Page 23 of Queen of Ever

Tarian

Painstruckwithconsciousness.I gasped at the sharp burst of it, radiating along my right arm and back.Then I was coughing violently on the cloud of dirt I’d inhaled, blindly pushing myself up, feeling debris fall away.I broke free, blinked into the dim, dust-choked space around me, where silhouettes of others were stumbling around, or staggering to their feet.An acrid tang of magic lingered, the kind that made my stomach churn and my skin crawl.The pain in my back and shoulder retreated to searing points, spattered like paint.The gnawing ache of them and the dizzy swoop of my head told me they were shards of something lethal, something that would need to be removed if my body was to heal.Probably iron.If it was iron, it’d slowly poison me, and anyone else who’d been hit.My gaze dropped to the floor, catching sight of a shiny brass button separated from its coat as I tried to wade through the fog of shock.I’d been at court.In the palace.With Briyala and…

Arun.

I fell to my knees again, clawing at the wreckage, fingers raw against jagged rock, my heart pounding as I uncovered a flash of blue fabric, a lapel missing its button.

I think I was speaking, but I didn’t know what I was saying as I cleared the rubble away from that coat and found it riddled with holes, the blue stained dark around them.I might have just been repeating the word ‘no’ over and over.

The world narrowed down to a rushing sound in my ears and the slick feel of blood on my fingers and the grey pallor of Arun’s skin as I uncovered his face.

There was no expression on it.No kind, long-suffering smile.No words of calm reason to soothe the hungry, black despair writhing in my chest, holding my breath hostage.I wanted to turn his face to me, but I couldn’t touch him.I was afraid to put my fingers to his skin when they were so cold with magic.Already, the pieces of rubble I tried to clear were crumbling, eroding with it.

‘Help.Someone help me get him up,’ I called to no one, my voice hoarse and strange.

His eyes stared straight ahead, fixed on the ceiling.Glassy and unfocused.No one home.Gone far away, where I could no longer reach.

Leaving me behind.

‘Tarian.’

I didn’t look up, just held my vigil over him, my hands clenched tight in my lap, my knees throbbing from kneeling.Maybe I’d been there a while.My body was shaking.

‘Come away, Tarian.’

For a moment, the queen’s hand on my arm didn’t revolt me.For a moment, I forgot who she was and what she’d done to me.She was just my mother, and I let her draw me to my feet.She was dusty, her hair ruffled, but looking otherwise unharmed, and there was a strange, unfamiliar gentleness to her eyes.She brushed away a track of tears I didn’t know I’d cried.

‘Don’t mourn him,’ she said softly.‘It was his job to die for you.’

The words jolted me from my trance in a burning wave of fury.

‘Get off me,’ I snarled, wrenching my arm away and stumbling backwards, wanting to put as much distance between us as I could.

‘You are a prince,’ she said.She seemed too calm, standing in the wreckage of her court with a body at her feet.‘You don’t have time to fall to pieces now.They’ll all be looking to see how you handle this.’

I couldn’t look at her.I staggered away, coughing again, holding onto that rage with a slither of relief for the way it blotted out the despair.Fuck her.Fuck the court.Fuck the stars for letting her live while Arun…

I couldn’t even think the word.

All around me, others were pulling themselves from the wreckage.Everywhere was the smell of iron.Fae blood didn’t smell of iron.It was sweet, slightly sickly.I could smell that, too.The pain in my back and shoulder became a sparkling, piercing burn that I preferred to the despairing pit in my chest, so I focused on it, relished in it, almost welcomed the way it began to claw its way through me for the distraction until I found myself on my knees in the rubble again, head spinning, coughing up bile as shards of glass cut into my palms.

Footsteps picking through the rubble.A pair of winged black boots were before me.Stupidly bright with polish.

‘Well, I’ve seen you in better condition.But possibly in worse too.Don’t know what that says about you.’Despite the words, Vesryn’s voice was unsteady.Nothing like his usual drawl.He scooped his hands beneath my arms.‘Come on, now, can’t stay here, the place is falling down.On three.One… two…’

I grit my teeth, hissing a breath as he forced me to stand and the pain flared bright again, sinking deeper into my flesh, like the iron shards in my body were burrowing their way down to my bones.Ves yanked me away as another piece of rubble crashed to the ground where I’d been kneeling.

‘Briyala?’I managed as we staggered forwards.

‘What about her?’

‘Is…she still… buried?’I could hardly get my tongue to form words.It took most of my focus to stay conscious.

‘How the fuck am I supposed to know?It was pure luck I tripped over you.’

‘Find her...we can’t…’

‘What a bright idea, princeling.While I’m at it, I’ll go fetch the queen and Arun and half the High Council and you can bleed over all of them at once.How about you let me do the ideas and you save your idiot hero act for when you aren’t dying.’

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