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“Oh, no,” Elora says when I don’t continue. “Please do finish that sentence. Just what? A weak little mortal?”
I frown. “I didn’t say that. Will you stop squirming?” I add through gritted teeth.
“Thieran, you’re being dramatic.” She prods at my fingertips and sighs. “Are you going to let me go so I can get a bandage, or are you going to wait for me to bleed out right here?”
“Apply pressure to that,” I say, dropping her arm. “I’ll send a healer to your room.”
She rolls her eyes even as her mouth ticks up at one corner, cradling her arm as she stomps away from me. When I turn back to Railan, prepared to admonish him for letting their sparring match get so out of hand, his eyes are trained on the ground.
I follow the path of his gaze, and my chest tightens. There, where Elora’s blood has dripped onto the grass at the edge of the training ring, are a series of vines twisting in on themselves and crawling along the ground until they slowly come to a stop.
Railan looks up at me, but before he can say anything, before I can come up with an excuse for why that isn’t what it looks like, a wave of power announces the arrival of new souls in the Shadow Realm.
He wants to stay and ask me every question I see cascading across his face, but the pull to his duty is stronger than his curiosity.
“I’ll come find you,” he says simply before disappearing.
I crouch down and rip the vines from the earth, but they hold fast, driving their branches deep into the soil as soon as I pluck them. As if they were meant to thrive here.
Shoving to my feet, I stalk toward the palace. Railan’s judgments will only take so long. And then I’ll be forced to explain something I hardly understand myself. And why I currently have no plan to do a fucking thing about it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“I promise it won’t scar, my lady.”
The healer wraps a soft linen bandage around my forearm, securing it at my elbow, and I sigh at the title I haven’t been able to get her to stop using since she stepped foot in my rooms.
“I will come back before you’re ready for sleep to change it for you.”
“That really isn’t necessary. Just leave whatever supplies I need to change the dressing, and I can manage.”
Her eyes dart from the bag she brought with her to my arm to the table I’ve indicated with a wave of my hand.
“I don’t think Lord Thieran would approve of that, my lady.”
“I’ll see to it that he does. I’ve had worse. I know how to tend to a wound.”
She hesitates a moment more before reaching into her bag and pulling out a small jar of the salve she applied to the cut that smelled of juniper berries and mint. Setting it on the table, she produces a fresh roll of bandages and clean cloths.
“You’ll want to change the bandage twice a day until it begins to close, and then keep using the salve until there is no scar.”
I smile and nod. She seems particularly worried about whether this shallow wound might leave a mark. But she doesn’t need to know that scars are nothing new to me.
“Thank you,” I say.
Following her to the door, I close it behind her and lean my forehead against it, grateful for the silence. Piecing together the events of the last hour or so was infinitely more difficult with her fussing over what is really nothing more than a scratch.
Turning for the bedroom, I cross straight to the wardrobe, shoving gowns and tunics out of the way and crouching down to pull the heavy jar full of my shielding potion forward.
All that work. All that waiting. And the damn thing doesn’t work.
After a few days of procrastinating, I forced myself to perform the ritual this morning before breakfast. Then I made mention of wanting to spend some time in the sparring ring, both for the exercise and the perfect opportunity to test my theory. Thieran promised to spar with me after an errand, but I managed to talk Nevon into getting a head start.
He took it easy on me. But not that easy. Spinning, feinting, and bringing his blade to my throat or my belly, but never puncturing the skin. Nevon would know better. I was having so much fun hefting a sword in my hand and sparring with a good partner I almost forgot the point of the whole thing.
So I went left when I should have gone right, and Thieran was there before I could even comprehend Nevon’s blade had pierced flesh. The look on Thieran’s face… I shake my head. I’m likely misremembering the horror, the concern, the anger.
Shoving the jar to the back of the closet, I rearrange my clothes and change my bloody tunic for a fresh one, rolling the sleeve of my injured arm up to my elbow. If the ritual doesn’t work, I must have made a mistake. A step or ingredient I missed.
