KALDAR closed his eyes. He was tired of watching his blood drip out of him.
It was over. He couldn’t talk his way out of this. He couldn’t pry his hands free. Nobody was coming to save him. He was done.
They had moved him to the bed, and now he faced the wall instead of the door. He would die alone, staring at the blank wall.
It didn’t matter, really. He’d done his job: Gaston had the emitters. He would be able to protect them, and he would deliver them to the Mirror. The boys survived. They were safe. And Audrey . . . Audrey was alive.
He let himself slip away, into his mind, in a place knitted of memories and wishful thinking, where he and Audrey lived happily ever after. In that place, he took her to his house. They made love. They sat outside in the evening, watching the fireflies dance over the water of the lake. They drank sweet wine and laughed. He was happy in that place. He wanted to stay there and let reality fade.
He would just go to sleep, Kaldar told himself. Eventually, he’d lose enough blood to pass out. Until then, what little time he had left, he’d spend with her.
The door burst open. Someone had come to change the blood bag again. Two men rolled into the room. One was Killian, Helena’s hunter. The other was Gaston. They grappled on the floor, trying to outmuscle each other.
It’s a hallucination.
Audrey dashed through the door, a dagger in her hand.
Killian’s mouth gaped like the unhinging jaws of a snake. Gaston clamped him down. Audrey dropped by them and stabbed the hunter in the neck again and again, blood spraying from a wavy dagger in her hand.
Behind them, people screamed and roared. The sound of gunfire and the clashing of steel filled the room.
Killian’s head dropped to the side. Audrey rose, bloody, and dashed to his bed. “Are you alive?”
“How are you, love?”
“Great! I’m marvelous.” She sliced open his restraints and held up a coin in front of him. “Bet me you’ll survive, love.”
Heh. Funny. “I bet you I can get through this alive.”
The coin pressed into his hand. Magic shot through him in a welcome surge, and he realized it was real.
“Audrey, are you fucking out of your mind? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Saving you. Grab him.”
Gaston heaved him over his shoulder. The tube attached to Kaldar’s arm jerked the needle in his vein. He swore.
Audrey pulled the needle from his arm and yanked one of his grenades off her belt. She squeezed the grenade and rolled it to the wall. Gaston crouched behind the bed.
The wall exploded with a sound like thunder. Dust filled the air. Kaldar coughed and felt himself lifted. Gaston ducked through the new opening in the wall and took off running. Slung over Gaston’s shoulder, Kaldar saw Audrey emerge through the rubble. She ran after him, the ruin dark behind her, the moon rising over it.
He was being rescued. It finally sank in. She had come to save him.
Gaston jumped. Kaldar saw the ground end and realized they were sailing off a cliff. They plummeted down and crashed into the wyvern’s cabin. His exhausted body screamed in pain. Audrey landed next to him. He had never been so happy in his entire life.
Wind fanned his face as the wyvern banked. The cabin began to close.
The wyvern careened. Boxes and trunks rolled across the cabin floor onto them.
“Jack!” Gaston roared. “Watch where you’re driving!”
Gaston scrambled to his feet and lunged into the front of the cabin.
The dragon righted itself.
“You are marrying me after this,” Audrey told him.
Kaldar laughed.
“Don’t give me that smirk. There is no way I went through all this just for some roll in the hay. I want a dress, and a big party, the whole thing.”
“Of course I will marry you, you fool,” he told her.
She bent down and kissed him, her face wet. He tasted tears. “I love you,” she told him.
Kaldar strained and managed to put his arm around her.
“I love you, too.”
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EPILOGUE
THE wyvern landed on the front lawn. Through the windshield of the cabin, George could see every detail of Camarine Manor, including Declan and Rose standing side by side on the landing of the stone stairway leading to the front door.
They did not look happy.
“Courage.” Kaldar clamped his hand on George’s shoulder and rocked, unsteady on his feet. The loss of blood had been severe. Kaldar was walking, but not very well.
In the seat next to him, Jack swallowed.
George wished he were anywhere else. Then he wished he could fast-forward the day to after he had been given the chewing-out. Neither scenario seemed likely.
Gaston opened the door of the cabin.
Kaldar stepped out. Audrey followed.
“Come on.” Gaston nodded at the door.
It was his turn.
George forced himself to rise and exit the cabin. Jack followed him, carrying his little cat. Kaldar waited for them by the cabin’s door.
Both Declan and Rose looked eerily calm.
“Go on,” Kaldar prompted.
George started walking across the lawn. He felt a most childish urge to hold someone’s hand.
“We’re dead,” Jack murmured next to him.
“You say that a lot,” George said.
“This time it’s for sure.”
“Hopefully not,” Kaldar said behind them, striding next to Audrey.
“Why are you worried?” George asked.
“Would you be worried if you had kidnapped the wards of the Marshal of the Southern Provinces and nearly gotten them killed?”
“They don’t seem that scary,” Audrey said, looking at Declan and Rose.
“Looks can be deceiving,” Kaldar murmured.
Declan and Rose were waiting. Lorimor, the house master, stood behind them with a worried look on his face.
George walked across the lawn. His legs felt heavy, as if filled with lead. He and Jack climbed the stairway, step by step. Suddenly, the steps were over.
George raised his head and looked at Declan. “My lord.”
Declan stared at Jack. “When I said you needed additional supervision, I meant I would get you a valet.”