What in hulls? My red dress is sliced in shreds, as is my bloody skin underneath it. Clawed not by bolcrane claws, but by my own fingers and blade in my attempts to get the vortex out. To get free.
I sag, as if the loss of blood is only affecting me now that I’ve noticed the obscene amount soaked into my clothes and booties. “I don’t care. Take me back.” I hurl myself at him, yelling it, telling him to return us to save the only friend I have left in the world and destroy the monster I should’ve been able to kill numerous times over the course of today. “Please. I have to try. He has Rasha.”
A voice slips through the gray fog filling the air around us, unleashing with it a calm that slides through my skin, my head, my spine. “Nym,” it says behind me.
I turn but no one’s there beyond the dead.
I’m about to glance back at the guard, to demand he obey me, when I see the flutter of an eye and a flash of green peering through the mist.
The rush of days, of hours, of seconds slows down . . .
Until time is standing still and the only thing I know in this moment is that the man who is dead, who was absorbed and destroyed, is running a hand through his black hair and hauling his tall, broad-shouldered self up to gaze at me with those beautiful eyes. They are blinking as if newly awakened, and that unfair tweak of a smile is starting to surface above a confused one. The thought emerges that the rest of the world can go to hulls in the silence that falls.
How long I stand there I’ve no idea. The moments are lost and forgotten as daft tears find my face and his gaze flickers and firms around mine. I go to move forward, then stop because he’s not real—he can’t be real—and this is a sick trick of Myles’s.
“Once again, I distinctly recall ordering you to run from Draewulf.” Eogan rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Not rush into the center of a blasted war.”
Oh litches . . . It’s really him.
The sob I try to hold back escapes my lips anyway, and then I’m in his arms and in his eyes and breathing in his scent. His heart is beat beat beating into mine because there’s nothing between us but the two inches of space where my lips don’t quite meet his.
“Gently,” he mumbles and it’s only then I’m aware he’s flinching at how tightly I’m holding him.
“Sorry.” I ease my grip but his face is bending to brush his mouth over mine. Warm and firm. His fingers slide down my chin to my jaw, to the memorial scars on my arm. Tugging me closer. Obliterating every thought until I jerk back to search his face. To slip my hands against his chest and make sure he’s real and solid and made up of skin and bone and a scar on his neck.
He winces. “Easy on the body. My block still doesn’t work against you.”
I frown. Because while he should look sallow and weak, everything about his fierce gaze and the determined set of his chin is stronger than I’ve ever seen it. And his strength is filling me too. I search his eyes. “How are you alive?”
A throat clears nearby. “Your Majesty, I’m pleased you’re—”
“Go fix the bleeding ship, Kenan,” Eogan says without looking up.
“Sir, as I was saying. I’m pleased you’re alive,” the large soldier says again. “But I think you need to see this.”
Eogan’s brow narrows. “What is it?”
“Your Majesty, we have Isobel onboard.”
Eogan releases me, and I spin around to see Lady Isobel being held by two guards near where I hurled her against the dining area wall.
I walk over and stop in front of her. And crush my fingers into my palms.
She smiles and spits in my face before slipping a hand free long enough to jut it up against my heart. Eogan steps forward but I stop him.
Because there’s nothing in her palm as it touches my heart.
No sensation. No chill.
She pushes harder before the guard yanks her arm down and jerks her backward. But she’s not paying any attention to him. She’s looking at me and frowning, her expression altering into panic.
Her ability’s gone. Ripped out by the same vortex that slammed her into the wall.
“What will your father do to Princess Rasha?”
She sneers at me and clamps her mouth shut just as Eogan leans in.
He studies her, but his answer is for me. “Her father took what he needed from King Mael. Now he’ll regroup and head for Cashlin to take Rasha’s mother. He’ll keep Rasha in case her mother is killed—at which time the power would fall to the princess and Draewulf will consume her. Thus, in order to preserve Princess Rasha and Cashlin, we have to reach the queen first.”
“I thought Draewulf needed your block in order to take—” “He took it,” he says quietly. “Not all of it, but he absorbed enough of my blood that he’ll make it work.”
I peer up at him. “He took part of you?” My voice sounds as appalled as I feel.
He nods and continues staring at Lady Isobel. “Where did you plan to rendezvous?”