In the Veins of the Drowning(28)

His hands were in my hair, cupping my cold face, gripping my shoulders as he took stock of me. “You’re okay. You’re okay,” he kept repeating to himself. Grooves sat between his inky brows. His face was sweat-strewn and terrified. Hard fingers swiped at the tears on my cheeks, and then he stooped and ripped aside the robe to look at my leg. “Shit.”

He hefted me up into his arms. As he ran us toward the stables, he set his lips to my ear. “I can fix it,” he promised. “You won’t even have a scar.”

“I don’t care about a Godsdamned scar,” I hissed at his lie. He set me atop a horse and climbed up behind me. “Just get me off this mountain.”

I did not often dream.

When I did, the images were fragile, broken, blurred. As if I viewed them from high above, through a veil of clouds.

But now I dreamed in lurid detail.

A faceless woman floated upon the surface of the sea, her body bobbing over the churning waves. She was naked, without hair. Where her eyes should be were seared, empty sockets. Something swam below her. Far below, where the sunlight could not reach. Like a great monster with a shriveled stomach, it frantically searched the depths with a clawed, unquenchable need. Its eyes were milky and veinous. Its skin slick and mottled with decay.

But its heartbeat was strong. It pulsed through the water and through the air. A steady thump, thump, thump of desperation. Of want.

Finally, the lurking thing strained up and up with delight, for it could sense the woman’s warmth leaking from her and desired to feast upon it.

Right before it reached her—right before I woke—I realized:

I was the woman. I was the water. I was the monster.

My eyes shot open to bleary, amber light. I did not move. I couldn’t. My body still seemed to bob atop waves, but now it hurt with such vibrant pain that I couldn’t even moan.

I rolled my head over a cool pillow. Sleep still clung like spiderwebs, but I could just make out the large room. A few ornate lanterns swayed from the ceiling, casting their light through the dark space. Everything was gilded. The walls, the intricate vines carved into the bedposts, the settee. I squinted at the figure on the far side of the room. The broad yet trim shape. The dark hair and darker gaze.

I blinked, and the king of Varya came into focus. A black lock of hair hung over his creased brow. He rifled through a box of small glass vials and as I watched him, the memories came. The strange pain in my middle that had brought me to my knees in the gravel yard of Nemea’s mountain. The slow, excruciating slice of a sword through my leg. Theodore clinging to me as we rode down the mountain atop a stolen horse. The jostling had tugged me in and out of consciousness, but I remembered the warmth of his power pouring through my bleeding thigh, the soft roll of his voice at my ear telling me to stay upright, to keep my hold on the pommel.

The bed lurched, swayed, and I realized… we were on the ship. I was on the sea. I could feel it in my body, through my pain, through the pitch and wood.

“We made it,” I rasped. Then, in the next breath, “I’m gonna be sick.”

Agatha was at my side in a rush, holding an empty washbasin below my chin. I heaved into it, coughing, then shuddered at how it flared my pain. Theodore moved himself and the box of medicines closer. The nauseating twist in my stomach eased.

“It’s the blood bond that’s making you ill,” Agatha said warily, as she ran a hand through my knotted hair. “It takes some time to settle.”

I held my throbbing head. “How much time?”

“Two days.” Lachlan and Agatha answered at the same time. Lachlan sat at the far end of the table Theodore stood beside, sharpening a dagger with a whetstone. I could see him properly now. He was wiry but imposing, with wide shoulders, light brown skin, and brown-gold hair, cropped close. There was an upward curve to the corners of his mouth and a mischievous light in his eyes.

Irritation pinched Agatha’s features. “Had you told me that you had performed a sacred blood bond with the king of Varya before walking into a horde of armed guards, I could have told you that you’d be sick. I could have told you that you’d need to keep close to one another until the bond settles. But instead, you told me nothing and nearly got yourself killed.”

“Agatha,” I groaned. “A lesson learned. The next time I frantically bind myself to a king and flee my home, I’ll make sure to run all the details past you first. That’s assuming that next time this happens, you’re not in the middle of a liaison.”

Lachlan snorted, and Agatha shot him a look that should have set him aflame. “Don’t worry,” she bit out, more to Lachlan than me, “it won’t happen again.” She swept away from the edge of the bed with the washbasin, her cheeks flushed bright. Guilt lanced through me, and I noted the strain between them. I wondered what had transpired in the short amount of time they’d been reunited.

I tried to sit up, to find a quiet way to ask Agatha what was wrong, but only managed to wince in discomfort.

“Don’t move.” Theodore’s order was low and chagrined. “You’ll make your leg bleed. It’s not properly healed yet.”

I met his icy gaze across the room and stilled. There had been a kindness to him, an attentiveness, while we’d made our way down the mountain. He’d kept a hand at my back and warmed me. He’d looked at me with something like compassion when I’d been scared. Now it was all gone. He possessed all the heat and civility of a marble statue.