32. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Ruin will come. Calyr is certain of this. Ruin will come, but there are shades of ruin. Will everything be burned away, or will it be a flame that purges the land and allows for new growth? Death and pain are terrible, but they are necessary.

~Inni the Destroyer, A History of Magic and Dragons

The door opens slowly, a dangerously soft breath comes from the other side of it. I leap to my feet, and I move to the it, not sure what I expect to see.

Whatever it was, it's not this.

Cole is standing purely through the strength of spirit. I put my hand out, but he shakes his head ever so slowly. Then I see his arms. Burned and blackened like so much of the rest of his body. His tunic is gone, completely burned away. His face is the only thing that's untouched above his waist.

"It's okay," he whispers. "I'll be okay. Can you fetch Nevan?"

The breath comes out wet and crackling, and everything inside me wants to reach out and touch him. To run my fingers over his broken body and help him.

"Nevan thought I could help more than he could," I whisper. "He explained how."

Cole's eyes move to the pitcher of silver liquid and bandages, and he breathes a little harder. "It's okay. I'll take care of it. Why don't you crawl into bed so you don't have to see this? It's not…" His body tenses, and he inhales sharply. "It's not your problem."

I steel my jaw. "No," I say. It's soft, but there's not an ounce of give in it. I move to the platter holding the supplies and dip a bit of cloth into the silver liquid. It coats the linen and slowly drips back into the pitcher as I squeeze it.

I bring the rag to Cole, and I see the pain on his face for the first time. Not the suffering of his wounds, it's the grief of everything else. That wasn't an enemy in the dining hall. It was his father. I stand in front of the man that has saved me from everything, the one who stood in front of every danger that's happened across our path. I run the rag over his chest, starting at his neck.

A mix of pain and ecstasy runs over Cole's face as the silver liquid coats his chest, filling in the gaps of peeling flesh. As soon as the rag becomes a little dry, I dip it into the pitcher again. Over and over again, I coat Cole's chest and each time, the gasps of pain are less.

"You don't know how much that helps," he groans. "And it feels… different. When you do it, I mean."

"Let me get your back," I say, mostly ignoring his words and focusing on his body. The body that was so beautiful but is now so broken and burned. I walk around him and run the rag over his back. The burn scars are barely noticeable under the new burns.

The edge of my finger brushes his skin, and in an instant, I'm transported to that strange mental landscape of fiery winds and razor-sharp glass. Of a desert that nothing could survive. Of an obsidian tower that had risen so tall into the sky.

I can't help but notice that it's changed. There's a crack that runs along the base. The tower is still completely stable, but that tower won't stand forever. Eventually, something is going to give. Something will knock that tower over if no one is there to stop it.

My finger moves away from his skin, and the image disappears. Cole needs help more than I'd known. He's looked more and more worn down, but tonight was too much. I don't know what to do other than tend his wounds, though. I make sure that every inch of his shoulders and back are covered in that silver liquid, and he groans again in relief.

That silver liquid seeps into everything, soaking into the wounds and giving them an oily sheen. As I finish his upper back, Cole seems to breathe easier, even though his chest still barely moves. That wet sound isn't there anymore.

"Thank you," he whispers.

I look down at him, my eyes hard and serious. "You're hurt because of me. If I hadn't needed help, your father wouldn't have had a reason to do this."

Cole laughs. Not the full belly laugh from the day we thought he'd broken. No, he couldn't manage that right now. Instead, it's a soft chuckle, but his eyes are sparkling. "My father's furious regardless of what I do. When Casimir Cyrus gets angry, he needs to find joy again. He does that by hurting anyone and everyone around him. He just knows that I can take it better than anyone else. There's a reason I haven't been home in thirty years."

Thirty years without seeing his father. "I'm sorry."

He tries to shake his head, but he winces. "Don't be sorry, Maeve. Being sorry means that there's someone to blame or some lack of control." The words come out stronger than I believed possible. "No, we're just not strong enough to fight back right now, Maeve. For now, we just need to survive. To do the things we can do. Like find a way for you to see Calyr. To help your cousin."

As soon as the last inch of him is coated, I go to get the bandages and wrap his chest and back in them. He smiles down at me. "You might have missed your calling, Maeve. You're a much more tender healer than Nevan's ever been. Maybe it's the skin versus scale issue, though. They're so scratchy."

