he is on my injury.
“It’ll scar,” he says. “But it’ll heal.”
“Iknow,” I hiss. “I told you that already, so will you let go of me? Why do you even care, anyway?”
“I don’t,” he snaps, but instead of lowering my skirts, he leans in toscrutinize my leg. His free hand grazes my calf, his fingers sliding upward, landing somewhere in the vicinity of my torn flesh.
Only…I can’t tell where that is anymore, because the pain has faded, swept away by the avalanche of sensation coursing through me.
A whimper works its way up my throat. No one has ever touched me in a place this private, this hidden. Nor has molten heat ever swelled in my core this way. The feeling inside me is so foreign that it can only be the mate bond, sizzling to life. Its power calls to me, spinning a seductive lullaby, but…no. No, this is wrong. This is sin.
I try to pull back, but my body refuses to listen. I settle for clenching my jaw and thinking of home—of the vows I’ll someday take, the prayers I’ll someday say, the magic I’ll finally earn. Until Amriel’s fingers flex, scattering the thoughts like smoke.
Ishanna, then. I list her titles desperately. Keeper of virtue. Goddess of the crescent moon. Guardian of Aethrolia…
But I soon run out of honorifics. Logic fizzles and dies, leaving me with nothing to shield me from the feel of Amriel’s palm pressed to my thigh.
