“Rakshasa,” Thorne grumbled and made it onto his feet.
Her attention shot back to him. He stumbled forwards, swaying and meandering all over the place.
“Thorne?” Sable rushed after him as he closed in on Fargus. She had no clue what this rakshasa thing was but knew it must be bad and had something to do with Thorne’s commander. She looked around her at the hunters and pointed at Fargus. “Contain him.”
Fargus smiled and disappeared in a blinding flash of brilliant white light.
“No!” Thorne growled and wavered. What was wrong with him? “Everyone in… danger. Must go… back.”
“Thorne?” Sable reached him as he wobbled and grabbed his arm, hoping to steady him. He collapsed, taking her down with him, landing on his back and her left leg.
She looked down at him.
Her world shattered.
A huge knife stuck out of the centre of his chest.
“Thorne!” Sable shook him but he didn’t respond. His body shifted, returning to its normal size, and his wings shrank into his back. Her fingers danced over his throat, seeking his pulse. It was thready and weak against their tips and her heart beat timidly in response.
“What happened?” The familiar male voice sent a bolt of hope rushing into her heart and she looked up at Bleu.
“I thought you left.”
“I tried,” Bleu said and crouched beside her. He ran his purple gaze over Thorne, his black eyebrows slowly knitting. “This is not good. We will have to remove it.”
Sable nodded dumbly and stared at the blade protruding from Thorne’s chest. It was off centre and she prayed that meant it had missed his heart, otherwise Bleu removing it could do more damage than good.
Bleu wrapped his right hand around the hilt of the short blade and pressed his other against Thorne’s chest. He leaned over Thorne, pushing his weight onto his chest, and frowned.
“Wait,” Sable blurted and Bleu halted and looked up at her. “What if… won’t this make it worse?”
Bleu shook his head. “Demons have extremely quick healing abilities and the blade is too low to have struck his heart directly. Thorne will heal any nick in the organ before it can bleed into his chest. My fear is that the blade is poisoned, so the entry point mattered little.”
That didn’t really reassure her as she had hoped it would. She stared down at the dagger, heart thumping and hands shaking, her emotions threatening to overwhelm her as tears began to line her eyes. Warmth soaked into her black t-shirt and her combat trousers where Thorne rested against her, sticking the material to her skin, the smell of his blood a stomach-turning tang in the air.
“Sable,” Bleu whispered, recapturing her focus with the softness of his voice. She raised her eyes back to his, her eyebrows furrowing as she caught the warmth in his. “I swear… Thorne has a better chance if we remove the blade and tend to him. If we leave it in and it is coated in toxin, it will kill him. Believe me when I tell you that the blade has not punctured his heart. I have fought demons for four thousand years. I know where to aim to deal a deadly blow to that organ.”
She didn’t doubt that, and it reassured her enough that she nodded, silently asking him to go ahead and remove the blade while she held Thorne in her arms.
She sifted her fingers through Thorne’s hair and stroked his cheek, hoping to soothe him. Bleu pulled the short blade from Thorne’s chest and the wet sucking noise it made turned her stomach.
She caressed Thorne’s brow, silently willing him to be strong and to come back to her. It was just a little knife in the chest. He could recover from that. He would recover from it.
Bleu sniffed the blade. “Poisoned. A potent one too.”
Sable stared blankly at him, her mind shutting down in reaction to his announcement. She fought the weakness surging through her and focused on Bleu.
His earlier words ran through her mind and she frowned at him as a cold feeling stole through her. “What do you mean… you tried to leave?”
Bleu’s already grim expression worsened. “I tried. I used the same pathway as we always have to enter the Third Realm. I was bounced back.”
Sable’s feeling worsened, weighing her insides down and chilling her flesh. “What the hell does that mean?”
Bleu held her gaze.
“Someone has blocked the path to the Third Realm.”
Sable shivered and looked down at Thorne as it hit her hard.
