Page 37

The words echoed through my mind as I sat up and scrubbed my hands down my face. The dreams always showed back up when I was stressed, weaseling their way into my subconscious like the worst creeping mold. I’d managed to go months this time, though, so at least that was something. My slip was soaked with my sweat. I needed a shower and a nice set of sweats so I could eat my feelings with a pint of mint ice cream. Hopefully I hadn’t woken Sloane.

Sloane.

Panic ripped through me in a sudden, all-consuming wave.

Where was Sloane?

Something moved in the darkness, and I screamed again. Who the hell was in my room?

Fire lit in a small jar, and then a face came into view. Bright red hair and long, pointed ears and eyes with laugh lines spreading out from them. I stared hard at the person, but my mind didn’t supply a name. A memory broke through the thick confusion: him speaking with someone else as his hands messed with my broken leg.

And then everything dropped into clarity at once.

I wasn’t in Arizona. Not anywhere near Brendon and his ilk. He couldn’t hurt me anymore. He couldn’t try to get into the apartment when Sloane was at dance classes and I was trying to sleep off a late shift at the bar.

“Not Brendon,” I breathed, needing the words spoken aloud. Once I heard them, my body settled. Not completely, but better than being mid-breakdown.

The nights I dreamed of him were the worst—they lingered with me for days, sometimes longer, as my mind struggled to sort through what was reality and what was memory-turned-twisted-nightmare. The court-appointed therapist had explained it was a natural response to the trauma of the assault, but it didn’t make it any easier to endure.

“No, my name is Reuben,” the man said, pulling a sweater over his bared chest.

There was rushing outside, heavy footfalls.

“Reuben? Is everything okay?” a male voice asked.

“We’re fine,” Reuben responded without hesitation. He picked up the jar of fire, holding it with a long piece of leather that acted almost like a lanyard, and slowly eased one side of the tent’s entrance open, revealing a star-filled pre-dawn sky. A man in silver armor quickly looked at me and then Reuben, his lips pinched with worry.

“We heard a scream,” he explained. “Should we wake the prince?”

Reuben shook his head. “Let him sleep a bit more. She is well.”

The man nodded and then quickly walked away, back toward whatever post he had probably abandoned to check on the noise. Reuben let the flap fall and turned toward me. His eyes were a bright green that were equal parts concerned and curious as he closed the distance between us.

“Do you have pain in your temples or feel ill?”

I eyed the fire, willing more memories from before I’d passed out to rise from the murky depths of my mind, but none came to the surface, only Callum fighting that other man and tying a tourniquet on my leg. The blanket covering me was soft and warm, and I pulled it close to me, using it as a shield of sorts. Reuben dropped into a crouch beside the cot where I lay, his gaze cautious, his movements slow and measured. The fire cast shadows across his face, highlighting a dark tattoo that spread along his throat: a lotus with two crossed, downturned arrows behind it, vines swirling around it filling up his entire throat and disappearing under the neckline of the sweater. It felt familiar, something that held weight and warmth, but I had no idea how a tattoo I’d never seen before could do something like that, so I ignored the feeling.

“Amethyst?” he asked, resting his arms on his thighs, his hands held limp between his knees. “Is your head hurting you right now?”

I swallowed every snide, catty remark I wanted to say out of self-defense even as I clutched the blanket tighter.

“No, it doesn’t,” I said instead with a shaking, hoarse voice.

He nodded. “May I touch you?”

I eyed the hand he held out like it was a snake about to strike.

“Why?” My voice was full of distrust this time.

He didn’t seem put off by it, his patience leagues better than anything I could manage unless my paycheck was hanging in the balance—and even then I had a limit with belligerent drunk men.

“So I can evaluate your head and your leg for what still needs to be repaired,” he explained quietly. “You were very hurt when Callum brought you out of Magefall, and I have been able to mend you only in stages.”

I offered him the hand I didn’t have twisted into the blanket. He gently wrapped his fingers around mine. His eyes closed as a rush of sensation started in my palm and then flooded through my body, finding channels of nerves I hadn’t known existed, settling behind my eyes and ears before rushing elsewhere. I whined as they burned through my knee and sporadically stung in my shin and ankle that I’d broken. Reuben frowned as he withdrew his touch.

“May I examine your head?”

“Okay.”