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One enemy suddenly got too close to me. He buried a stake in my body, missing my heart by only an inch.
I fell to the ground, feeling the oak wood poisoning me.
My soldiers who had been fighting alongside me quickly descended on my attacker. Two pairs of hands grabbed me, and I was carried from the battlefield through the wave of our forces.
“No, I must fight,” I managed to call out.
“You’re injured, your Highness,” someone protested. “We’re bringing you to safety.”
“Tell the army to fall back,” I commanded.
My sight clouded, shadows encroaching on my vision much like whenever I felt insanity start to come over me. The shadows formed people I knew from the Estone court. They bore malicious smirks on their faces.
“You’re useless,” one said.
“You can’t protect anybody,” said another.
“Your wife hates you,” one claimed.
They were all right. Everything they said was the truth.
Even so, I wanted to throw myself at them to silence them. I had no power to move my body, though.
“Grace,” I mumbled.
“We’ll call your wife to your side,” someone said.
The thought of having Grace close to me calmed me down. I drifted in and out of consciousness, darkness slowly consuming me. My chest seared; my whole body felt on fire. The poison from the stake was inside me, burning me, cooking me alive.
I just hoped I would survive this wound. There was so much I wanted to tell Grace; the truth about who I was and the fact that I loved her.
Chapter Twenty-One
Grace
After my talk with Ruth, I thought more about how I had approached my relationship with Silas. I wanted to know more about him, the real him, and to do so I would need to have a real talk with him. I didn’t want to give up on our relationship. I wasn’t someone who would just abandon all hope without trying.
Silas and the army had left for the battlefield that morning. I busied myself with embroidery, waiting patiently for them to return. Usually battles between vampires could last from eight to ten hours before one side decided to fall back. The war had consisted of a bunch of stalemates so far. It was going nowhere, even with Athalis’ help. I didn’t want to give up hope for our victory, though. Under Silas’ command, I believed the war would soon be won.
A few hours passed when suddenly there was a commotion near Silas’ tent. I rose from my seat and approached to see people carrying someone toward the tent. My heart sped up, and I ran over to them.
I gaped when I saw who the people were carrying. Silas. He was all bloody and even paler than usual, dark veins bulging on his skin. There was a stake embedded in his chest.
“Silas,” I called out to him.
He didn’t reply. Instead one of the people turned my way. “Princess, I’m glad you’re here. The Prince has been calling for you. He’s not fully conscious, but he wants you at his side.”
“I’m coming,” I closed the distance between us and grabbed Silas’ hand.
I walked next to him as the men carried my husband inside the tent. They laid him down on the bedroll carefully. One of them removed the stake. Silas groaned, and more blood gushed from the wound. A clean cloth was put against the wound to stop the flow of blood.
“The stake narrowly missed his heart, but vampires are sensitive to oak wood, so his body is still suffering from the poison,” one of the men explained. “That’s why the stakes we use for combat have metal ends which we can hold safely.”
“Someone tried to kill him?” I asked. “Wasn’t he just supposed to command the army, not fight in combat?”
The men looked at each other. “There were more enemies than anticipated, so the General came down to the battlefield to help us fight.”
“He killed forty enemies,” the other one supplied.
