by Skye Horn
“I swear to you. I would never have allowed anyone to hurt him or you like this. My visions are never clear, you know that. I just had this feeling I needed to find you and that’s when I ran into Haven.”
She searched his eyes, seeing only sincerity, and swallowed down her arguments with shame, but Caden did not look hurt by her comment. Instead, he said, “What can I do?”
“We’re headed to the gardens,” Adrian said.
“I can heal him,” Thea mumbled, and all three of them stared at her in shock. She didn’t wait for a reaction. She knew how crazy it sounded. Kieran was practically dead, but she had no other choice. She couldn’t let him die. She couldn’t live in a world without him in it. Not after everything they’d been through. Their child needed a father. She needed him even if it meant he never loved her again.
Without waiting for their questions, she headed for the gardens more quickly, knowing they would follow.
It was only a few more winding corridors before they arrived, and Thea was thankful the castle was nearly empty. She’d forgotten about the worries Morrigan and the Blackmire soldiers’ absence had caused her. Now all that mattered was making sure Kieran didn’t die.
“Put him here,” she said when they reached the quadrant of the garden that Thea had come to know well. This was where Morrigan had been teaching her to use nature to balance her magic. It was full of life that should never have existed in this winter-struck kingdom, and yet, it did exist. Someone had used magic to keep it alive, and Thea intended to use that same magic to heal Kieran now.
At least she hoped that was what she was going to do.
As instructed, Haven and Adrian laid Kieran’s body onto the path beside the biggest patch of flowers. There were various types, but Thea didn’t have time to think about which ones might work best. Instead, she started pulling handfuls from the ground and sprinkling them all over Kieran’s body.
“Help me,” she said, and watched as her confused friends did the same.
Blood soaked into the flower petals, turning the whitest of the flowers into crimson red. She tried to hold herself together as she stared at the open wounds in the light, seeing just how deeply they cut.
“Who did this to you?” she whispered, kneeling beside him and placing her hands on his ripped-open chest. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she stared at his sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes. She fought the urge to look away, because despite how deathly he appeared, she could feel his faint heartbeat beneath her palms.
“Are you sure you can do this?” Haven whispered. Thea didn’t know when she’d knelt beside her, but her voice grounded her back into reality.
She nodded her head, even though she wasn’t sure she could at all.
“What about the baby?” Adrian said, kneeling on the other side of Kieran.
Thea lowered her eyes to Kieran’s closed lids. His lashes flickered slightly, but his eyes did not open.
“I can do it,” Thea said, unsure if she was trying to convince herself or the rest of them.
She closed her eyes, reaching out to feel Kieran’s life source beneath her palms in the same way that she would reach for the flowers. Slowly, she let the magic trickle to each stem and then each petal that touched his body, feeling the warmth of their life.
I can do this.
She needed to stay in control. She’d only ever done this on minor injuries and with a single flower. The idea of using all of these life sources to keep Kieran alive was crazy, but it was all she had.
Losing him wasn’t an option.
Command it! Morrigan’s instructions ran through her mind on a loop. If Thea didn’t command the magic, she could end up killing Kieran and hurting her friends. They’d all seen her lose control before, but this?
Her body was already trembling as the first couple of flowers withered away. Thea didn’t need to open her eyes to know it was working. She heard Haven gasp from beside her and felt Kieran’s body jerk in response.
Warm tears flooded Thea’s cheeks and fell onto her trembling hands as she leaned over Kieran’s body. She laid her head against his bloodied chest, listening for his heartbeat, but it still sounded too slow. His breaths were still too shallow.
“You promised me,” she reminded him, hoping somewhere inside he could hear her and recognize her voice, even if he didn’t remember the weight of the promise he’d made.
Thea let out a scream of agony when she reached for the magic within another flower and it rebelled against her. It pulled against her for control, searing through her veins like ice against fire. Her lungs burned for air and she could see Caden staring at her with eyes so full of fear that she had to look away. Adrian and Haven were kneeling beside her as her body convulsed over Kieran’s, fighting to regain control.
“No!” she screamed at the magic, lashing out with every instinct inside her to grab onto the raw power. She felt as if her skin were being peeled back layer by layer, but she pushed forward, taking another flower in her hand and crushing it over the largest wound on Kieran’s chest. If she could stop the bleeding there, maybe he would survive this. Even if she couldn’t heal him wholly, she needed to keep him from dying.
“Thea!” Haven and Adrian were screaming, but they sounded far away. Her vision blurred into flashes of red, and the world around her faded, but Kieran’s slow-beating heart remained a steady constant beneath her hands. She forced the magic she’d pulled from the flower down into his body and felt the skin of his chest knitting itself together beneath her touch.
“It’s working,” she sobbed through the pain in her own body, feeling Kieran gasp out as if he needed more oxygen. He trembled under her hands but remained unconscious.
“You’re using too much,” Adrian whispered against her ear.
When had he gotten so close? She wanted to push him away and tell him she could handle this, but suddenly his hands were on hers, covering them protectively as he said, “Use me.”
