Page 111 of Slaying the Shadow Prince
‘They need us…’ Talemir murmured, his eyes falling back to the orchids he’d been tackled into.
‘Yes, brother. They do.’
And Talemir realised, heart soaring, that it had not been a random patch of those flowers, but an entire field. Tugging on his riding gloves, he snatched up a handful, tearing them by their roots. Suddenly, nothing else existed for him. He whistled and his stallion came cantering towards him; it had barely stopped when he swung himself up into the saddle.
Wilder was grinning almost manically, his teeth still bloody. ‘Let’s go slay some monsters.’
But as they started back to the camp, an icy sweat broke out over Talemir’s skin. He let out a moan of pain as he doubled over, spots blurring his vision.
‘Tal?’ Wilder’s voice was distant. ‘Tal?’
Talemir wanted to reply, wanted to tell him he would fight until his last breath against the wraiths, to save Drue, to save them all. But sharp agony, low and deep in his gut, robbed him of speech, of all senses.
He slid from the saddle.
Suddenly, he was back at Islaton, surrounded by a circle of white stones and a swarm of monsters.
Therheguld reaperwas reaching into his chest all over again, piercing his heart —
27
Drue
‘Drue!’ The voice carved through the night, forcing her upright on her bedroll. ‘Drue!’
Her name was laced with desperation, urgency.
She shot out of her tent in time to see Wilder Hawthorne riding into camp, the dying campfires illuminating a body hanging over his horse in front of him, a riderless stallion in tow.
Talemir.
Drue broke into a run.
Heart hammering, she skidded to a stop as Wilder swung down from his saddle, and she helped him pull Talemir’s unconscious body from the horse.
‘What happened?’ she managed, taking in the sight of his sweat-slicked brow and his ashen complexion. His handsome face sported a range of bruises and cuts.
Together, they lay him down on the damp grass. He was shaking beneath their touch.
‘I don’t know…’ Wilder said, his breaths coming short and fast. ‘One minute he was talking to me. We were on our way back to you, to help, but then he collapsed.’ Wilder ran a panicked hand through his hair. ‘We fought. Hard. It could be an internal injury. I could have done this.’
Drue was patting down Talemir’s body for any sign, any clue as to what was going on. He wasn’t bleeding anywhere; no bones seemed broken.
She removed his riding gloves. Nothing but split knuckles.
But she froze as she spotted the skin beneath the collar of his shirt. There, his beautiful olive complexion was marred with a network of fine white lines.
Feeling nauseous, she skimmed a hand over his breast pocket, and pulled the familiar flask from his jerkin. It was far lighter than she expected. She shook it. Nothing.
Yanking off the cork, she sniffed its contents.
‘Monster tonic,’ she muttered, tipping it upside down, only to see a single drop leave the vessel.
‘What?’ Wilder asked, bewildered.
‘He was taking this – a tonic prepared by one of your alchemists at Thezmarr,’ she explained, not taking her eyes off her fallen Warsword. ‘I don’t know how much he was meant to be taking, but leading up to the skirmish with the raiders, I noticed him drinking a lot more. A lot more than seemed right.’ She pointed to the strange marks on Talemir’s neck. ‘It was causing this.’
Wilder put his face in his hands. ‘How could I not have known? How —’