I arch my brow and chuckle. "You're just lucky that you have medicine like this. Those injuries… they'd be a death sentence to a human."

His next words are much more somber. "They just leave scars for High Fae. Trust me on that." The sparkle in those cold blue eyes dies a little at the thought, and I can only assume he's talking about the time his father left those scars on him. As a child.

"Well, you're still lucky."

He shakes his head. "Luck has nothing to do with it. If my skin was scarred any more, I'd probably lose some mobility, and my father's sharpest weapon would become less effective. That's not something that he's willing to allow, so he'll give me medicine after these little ‘punishment' sessions. He'll let me heal up before he does it again. For now, we just stay out of his way, take our meals in my chambers, and try not to stir up too much trouble in Draenyth."

The pointed look he gives me is a warning. Today's chaos can't happen again. I nod, and he sighs as I tie the last bandage into place. When he walks, there's far less stiffness to his gait, but when he looks at the bed, he hesitates. I can only imagine how unpleasant it'll be for him to lie in any position. Even with the bandages and medicine and his Fae healing, those are horrific burns, and there won't be any comfortable positions.

Then he says something completely stupid. "Would you mind if I took a blanket when I lay down on the floor?"

When he lays down on the floor? "What?"

The silence is deafening as he stares back at me, so I ask for a bit of clarification. "Cole, why would you lay down on the floor?" I say the words as calmly as possible, even though I really want to tell him to stop being stupid.

"I… I was planning on giving you the bed."

I turn to look at the bed that five people could sleep comfortably in and then look back at him. "No. Get into bed. If I need to build a pillow wall between us, I will. You're hurt, and I'll hurt you more if you try to do that."

He looks at me, and then he gives me his best grin. "Yes, Mistress." The grin cracks as pain shoots through his back, and his hand moves to the bed to steady himself.

I don't say anything as I watch him take a deep breath and slowly crawl into the bed, careful to stay on his hands and knees until he turns so that he can lie on his shoulder instead of his back. His face contorts into a grimace. His chest rises in soft panting breaths as he tries to maintain control.

I don't know what comes over me, but I crawl into bed behind him. I remember what it felt like to have those burns across my back. There's nothing I can do, but I want to comfort him. I want him to know that he's not alone this time. I can't heal him any faster. I can't do anything to help his physical wounds, but for the first time in Cole's life, he's not alone. I'm here, and I won't let him forget he can lean on me sometimes.

My hand moves to his neck, my nails softly caressing the unmarred skin. Slowly tracing the thick muscles along his neck, I expect him to pull away, to want to be free of my touch. I don't know why as he's never recoiled from me before, but my entire life, people have pulled away from me.

I feel like I know what to do. Intuitively, I let the tips of my fingers move from his unburned skin up the nape of his neck until they run through his hair. Cole lets out a soft sigh as my hand slides through that thick black hair. My body presses against his. My fingers explore his head and neck, slowly tracing the lines of muscle and bone.

His breathing deepens, and I'd swear that I can hear little moans of pleasure. When my fingertips brush against the bandage over his shoulder, his moans become loud enough that I'm sure of them.

I want to touch more of him, to make him feel better, and as I try to shift, my dress keeps getting in the way.

Without turning around, Cole says, "Just take it off. It's not like I haven't seen you in your underclothes already today."

I blink. The frustration at my dress shifts. He wants me to lie next to him in my undertunic. Nothing except a thin piece of linen between us.

"Are you really going to sleep in that dress?" he continues, trying to persuade me. "It's gorgeous, but I doubt it's comfortable at all. Or, if you'd rather, you can always wear one of my tunics. I'm sure it would be big enough to cover everything."

Right. Being absolutely covered in something that smells solely of him? In his bed? Next to him? If I took off my ring, we'd drown in shadows with how fast and hard my heart's racing. "Fine," I mutter. There's no way I'm wearing one of his tunics, but he's right. He's seen me in my underclothes already.

His tunic would be something entirely different.

I climb off the bed and try to remove the dress. It's harder than I'd expected, and then Cole turns his head to look at me, a wicked grin on his face. "I thought you were supposed to keep your emotions leashed," I hiss.

That only makes his smile widen. "Come here, Maeve. How any woman takes one of those dresses off by themselves is beyond me."

The corset ties are in the back, hidden behind another panel of fabric. I'm going to have to lose a few pounds, or I'm going to rip the dress if I try to get it off by myself. It just seems so intimate to let Cole undress me.

