8. Veyka

Arran.

My heart twisted inside my chest. Pain, longing. My eyes raked over him, checking every curve of muscle and long plane of his body.

His boots were clean of the mud and blood of battle. His leather trousers were immaculate as well, stretched across his hips. But his armor was gone… the vest that buttoned across his chest, the battle axe, the scabbard… nothing but the linen shirt he wore beneath.

A pale gray, fashioned in the terrestrial style, with buttons that started in the center of his chest and angled upward to where they ended at the shoulder. Open now, revealing a triangle of perfectly golden skin and the upper branches of the tree tattooed across his chest—his Talisman. The physical marker of the power within him, to bend even nature to his will.

He did not move. Not even to draw breath.

But it was his eyes that struck me the most.

His eyes were closed.

That strong, muscular body was prone. Laid out on a slab of granite. Utterly still.

I stumbled forward, my chest exploding with emotion. My eyes burned. I could barely see. The granite jarred my knees as I fell, but that pain was nothing.

Arran. Arran, please.

Arran, wake up!I cried down the bond. Screamed. Reaching for any shred of him on the other side of that precious golden thread.

But there was nothing.

Arran can't be gone. I would have felt it. No one can die in Avalon. How can he… No… no, no, no, no…

Gentle claws landed on my shoulder.

I felt the brush of Isolde's leg as she climbed up onto the base of the granite slab beside me. She lifted her other hand toward Arran, then paused, looking down at me.

"May I?" she asked softly, her voice barely audible through the keening of my soul.

Words were beyond me. But the plea in my eyes must have been enough.

Isolde's white eyes shone. Sympathy, reverence, kindness – she showed more emotional depth with one glance than I'd ever managed with words and actions combined.

Then she turned that focus to Arran.

She laid her hand on his arm with a gentleness that belied the long, sharp claws at the ends of her fingers.

I felt her power before I saw it. A warm wave, washing over my skin, radiating from the white faerie. The glow beneath her palms was brighter than when she'd healed Lyrena. As if she was drawing from the latent magic of Avalon, humming all around us.

Later, I'd wonder if that was why my void power had carried us further onto the sacred isle than I'd intended. Some strange amplification…

But now, my thoughts, my eyes and heart—they were all for Arran.

Isolde's hands drifted over his arm to his chest. The unbuttoned flap of his shirt fluttered open—

I doubled over, my stomach emptying itself violently onto the grass, bile splattering the edge of the granite slab.

I was wrong. Wrong about everything. He couldn't live—not in Avalon, not anywhere. Not with that gaping wound his chest. His heart—

Another wave of bile rose in my throat.

Arran's beating heart was visible, right there, through the wound I'd inflicted.

This was all my fault. I'd killed my mate, the male I'd finally allowed myself to love. I'd doomed myself. I'd doomed Annwyn.

Arran's beating heart.

Beating.

His heart was beating.

"The king lives."

Morgyn.

I reached for the edge of the granite slab, digging my nails in hard enough they cracked as I hauled myself up. She stood on the other side of Arran, a few feet back on that perfectly emerald grass. As always, her pale lavender gown fell as flawlessly as her sheet of brown hair. One neat braid, the width of a finger, fell from each temple. And she stared at me with those blue eyes, with the same unshakeable calm.

I wanted to gouge those eyes out.

"The Lady of the Lake speaks the truth," Isolde said before I could launch myself through the air and start ripping her apart.

"I have no reason to lie," Morgyn said, watching the faerie.

I put a hand on Isolde's shoulder. "You would do anything to preserve your precious neutrality," I spat at the priestess. At my sister.

The word was loathsome. A mockery of what Arthur and I had been to one another.

He lied, too.

My heart was breaking inside my chest.

"You were supposed to heal him. Help him!"

"Your Majesty…." Isolde tried to interject.

"His chest is cleaved open! He is dying! You left him alone in this infernal mist to die!"

"My queen…"

"What is wrong with you? Are you every bit as heartless as our mother? Do you blame me, is that it, for being their precious chosen one?"