That rakshasa thing had played them all and had won, getting what it wanted.
It had separated the king from his kingdom.
CHAPTER 18
Sable sat at the edge of her double bed, her left hand holding a cold compress to Thorne’s brow and her gaze riveted on him. The apartment was quiet around her. Too quiet. The silence gave her no respite from her dark and painful thoughts.
Thorne’s bare chest gently rose and fell in time with his slow breaths, his tawny skin glistening with sweat that beaded in the valleys between his muscles.
Bleu had helped her bring Thorne to her apartment and had settled him on the bed for her, and had then left to attempt to enter the Third Realm again. He had tried several times over the two days since then, all without success. He had visited the elf kingdom too and had informed his council of the problem, and they had dispatched another legion of their army. This one had teleported to the edge of the Third Realm in one of the other demon kingdoms and had attempted to enter from there.
They had failed.
For now, they couldn’t contact Loren or Olivia, or anyone within the Third Realm. They were cut off and Sable had fought enough battles to know that this was the opportunity the Fifth Realm had been waiting for.
Sable’s gaze drifted lower, over the taut planes of Thorne’s handsome face, down his neck to his chest. The wound in the centre of it was red and angry, the skin raised around it. It was healing though, just as his other wounds were. She had gone so far as to measure it after the first few hours, needing to do something to calm her fears. The progress was slow, but it was happening. Thorne was healing.
At least on the outside.
She couldn’t vouch for his condition inside.
Leads trailed across his torso, attached to pads on his chest and his left side. They linked him to one of the monitors from Olivia’s lab. The steady beep reassured her and sometimes she would stare at the number on the screen, forcing herself to see that his heart was beating strong even though a fierce fever gripped him, turning his skin hot and clammy.
Sable removed the cloth from his brow, dunked it into the bowl of icy water on her nightstand, and squeezed it out before mopping his chest and face with it. He twitched wherever she laid the cloth, as if the cold hurt him. She didn’t stop though. She needed to bring his temperature down.
Bleu had warned her that the toxin on the blade was one capable of killing Thorne and that she had to keep his core temperature as low as she could. She had wanted to place Thorne into an ice bath but Bleu had advised against it. Apparently, that could kill Thorne just as easily as overheating.
She had been keeping vigil at his side ever since and had lost track of exactly how many hours had passed since Fargus had shown up in the cafeteria and stabbed his king. Not Fargus. Something else. Something with glowing blue eyes and the ability to teleport.
Something that might be in the Third Realm right now, among her friends, placing them all in danger.
Sable wet the cloth and wrung it out again, and then neatly folded it and laid it across Thorne’s brow. She stroked his small horns and looked down at his hand, tempted to take it in hers. She resisted and lifted her gaze back to his face. It caught on the wound on his chest. Tears threatened to well up and she cursed them and the feeling of despair that swept through her. Thorne was strong. He would wake and she would feel like a fool for doubting him.
Her stomach growled and her head ached, but she made no move to eat or rest. The blood on her black t-shirt and trousers had dried, making the material stiff in places, but
she couldn’t bring herself to leave him for even as long as it would take her to shower and change.
Thorne needed her, and she felt compelled to be here with him, by his side, watching over him and keeping him safe, keeping him cool. Waiting for him to wake and piece her world back together.
Someone knocked at the apartment door.
It opened a moment later and she looked over at the bedroom door. Mark stood there, his aging face awash with concern as he stared at her, and then darkening as his grey gaze dropped to Thorne where he lay on top of the dark purple covers on her double bed.
“I came as soon as I could after I had received word about the incident.” Mark stepped further into the room and she nodded, grateful he had left the Archangel conference of senior staff in Amsterdam early. She knew in her heart that restoring order amongst his hunters and checking on them weren’t the only reasons he had risked displeasing the other cell leaders. He had come back to check specifically on her and Thorne too.