"Thank you," I mutter as I move to his side of the bed.

"I'll do whatever it takes to get you to touch me like that again. You have no idea how good it feels. Even better than the medicine."

His fingers move deftly, as I had expected, pulling the strings that have me stuck in this silk prison. In only a few moments, I feel the corset top loosen enough that I can breathe normally. I take a deep breath and slip my arms out. Then it's off, and it's like I've suddenly lost ten pounds, and I guess I have. I sigh as I toss the dress to the floor. And realize that my undertunic has ridden up nearly to my bottom. I whirl around at the same time that I get it straightened out.

Cole's grinning even wider now. "Maybe I won't touch you like that anymore," I threaten.

"Would you believe me if I said that I'm sorry?" The way his eyes roam over my body like a wolf eyeing a deer, I know that's the most blatant lie he's ever told me.

"Not for a minute." I can't help but smile, though. I walk around the bed to get to my side, and then I see him barely shivering. Of course. He's burned, and the medicine is cooling the fire in his skin. Damn that man for not saying anything.

"You idiot," I mutter, all other thoughts pushed out of my mind. "Try not to hurt yourself while I get you under the covers. This room's going to get cold, and you're just ignoring it. You're already shivering."

He pauses for a moment, and the shivering gets worse. "I didn't want to bother you," he says, and I can hear his teeth chattering.

Holding my tongue is a challenge in willpower because I want to rip into him, telling him just how stupid that comment was, but I remind myself that tonight has been terrible for him. If there was ever a time that Cole Cyrus might actually break, it'd be tonight.

"It's not a bother, Cole. You're injured, and I'm here to help you feel as good as you can. Now, let me get this blanket on you." I pull it and really have to throw my body weight into it to get it out from under him.

I nearly fall over when it finally comes loose. At first, I feel like a fool and expect Cole to be grinning at me as I right myself, but when I look at him, his entire body is shivering uncontrollably.

Damn that man and his stubbornness. At least I was paying attention. I pull the blanket over him and lie directly behind him, my warmth flowing to him, and I wish I had the power of flames. Just a little heat would help keep him from being so miserable.

Cole needs warmth, and if there's anything I can do to help him, I need to do it.

Which is why I pull off the undertunic and put it next to me on the bed before crawling in behind him. My breasts press against the bandages along his back, and I can feel his body absorbing my heat. My entire body presses against him as tightly as I can, willing myself to warm up and give him every bit of heat I can muster. His chattering teeth slow and eventually stop, but his body doesn't stop shivering.

My fingers go back to his arm, slowly running along his muscles, and he visibly relaxes as soon as my fingers touch his skin. "You need to tell me if you need anything at all, Cole. Do you understand me?"

His body's still shaking, but when I press myself against him, he doesn't cringe from the pain. Even as my chest presses against his bandages. Underneath that linen, he's healing already, and I just have to do my best to help him make it through the night. He needs to stay calm and relaxed, and more than anything, he needs to sleep.

My hand moves over his skin, dancing as lightly as a breeze. As lightly as my shadows. Cole's eyes close, and I wrap my arm over his shoulder, feeling every muscle of his body pressed against mine, and my nails touch his cheek again. This time, I don't pull away, though. His stubble is rough under my caress, and it rasps almost silently, but Cole lets out a soft moan, and I'm sure that I'm doing the right thing.

With how close we are, the betrothal bond is making everything feel strange, though. Every second we're this close, with our bodies touching this much, it's impossible to ignore the way he feels under it.

My lips are inches away from his neck, and my breath comes out hot against it. When I close my eyes, it's hard to separate myself from the male I'm laying next to. He's so peaceful, even with the pain that still radiates through his body. Somehow, he found peace in my touch. He let me take care of him when he never lets anyone take care of him.

That's what he was looking for today in the bath. That's what he'd wanted. Not what I'd been imagining. No, he'd known that tonight his father would do this, and for once in his life, he wanted someone to show him tenderness. He needed someone to show him physical kindness so he didn't break from his father's cruelness.

My hand stops moving over his skin, and I wrap my arm over his body, glad to feel him not shivering anymore. When I close my eyes, I stop trying to separate myself from Cole, enjoying the peace he's found. I made a vow to him to take some of the weight off his shoulders, and I feel like this is the first step.