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“Promise me, Ephraim. You’ll make sure he never gets his hands on them, uses them to break the gates.”

Mama’s voice was so faint now, it made me so scared. I looked at her, trying to understand what was happening.

“I promise, Rina.”

“I love…” Mama didn’t finish the sentence.

The man screamed, the sound complete devastation that made my chest hurt and my eyes burn. Sloane stirred beside me, but she didn’t make a sound. He set Mama down so gently, as gently as he did when putting us to bed at night. His hands shook as he swept them through Mama’s hair, pulling it away from the stain on her shirt and the blood on her face. His hands glowed after a moment, almost as bright as the blinding light earlier.

“May Oltia hold you,” he whispered, tears in his voice.

Then the man’s arms were around me, pulling me and Sloane both into his chest, each of us on one hip the way he liked to carry us when we got too tired while walking back from town. The blood was gone from his arms, from his hands. Sloane was still asleep, that bruise even darker than before. Mama didn’t move, her eyes closed like she was sleeping.

“Papa?” I asked.

He pressed his lips into my temple again. They were trembling.

“Close your eyes, cárias,” he murmured. His voice trembled, too, like he was crying again. “Hold onto me tight, okay? Don’t let go, and don’t watch.”

I clung to his neck, burying my face in his shoulder. He started singing again, that song I loved so much, even as he walked. I looked up once, just long enough to see our little house nestled in the trees disappear as Papa’s magic swirled around us, stronger than he’d ever used it before.

39

CALLUM

Amethyst’s sharp cry pulled me from sleep as effectively as a fish pulled from the water. I lit the oil lamp with a careless flick of my magic while trying to figure out what was wrong. She whimpered again, and the sound cut straight through me. My heart beat in my ears, loud enough to drown out any noise from outside the room.

“Amethyst?”

I carefully rolled toward her, propping myself on an elbow.

She sat staring at the windows, her chest heaving, the blanket pooled around her waist. The shirt of mine she’d worn to bed had fallen off one shoulder, revealing her arm down to her elbow. I soaked in her skin, looking for what caused her distress, but there was no blood, no signs of any kind of pain. I carefully adjusted it back into place and then circled her wrist.

She didn’t respond to the touch at all. With a frown, I sat up fully. Was she having one of those nightmares of her assaults? She hadn’t had one in nearly a week, only a few days after arriving in Starguard.

“Amethyst, you’re safe,” I murmured.

She finally turned toward me. Her eyes were wide and haunted, nearly unseeing. A tear fell from her lashes and tracked down her cheek. Cursing myself already for touching her when she couldn’t consent, I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her into my chest. Magic brushed along my skin like a hot branding iron, but I didn’t allow myself to tense. She palmed my stomach, her nails digging into my skin even through my shirt.

“You’re not with him. You’re not there,” I said. “You’re here, with me, in Starguard.”

Her magic lashed out again, and I grunted as the fire jar she kept on her nightstand tumbled to the floor. The glass shattered on impact. Amethyst flinched in my hold.

“You’re not there. It’s not real.” I repeated the words over and over again in as gentle a voice I could manage as my scent wrapped around us both. “You’re with me, not with him. With me, Sterre.”

Slowly, her magic pulled away from me like the tide. I expected her to push me away, put that space between us she’d maintained since the beginning. Instead, she sucked in a ragged, stuttering breath, held it for several long moments, and then released it. Her body sagged into me as she did, like she was a puppet whose strings had been cut.

“Sterre?” I twisted a strand of her hair around my finger.

She only snuggled deeper into me, practically climbing into my lap. I tried not to enjoy it, tried not to savor every point of contact, knowing she was driven by fear and not desire. I’d rather have her hesitant brushes of fingers and knees than this full body contact stemming from an instinctual need for an alpha to calm her down.

“It wasn’t the assault.” She pressed the words into my shoulder.

I couldn’t help but tense, her hair falling from my light grip. She’d not said anything about other nightmares that plagued her. What else haunted her? I swallowed a growl that tried to rise at the question.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

There was a long silence only broken by my steady breaths and her jagged ones. When she nodded, I held her closer to me.