At first, Thea was confused. She felt Haven place a hand on her shoulder and frowned as her friend said, “And me.”
Caden was next, kneeling in front of her. She could just barely see him through her tears. Her teeth chattered furiously as if all the heat had been sucked out of her body. The darkness that swelled in and around her seemed endless.
“And me,” Caden said, grasping Thea’s forearms.
After a moment, she understood what they meant and shook her head.
“Can’t—” she gasped. “Too much.”
She couldn’t put the words into complete sentences but she knew that if she drew the energy from any of them she risked hurting someone other than herself, and she couldn’t do that.
“Thea, we are a team,” Haven said. Adrian and Caden nodded their agreement. “We know you can do this. We want to help you.”
At that, Thea’s eyes fluttered closed. Could she take energy from another being? Sure, she’d sucked energy out of the flowers, but to take energy from another being without hurting them seemed unlikely.
“Trust us,” Adrian said, and his voice calmed her nerves. They were trying to protect her and her baby. They were trying to help her save Kieran.
She took a deep breath that completely filled her lungs and then, exhaling slowly, she reached out for their magic. She felt Adrian’s first. His magic was buried deep, but as soon as she touched it, it roared to life, wild—untamed. It took everything in her not to flee from the raw power he kept hidden beneath the surface. It was so much like her own that she wondered how he kept it bottled so tight.
I wonder if he knows his element is fire, she thought, feeling the intensity of the flames within him.
Haven’s magic came next. It was brighter than anything she’d ever experienced before. It flowed like a river, freely, within her and came to Thea without hesitation or malice.
When it came to Caden, the magic was timid—afraid. He didn’t know what he was capable of yet. He was untrained in how to manage the power that he’d been born with, but even that magic
, Thea was able to draw from.
She made sure to take as little as possible, focusing back on Kieran. She let her own magic mix in with the other three, using that power to draw from the flowers on Kieran’s body and fight the power-hungry darkness within her. Her friends trembled, trying to keep control.
Thea had just begun to think it was working when she gasped out in pain again and threw all three of their hands away from herself.
It was too much.
Her magic wanted theirs for its own. Morrigan’s curse was power-hungry and would destroy anything that stood in its path, including Thea and her friends. She whimpered, sinking to the ground beside Kieran, as her energy supply faded away.
She heard her friends calling out to her, trying to shake her back to consciousness, but there was nothing she could do now. She’d given too much, but all that mattered now was that she hadn’t hurt them—that her magic hadn’t sucked them dry.
Her eyelids fluttered closed, and just before the world faded into complete darkness she heard Kieran’s heartbeat quicken.
Chapter 26
His entire world was on fire. Searing agony blazed through the muscles of his back like someone was dragging spears of heated steal through his skin. His shredded wings had lost feeling completely before he blacked out from the pain, but the memory of their exposed membranes twisting at odd angles caused his stomach to flip. Kieran was dying—perhaps even already dead.
Ainé. He prayed to her as loudly as he could, screaming to the void for her rescue, but there was no response. The Goddess did not swoop in to save him as Morrigan had done for Thea. She did not answer his plea for relief from the pain he suffered. She had abandoned him.
His blood boiled with anger and regret.
His mind was a swirl of visions and memories, but he could not tell the difference between what had really happened and what was fantasy. His mother was in nearly every image. Her lips were pulled up into a knowing smile that made him want to hide his face. She could see right through him.
“Don’t let go,” she told him, her face blurring as his world faded again. Another onslaught of pain pushed him beneath the darkness, but he held onto his mother’s words like a lifeline to the living.
How could he hold on after everything he’d done? And what had it been for if his Goddess had abandoned him?
“Remember who you are, Kieran.” His father’s voice was a low rumble in the darkness, but there was no face to put it to.
“You both left me!” Kieran screamed to the void, throat tightening as he choked on his own blood.
Abandoned. He’d been abandoned by his parents, by Ainé—he had abandoned Ethel. He was meant to be her protector.
I deserve this.
Kieran let the darkness swallow him, sinking into the abyss where the pain could abandon him too, but something tugged at him. Something coaxed him away from the peaceful slumber he longed so deeply for. He fought it at first, shaking away the tendrils of light that penetrated his darkness. He cursed it and told it to leave him be and let him die.
But then her voice broke through.
“You promised me,” she said, as if she were standing right next to him. A warmth spread through his chilling body and he screamed as light penetrated his darkness. He cowered, hiding from the magic, but playing her words again and again.
He’d broken so many promises; what would one more cost him? He deserved this death—even wanted it. But the magic was pulling him forth and he was losing the will to fight it.
Promised. He’d promised to return to Ainé also. He’d made an oath. But she’d abandoned him.
His entire world felt torn in two.
How could he keep doing this?
He heard Thea’s call, but how could she save him now from the ruins of his own soul?
As if in a dream, he saw her face. Her gray eyes had turned a liquid silver and she reached a hand out to him, beckoning him forward. He wanted to tell her no. To scream at her to give up on him. But like the moon calls to the ocean’s tide, his hand found hers and the darkness fell away.
