Page 66 of Shade of Ruin

That gave me everything else.

Now I just need to steel myself against any kind of fear. Because the man that walks through that door is going to be a broken thing compared to the one that walked into the dining hall with me.

But he’s my broken thing. This time, it’ll be me that’s helping him.

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 overhis 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.

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