Page 13 of Lady for Embers

“Is he awake?”

Cassius shook his head, helping her as she struggled to sit up. “Not yet, but the High Witch has said he grows stronger every day.”

The room spun when she made it to a sitting position. She felt so empty. Her power reserves were nonexistent. She’d poured every bit of them into Sorin to call him back to this side of the Veil, to give him the power to come back to her. But that wasn’t why she felt empty.

She couldn’t feel him. She couldn’t feel his emotions. There were no whispered words down their bond. Her head was silent, and once she might have cherished that, but not now. Now she wanted to hear him teasing her, taunting her. She wanted him to call her “Love,” and she wanted to sit and play the piano for him for hours. She wanted to be annoyed with him so she could call him names, and he could grumble about her “godsdamn tongue.”

She wanted him to wake the fuck up.

Tears welled in her eyes when she ?nally turned to look down at her husband where he lay beside her on the bed. His chest moved up and down in slow, steady breaths. His skin held its normal tanned glow, and dark stubble lined his jaw. She reached over, her hand shaking, as she brushed her ?ngers along it. He didn’t move. Didn’t respond at all to her touch.

Her gaze traveled from his face down to his chest. Someone had removed his tunic, but there was still white scarring where Talwyn’s power had slammed into him. Her ?ngers drifted to those scars directly over his heart. Her trembling ?ngers hovered there, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch them.

“Hazel works on the scarring every day,” Cassius said softly.

She nodded, swallowing down the tears that were burning at the back of her throat.

“You have been asleep for four days.”

Four days? That explained her dizziness. And the pain in her empty stomach. And the full bladder.

Her eyes lingered on Sorin for another few moments before she moved to climb from the bed. When her gaze fell on the rest of her family standing near the hearth, she suddenly remembered the muf?ed voices that she’d heard when she’d been waking.

Cyrus, Eliza, and Rayner were all watching her, a mixture of relief and wariness on their features. There was a moment of tense silence before they were all rushing forward.

Eliza shoved Cyrus to the side to get to her ?rst, gripping her tightly. The tears she had been ?ghting broke free, and a sob escaped her throat. “He was gone, Eliza,” she whispered. “He was gone, and I was still here.”

“I know, Scarlett,” she whispered back. Scarlett felt the general’s tears mixing with her own.

And gods, her tight hold reminded her of Nuri. Anotherbetrayal she would need to come to terms with. But not right now. She couldn’t think about any of that right now.

“Time to share, Eliza dear,” Cyrus said, but there was none of the usual mirth in his tone.

Eliza stepped back, and Scarlett turned. She and Cyrus stared at each other for the longest moment. Icy blue eyes locked onto golden ones.

“I’m sorry,” Scarlett ?nally said, her voice breaking with emotion. “I’m sorry. I didn’t— I wasn’t thinking when I—”

“Shh,” Cyrus hushed, pulling her into him. “No apologies, Darling,” he whispered.

“He was gone. I didn’t know what I was doing. There was so much... nothing.”

She was crying into his chest, tears once again soaking into his tunic. “I know, Scarlett. I know exactly what you were feeling.”

And how was that fair? How was it fair that she was able to save her twin ?ame, but Cyrus had to live without his every damn day? He deserved so much more than that. He didn’t deserve this pain. He didn’t deserve to have to survive this kind of loss, to live with it day in and day out. She’d barely lasted hours without Sorin. This male had done this for over a decade.

“You are the strongest person I know, Cyrus,” she whispered through her tears.

“I’m not, Darling,” he replied. “I simply do what needs to be done.”

“You are,” she whispered again. “Thank you, Cyrus.”

He squeezed her tighter. “You deserve so much more than what the Fates have dealt you.”

“I am grateful for the things they’ve given me, Scarlett. Even if only for a time,” he replied. Then he pulled back to look into her face. “I think the bigger revelation here is that you just admitted to believing in the Fates.”

“Oh my gods,” she muttered, shoving him slightly away from her with a scowl. “I did not.”

“You totally did.”

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