Page 71 of Once the Skies Fade

Asher simply stared at me for several breaths, his expression unreadable. He drew in a long breath and scratched the edge of his jaw before finally speaking again.

“I don’t particularly like you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect you. You carried your competition through a deadly forest to ensure he survived. That’s admirable.”

“I didn’t do it to impress you,” I said, but he brushed aside my interjection with a wave of his hand.

“More importantly, though, you saved my neck—literally—when you didn’t need to. For that, I’ll help you out.”

I twisted my body as best I could given my restraints. “You mean you’ll get that itch for me?”

His lip curled in disgust. “No. You can take care of that on your own once I get you loose.”

“Going to give me back my pendant?”

Asher shook his head slowly.

“Then how am I?—”

“We’ll share it.”

“Not sure how that will work, unless you’re offering to carry me or something.”

He stepped forward, laughing silently as he lifted the chain up over his head. “You don’t know what it is, do you?”

“Am I supposed to?”

He shrugged. “I just thought you were supposed to be some wise warrior or something.”

“Battle strategies and political maneuvers I can manage, but guessing how a magical bottle works to curb a bloodthirsty forest is beyond my expertise.”

“You talk too much.”

“So I’ve been told. Are you going to explain it, or do you really want me to guess?”

Asher carefully removed the stopper from the vial, placed his finger over the opening, and tipped the bottle slightly. When he lifted his finger, he revealed a spot of dark red that slowly began to trail down his skin.

“Blood?” I asked, and the pieces clicked into place. “Of course. Calla’s?—”

“The queen’s, you mean,” Asher chided.

I ignored his correction. “Do you happen to have another vial, or some other container, on you?”

He shook his head. “I figured we’d just”—he waved his hand in the air, palm toward me, like he was washing a window—“smear some on you.”

“Why not on you?”

Asher regarded me, looked down to the vial in his hand, and then peered up to where the vines still held my wrists.

“Because you’re the desperate one here. Not me.”

I started to protest thatdesperatewas a bit of an exaggeration, but then, he wasn’t actually wrong. Without his help, making it back to the castle on time—let alone survivingthe forest at all—would be nearly impossible. I didn’t have the luxury of failure here, not when Connor and Lieke were relying on me.

“Fine,” I said, sighing. “Smear away.”

I winced as the blood painfully rushed back into my arms and hands, and even shaking and stretching them out, it took longer than expected for the feeling to fully return. The first step I took brought a fresh burst of pain down my leg and through my hip, and I hissed through my teeth as I reached down to the wound and found it bleeding again.

“Shit,” I muttered, and Asher—who had already started to walk off—stopped mid-step and looked back over his shoulder.

“Need something?” he asked.

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