"Veyka."

Isolde's quicksilver voice finally penetrated. But I was beyond words anyway.

I was going to kill Morgyn. And then every priestess in this cursed place. Even if I spent the next hundred years hunting them all down through the mist.

Morgyn held my gaze. Her lips did not curve or press down into a line. But her eyes… they swirled with feeling. I couldn't have named which ones. But I recognized the storm swirling inside of her.

My hand slid to my knife.

But Morgyn simply lifted her hand, spinning her palm in a graceful wave.

The mist disappeared.

And hiding beneath that velvety white blanket…

Dozens of priestesses. Males and females, dressing in indistinguishable flowing robes. Reminiscent of the ethereal styles of the elemental court, but with thicker, heavier fabrics against the cool air. That remained, even with the mist gone.

All shades of purple, from palest lavender to rich aubergine. All the forms moved with graceful purpose. Walking between buildings carved from the same granite as the slab where I braced my palms. Some carried platters and bowls toward stone altars. Another led a group of children—young acolytes—into a copse of aspens. A small white crystal dangled around each neck. Communication crystals.

But not a single word was spoken. Maybe that was another bit of magic, like the fog.

Beside me, Isolde exhaled slowly.

They'd been here all along, hidden by the mist while we bumbled about. They'd let us walk right in. After denying me access for weeks, Morgyn had let me walk to my mate unhampered.

What sort of cruel, twisted game was she playing?

Anger curdled in my stomach. But when I glared back at her, the Lady of the Lake's eyes were unreadable once again.

"What have you done to my mate?" My voice was steady. I knew she would recognize that calm for what it truly was—lethal.

But it was not Morgyn who answered.

"He is in an enchanted sleep," Isolde said.

I bit down hard on my lower lip to keep it from trembling. "Why?"

"To heal," Morgyn answered. She did not even smirk. Cold, unfeeling creature.

"He is healing, Majesty," Isolde said quickly, before I could start screaming at Morgyn again. "Look," the faerie implored.

I did not want to look. I did not know how I would survive it. Not without Arran at my side to catch me. Not when Arran was the one lying there…

"The edges of the wound have smoothed, the damage giving way to healthy tissue," Isolde explained.

I forced my eyes down.

It was better than it had been in the clearing… I shivered. Shivered, shook, trembled.

Arran had once promised to cleave open his own chest to find that golden thread between us, to use it to find me if I was ever lost to the void. In the end, I'd done it for him. And nearly lost him in the process.

I pressed my eyes closed, focusing all of my energy on the bond in my own chest. I could not see it. But I could feel it there.

A shaking exhale. "How long?"

I expected Isolde. Got Morgyn instead. "We cannot predict. It is mighty magic, as will be the price."

All magic had a price. Cyara's aching wrists after she used her flames to build my fire. Lyrena's catatonic sleep after quieting the flames that consumed the human village. I'd take a missing limb or a natural disaster or whatever terrible cost the Ancestors demanded. Anything, so long as he lived.

I turned to Isolde, those magical white hands now folded behind her back. No glow in sight. "Can you help him? Heal him faster?"

I watched her eyes fill with tears, knew the answer before she spoke it. The shake of her head was so small, her tiny white braids hardly moved.

"My magic is different here," she said. Whether her sadness was for me or Arran, I felt the weight of it settling in my chest.

"What if I moved him? Brought him to our camp using my power."

Isolde's braids did move this time. "I am afraid he would not survive the journey."

So was I.

I did not know what the void would do to him in this state. Rip him apart, but then find there was not enough of him left to put back together? When I'd moved with Lyrena during the succubus attack in the forest, she'd been injured, but not so gravely.

I sank down to my knees, the vomit I'd spewed up earlier magically enveloped by the unnatural green grass. I kneeled on the edge of the granite, the sharp corners digging into my knees, and let my head fall forward against the cool stone.

"He is safe here," Morgyn said.

I did not believe that for a second.