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Cameron shot me a wicked look. I shook my head and gave him my best hard stare. Xavier snickered.
“A week?” Neverra squeaked. “Why didn’t you tell us or come get us? I would have helped sooner.”
“You and Logan have already helped enough. Besides, your time together is more important given the circumstances.”
“I want to see her. I need to tell her something.”
Samkiel seemed almost hesitant to oblige but finally nodded. “Perhaps when she wakes.”
Neverra nodded, and that was that. We all filed out of the room behind him, Neverra reaching for my hand again. I noticed how the others kept an eye on her, as if they, too, were afraid she would slip away if we blinked.
“Are you hungry?” I whispered to her.
“Gods, yes.”
My smile reached my ears. I called after the others, “We’re going to get something to eat. We will meet you all there.”
They nodded and waved, continuing to follow after Samkiel.
Once out of sight and halfway to our room, I asked her, “What do you need to tell Dianna?”
Neverra glanced at her hands, and I could feel the sorrow eating at her through our bond. “Just a message her sister left.”
Forty-Nine
Samkiel. Remains of Rashearim.
Sunlight bathed the new floor I’d made a week ago when I’d first returned to the remains of Rashearim with Dianna in tow. We were in my home, except it was no longer in a state of decay. I had remade the entire place. The holes created by powers I couldn’t contain were gone, and the overgrown foliage no longer threatened to reclaim the land. I’d modeled the interior after the places she had stayed and enjoyed. Dianna would remain here until I figured out what to do with her, and I wanted her to be comfortable.
The council would want her head for all she had done. They cared not about grief or pain, but I refused to give her to anyone, let alone them. The meeting with The Hand went well. Everything Neverra told us would stay sealed within my journal. My gut screamed that something moved beneath all of this, something I hadn’t seen yet, and trusting anyone outside of The Hand made me uneasy. My chest ached at the recollection of what Neverra had gone through, but the worst part was that I felt it was all my fault. I’d trusted the Vanderkais and sent Drake right to her, to them, and it had cost Dianna everything and almost cost Logan the same.
“You caught me.”
The words she’s spoken to me after falling through that portal whispered through my head. She had returned to me, and I had caught her. Ethan had warned me back in that over-cumbersome mansion not to make her fall if I had no intention of catching her, and as I watched her sleeping form, I realized somewhere along the way that catching her and keeping her safe was my only intention.
“Guilt wafts off of you in waves but undetected by mortal eyes,” Roccurem said from behind me.
“You are lucky I have not disintegrated you yet,” I snapped.
“I assure you. I have the best intentions for you, Dianna, and the realms. In as much as I am allowed to interfere, I will do what I can for all of you.”
I sat on the edge of the oversized bed, watching her as she slept. Her hands rested on her chest as it rose and fell. She was clean, her clothes no longer a mangled, tattered mess. I had healed her as soon as I could, but she had not moved much in the last week.
Roccurem looked down at her, once again in his mortal form, his hands clasped behind his back.
“What’s happening to her? What’s wrong with her?” The words tumbled from my lips against my will. I already knew and was unsure why I needed to hear it from him.
Dianna shifted and resettled, a strand of hair falling across her cheek. Eagerly I reached out to tuck it back behind her ear, my touch barely a whisper against her skin. I cared for her more than I wanted to admit to myself, and I had even told her. The words had left my lips of their own accord. I knew I shouldn’t because it would cause more harm than good, but I couldn’t control it, nor did I know if I wanted to.
I caressed her temple the same way she had done for me those long and bitter nights. I knew she was an Ig’Morruthen, a creature built for pure and utter destruction and my sworn enemy. The entire world knew it now, but at this moment, she resembled nothing more than an innocent woman whom Kaden had tried to turn cruel.
“She has overused her abilities to the extreme. Simply put, she is burned out.”
My hand hovered over her forehead once more, barely an inch above. Light danced from my palm, but no swirling black mass followed. No fire rose to greet my power. I had done this so many times over the last week, and the results were always the same.
“How long do you think?” I lowered my hand. “Has this happened before?”
“I have not heard of such things, my liege. Powers like yours, like hers, are not common. We don’t know how they work or even why. It depends on her. She expelled an extreme amount of power even to open a portal from Yejedin. Even at her age of a thousand years, power of that magnitude must be taught and trained. She has buried so much under grief and rage and has not processed it since her sister died. It may be days. It may be months, years, or never again.”