His eyes lingered on Thorne, a calculating and wary edge to them. She couldn’t blame him for bearing a grudge against Thorne. He had come crashing into the cafeteria twice now, throwing Archangel into pandemonium and harming its hunters, sending many of them to the infirmary with minor wounds and concussions. Her superior’s hand fell to his side, brushing the crisp black jacket of his suit.
Sable wished he had chosen a less sombre colour, or had at least injected one other than black or grey into his choice of clothing. The black suit with a black shirt and a charcoal tie made him appear as if he was going to a funeral. When coupled with the sense of death that hung in the air around Thorne, it sent a chill through her and slowly eroded the fragment of hope she clung to desperately.
“How is he?”
Sable looked back at Thorne. “I’m not sure. Getting better, I think. Bleu believes it might be days before he wakes.”
She didn’t know whether she could take many more days of this.
She didn’t think she was strong enough.
Mark moved to the foot of the bed off to her left, his eyes locked on Thorne. “What happened?”
“I had to come back, and Thorne followed me. There was an incident in the cafeteria. One of his own men stabbed him in the chest with a knife coated in a toxin… at least it looked like his commander.” Sable looked over her shoulder at Mark. “Thorne called it a rakshasa.”
Mark’s face darkened into grim lines. “His man is dead then.”
She had feared as much. “What is it?”
“A type of shape-shifter.” Mark ran a hand over his sandy hair, an action that painfully reminded her of how Thorne would stroke his left horn when nervous. “Think of it like a parasite or symbiotic being. It takes over its host, living as part of it at first, learning everything it can. It then kills the host and shifts into that form. It can assume the shape of any it has killed. They can replicate everything about a host. Smell, voice, everything.”
Thorne had been right. Everyone was in danger. No one would know that thing was among them and had been there for God only knew how long. It might have killed any number of the people in the castle, assuming their form whenever necessary. How long ago had it killed Fargus?
“Evan will lead the team until we can find a way back into the Third Realm. Bleu is trying to get a message to Prince Loren. I’m sure he’ll succeed and we can warn them about this shape-shifter.” Sable wet the cloth again and pressed it back against Thorne’s head. He moaned and shifted, trying to get away from the cold compress. She pressed harder, keeping him in place and murmured softly, hoping the sound would soothe him.
“Sable… I don’t need to warn you how Archangel feels about relationships between humans and demons or fae.”
He didn’t need to remind her, and not only because she already knew Archangel frowned upon such things. He didn’t need to remind her because his choice of words dredged up something she had been slowly forgetting while focused on taking care of Thorne.
There was a chance she wasn’t wholly human.
She lowered her gaze to her right wrist and the leather cuff around it. It hadn’t hurt since her return to the mortal world and neither had her leg. It was a relief, but she still worried that it would flare up again and she needed to know what it meant. She couldn’t ask Mark about it though. If he discovered that her gift was more than they had ever thought, then the people in charge might find out, and they would want to run tests on her. She had been prodded and poked enough when she had joined Archangel.
She didn’t want Mark and her bosses to look at her with that same dark, grim edge that Mark’s steel-grey eyes held right now as he stared at Thorne. She didn’t want them to go from looking at her with admiration and something akin to affection, to looking at her as if she was a monster. She didn’t think she could handle it, not when she had been with them for most of her adult life and had come to view Archangel as her family.
“I expect you to file a full report about what happened in the Third Realm,” Mark said and then softly added, “It can wait until the demon king wakes though.”
“Thank you.” Sable didn’t take her eyes off Thorne.
She held the compress to his brow and listened to Mark withdraw from the room and then leave the apartment, quietly closing the door behind him.
Alone with Thorne again, she couldn’t hold back the tide of her emotions.
She stared at his face, heart aching in her chest, hope slowly withering.
He had to wake up.
He had to come back to her.
Sable swallowed hard, lowered her trembling hand and finally took hold of his, squeezing it tightly as her strength left her.
