Another hand touches my back. Gentle fingers wrap my tangled matted hair into a braid. As soon as they do, a weight is lifted off the back of my neck, and I can’t feel the blood matted within the knots of my hair.
“Evander, give us a moment,” says a voice I swore I thought I’d never hear again. Not with that timbre of gentleness, at least.
I still can’t breathe.
Andy rubs the side of his neck. The pressure of his fingers leaves little white marks on his skin. “We need to get her out of here.”
“She’s not going to move in this state,” she says, with only a hint of matter-of-factness.
Andy looks as though he might not move, but he exchanges looks with the woman behind me, and eventually swallows and nods.
He stops by the woman and whispers something I’m not meant to hear.
I do anyway, of course.
It’s that he’ll be right outside listening. That he’ll protect her at all costs.
I decide I’d rather not be that cost.
When Ellie Payne kneels before me, I let loose a strangled sob. It’s raw in my throat, but at least it pushes the air through, reminds me I can breathe.
“Ellie, I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.” I know I should say more, that I should list out all the reasons one by one, but I can’t even count all the reasons Ellie Payne should hate me. I feel as if I begin to list them, I’ll miss something and she’ll count my misremembering against me.
Ellie’s brown eyes are soft as she takes me in. I expect her to take a single look at my face, at the shadows under my eyes, at the hauntingly beautiful transformation, and recoil.
But Ellie Payne is not the type to recoil.
Instead, her eyes examine me like she might a piece of warped glass, with a detached sort of calculation. Then she sets to work fixing me.
Her fingers are nimble as they work with the clasp at my neck, and though blood smears my front, she manages not to get any on her. My robe falls away, and with it a significant portion of Clarissa’s blood.
Something in my chest loosens.
I’m left in my shift, which is also coated in blood, and Ellie helps me work it over my head. There’s a moment when Clarissa’s blood, soaked into the fabric, smears across my face, and the scent threatens to make me vomit. Like when one’s gorged themselves on too much of a single food and later gets a whiff of it.
But then the shift is gone, and Ellie quickly tosses it behind me, presumably so I don’t have to look at it. I’m in my undergarments now, my arms bare and exposed, but Ellie works at her own clasp, and when it comes off, she sets it gently to the side and begins unbuttoning her linen dress.
She’s left in a set of ivory satin undergarments, which only highlight the beautiful warm tones of her smooth brown skin. The undergarments do little to expose her, other than the form of her waist and hips, but I remember how little Ellie enjoys flaunting her body. How she always seemed to gravitate toward more modest designs when picking out her evening gowns, and even had Imogen rework an outfit I picked out for her to provide more coverage.
But here she is—Ellie Payne sitting across from me in her undergarments as she wipes my face with a terrycloth. She dips it into a basin of water Clarissa must have been using to freshen up. I can’t help but stare as she slips her clean dress over my head, as she wraps me in a freshly laundered cloak that smells of rainwater and lavender.
My face is wet, and it shouldn’t be after Ellie dried it off with the bedsheets, it shouldn’t be soaked in blood after Ellie’s cleaned me up, after she’s wet my hair and pulled a comb through its tangles to work out the blood.
It takes me longer than it should to realize it’s not blood coating my cheeks.
It’s not the coppery, bitter substance that leaks through my veins.
It’s salt and water, tears streaming down my face, wetting Ellie’s underskirt as she works on me.
“Ellie, I’m—”
“Shh,” she says, and I’m in no position to argue with her, so I don’t.
Moments after she’s done cleaning me up, Evander enters the room, followed by two high fae I don’t recognize.
The male with tanned skin, jet-black hair to match his trimmed beard, and molten fire for eyes examines me with suspicion, but he has no reason to fear me, and I can tell with one exchanged look that he doesn’t. I’ve heard of this male before—the King of Naenden, the male who can summon fire with his hands.
He wouldn’t need the sunlight to burn me.
Next to him is a slight woman, barely older than me. She’s missing an eye, and burn marks snake up the left side of her body.
Yet she doesn’t seem to fear her husband, the yielder of the element that left her marred.
Queen Asha of Naenden, weaver of stories and savior of her people.
There’s something else that’s important about her, but I can’t quite grasp onto it through the fog.
The three of them glance quickly at Ellie, still in her undergarments, but Kiran’s and Asha’s attention quickly returns to me.
I’m the one clothed, yet I’ve never felt so naked.
“You’re safe now,” Andy says again, and I want to believe him, I do, but why should I? The last time I was with him, he locked me up. It’s not that I blame him for it; I would have locked myself up too, but I can’t…
I can’t I can’t I can’t…
“You can’t what, Blaise?” Ellie says, wiping a sweaty strand of hair from my eyes.
I hadn’t realized I was speaking aloud.