When Kieran opened his eyes, the world was bright again. He blinked up at the cloudless blue sky, trying to hold on to remnants of the dream—or rather nightmare—he’d just experienced. His mother and father had been there, telling him to hold on just a little longer. Thea had been there, reaching out for him to take her hand.
Where had Ainé been, though? Why hadn’t she come to his aid?
Kieran shifted under the weight of someone’s body, watching as dead flowers fell away. As he came to his senses, the sound of heavy pants reached his ears. Three figures were hunched over their knees, breathing heavily. The body on top of his own was hardly breathing at all. Her red hair fell across his blood-crusted chest, sticking to the fresher wounds. Her cheek was icy against his skin and her eyes were closed.
“Thea,” he choked out, pushing past the dry ache in his throat. He reached a hand up to rest against her hair.
“Don’t touch her!” one of the hunched over figures growled.
Adrian.
But Kieran didn’t listen.
Instead, he pushed himself up, cradling Thea in his arms. She seemed tiny and fragile, but her body was limp.
Kieran could hardly hold her, even as a bit of strength returned to him. He brushed away the silken hair from her face until he could see her small freckled nose and sharpened jaw. His entire body shook beneath the pain of moving, but he fought through it.
“Kieran,” Haven said slowly, crawling to sit beside him. “I need to take her.”
He shook his head and was surprised to feel tears streaming down his cheeks, but he could not talk.
“She’s hardly breathing,” came another voice—the crown prince.
Adrian reached to take Thea from Kieran, but he only held on tighter, growling in warning at the other man’s hands. He had no energy to fight, but that appeared to be an inevitable response. He wasn’t sure what Thea had done, but her voice had brought him back. He couldn’t let her go now. He’d promised, and she’d been the only one to come save him from the pain—even after everything he’d done to her, after everything he’d said.
“Kieran, please.” Adrian’s voice no longer held any threat. Instead, he stared at Kieran with wide, fearful eyes that told him everything he needed to know about how this man felt about Thea. After all, hadn’t he had a similar look in his own eyes before?
Slowly, Kieran nodded his head and let Adrian take Thea’s body from him. His hands were still bound, but he stretched his aching legs, feeling only the remnants of pain within his core. Adrian quickly scooped Thea up into his arms, struggling beneath his own exhaustion.
“Take her to my room,” Caden ordered, and Adrian nodded before disappearing down the path with Thea’s limp body cradled like a child.
“The baby,” Kieran said quietly, watching until they were gone. “Is she—”
“She knew what she was risking,” Haven said quietly, and something shattered inside him.
“Ainé didn’t come,” he murmured, shifting his gaze to his bound hands.
“Are you surprised?” Haven asked, venom in her tone that made Kieran’s eyes retreat to the ground. Confusion swept over him.
Why would Ainé leave him to die while Thea risked her life to save him?
“Who did this to you, Kieran?” Caden asked. “Who left you to die like that?”
Kieran’s face hardened at the memory. They’d come while he was sleeping, demanding information from him that he had refused to give.
“The king and two of his men,” Kieran said, eyes narrowing on Caden. “Your father.”
“But why? Morrigan would be furious. The guards were under strict orders to keep you alive!”
Caden stood and began pacing. His eyes were blazing with fury and confusion, but it was Haven who spoke next. Her voice was calm as she calculated the information Kieran was giving them. He felt exhausted and wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep right in
the middle of this garden. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his skin for the first time in weeks and even though snow still coated the ground, his body felt as if it wouldn’t hold out much longer.
“The king isn’t stupid enough to act on his own against Morrigan’s wishes. He knows she is his best chance at surviving this war in one piece. But if Morrigan wanted Thea to believe someone else had killed Kieran, who better than the man who hates her most?”
“That still makes no sense, though. We’ve been questioning Kieran for weeks. What could they possibly get out of beating him to death?”
“Information,” Haven guessed, meeting Kieran’s gaze.
He nodded his head.
“Which is exactly why she isn’t in the castle anymore.” Haven stood, pulling Kieran to his feet even though he wanted nothing more than to stay on the ground. He groaned as she pushed herself beneath his shoulder. Although most of his wounds had been healed, he was still in bad shape. He didn’t think he’d be able to make it back to the castle without their help. “We need to get somewhere more secure. Then you’re going to tell us exactly what you told them.”
Adrian sat on the bed beside Thea, wiping blood from her face and hair with a warm cloth. The stillness of her body scared him, but he heard the steady beat of her heart when he placed his ear to her chest and felt it rise in slow breaths. Whatever magic she’d used had exhausted all of them, but her more than the rest. She hadn’t been able to hold herself up any longer, and then Kieran had woken up, as if she’d given him yet another piece of herself to keep him alive.
The thought angered Adrian more than he wanted to admit. He hated how desperate Thea was to save a man who was so far past saving. And yet, hadn’t he seen the protective glint in Kieran’s eyes when he’d held Thea? Could that only be for their child, or had she somehow reached a part of him that remembered what she’d meant to him? Adrian shook the thought away. Selfishly, he didn’t want Kieran to remember.
