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“The cut would’ve been deeper if I’d been in my own cloak.”
He muttered something in demon tongue I didn’t understand then pressed the ice-cold cloth to the cut. It was a jagged bone that had torn through my coat and blouse to my forearm.
“Hurt?” he asked when I winced.
“No. It feels good.”
“I don’t have any ointment. But we’re only a few more hours from Gadlizel.”
“Are you sorry you kissed me?” I blurted.
He jerked his gaze to mine, his silky black hair coasting over the exposed part of my wrist. “Why would you ask that?”
“You stopped so suddenly. I thought you might have thought it was a mistake.”
“Do you think it was mistake?” he asked, his expression tight with anticipation as if my answer mattered greatly.
I considered my feelings, my emotions of relief and gratefulness that he’d saved me and dragged me out of that nightmare of a pit. But that wasn’t what had made me press my lips to his. It had come from somewhere deeper. Or, perhaps, somewhere divine.
“No,” I finally answered.
The tension in his face eased. “It doesn’t look bad enough to need stitches, thank the gods.”
“What about you?” I pushed. “Did you think it was mistake?”
He huffed out a laugh, his fangs flashing when he met my gaze. A tremble shivered through me at the sight of his teeth. I had the most outrageous desire to lick them again, feel the sharp prick of them on my tongue.
Those crimson eyes filled with the same heat of a few moments ago. “No, Murgha. It was not a mistake. It was as it should be.”
When I thought he might ease forward and kiss me again, the fluttering of tiny wings announced Gwendazelle’s arrival right before she landed on my knee.
“Murgha is hurt? What happened? What happened!” Her round black eyes widened with alarm.
“It’s all right,” I assured her.
“It was a nightwyrm.”
“It attacked during the day?” She shook her little head. “Not good. Not normal.”
“Indeed,” said Vallon, “and they don’t prey upon the fae.”
“The creature was unnatural,” I said, remembering how I’d sensed something odd near the dellabore bush and had followed the pulse of dark magick seeming to come right out of the ground. “I was looking for the source of that unnatural essence, and I slipped…”
I was falling again, slipping back into the abyss, and then I could no longer see Vallon’s concerned expression or Gwenda’s worried one. I could see nothing at all, my mind slipping into that misty world of visions.
Of prophecy.
Chapter
Thirteen
VALLON
Murgha’s violet eyes glazed over as she stared into the distance.
“Murgha?” I gripped her hands in mine, rubbing them to get her attention.
She didn’t move or answer. Her vacant stare didn’t worry me as much as it surprised me. I’d seen this happen before on seers in Gadlizel. When we once had them. King Halvar had excommunicated them all except for the very last, the one he’d slain in his great hall at the Feast of Solzkin. What should have been a time of celebration had turned into an unjust execution.