“Fight it, Thorne,” she whispered.
She stroked his brow, letting her fingers drift down to play on his cheek, reaching out to him and praying he could feel how much she needed him, could sense her hurt as she could sense his, and would listen to her plea.
“Fight for me.”
CHAPTER 19
Thorne’s body burned with all the fires of Hell, aflame and slowly turning to ash beneath his too-tight skin. He moaned as cool ice caressed his brow, chasing back the inferno, giving him brief respite from the heat. His bones ached, limbs too heavy to lift and muscles too weak to support them. They shook when he tried to move, clenching and trembling one moment and lax the next.
“Thorne?” Her sweet voice called to him in the dark abyss, luring him up towards her.
He clawed his way upwards, fighting the shadows that wrapped around his legs, twining tight around his ankles and trying to pull him back down.
Sable.
His female feared. Something scared her and he had to remove the source of her fear, relieving her and making her feel safe. She had told him once that she felt safe with him. He would make her feel safe again now.
He fought harder, his body shuddering as the fire swept through him, radiating outwards from a point in the centre of his chest. Each searing wave threatened to send him tumbling back into the black oblivion waiting to claim him.
“Thorne.” She was distant now, little more than a wobbling reedy voice swallowed by the darkness.
Thorne grimaced and kicked at the tugging shadows clinging to his legs. He had to reach Sable. No matter how weak he felt or how tired, no matter how little energy he had, he would never stop trying to reach her. Even if it killed him.
He ground his molars and pushed onwards, shoving through the darkness, forcing himself to continue. Nothing could stop him from reaching her. Not even Death himself. He would fight the bastard and he would win. He would not give up, not until his mate’s fear had ebbed and she felt safe again, and not even then. He would never give up.
Her fear trickled through the link between them, tugging at his heart, filling him with a need to reach her and pull her into his arms, and hold her close in the shield of his embrace.
His little huntress needed him.
He was coming for her.
He kept clawing his
way upwards, every instinct he possessed driving him towards her.
“Fight for me,” she whispered and he did, every inch of him straining as he battled the heat and the darkness, refusing to surrender to it.
His female needed him.
She shimmered into view above him, hazy and ethereal. Cold caressed his cheek and his forehead, her touch soothing the raging fires in his body, giving him the strength to keep pushing onwards.
“Wake up, Thorne.”
Those words were a command to his soul, an order he couldn’t ignore.
Thorne reached for her and she came into focus, her backdrop a warmly lit blanket of white and her long black hair hanging forwards, brushing her cheeks. They were reddened and damp, matching her eyes. His female had been crying. Why? What did she fear so much that it had torn down her strength and revealed this vulnerable side of her? He would destroy it, whatever it was. His female had no need to fear any longer. He was here.
A watery smile wobbled on her lips. “You awake?”
He thought he was dreaming to have his angel hovering over him as she was, her golden eyes enchanting him and her hip pressing against his bare side. She brushed her fingers over his brow and the cold came again, moist and icy.
“You look a little dazed.” She moved the wet something across his forehead. A cloth? “You with me?”
He tried to nod and his neck ached. He grimaced instead, a growl rumbling up his throat as he inwardly cursed the weakness infesting him, keeping him from speaking with Sable. Her smile grew, gaining strength and emotion that flowed into him and stilled his heart. She was happy, and relieved. His female felt safe again.
“How long are you going to lay there sleeping, huh?” She mopped his brow and he frowned.
Sleeping?
Memories of his last few moments came flooding back, rewinding quickly to the point when Fargus had stabbed him in the chest with a poisoned dagger.
His hand shot to his chest and Sable gasped. Thorne realised why. She held that hand, her fingers linked with his. His gaze darted to her and her cheeks darkened. She tried to remove her hand from his but he tightened his grip, gently squeezing her fingers between his, hoping to show her that he didn’t want her to let go. It pleased him that she had been holding his hand.
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