Page 89 of Fated In Forever
Especially not the stillness behind my ribs.
The emptiness in that deep well at my center that didn’t have a bottom.
Sometimes I felt hands—warm and careful—tending me. A cloth across my brow. Fingers at my pulse. Someone whispering my name, over and over again, like a broken prayer.
Blake.
He never said much these days, except for my name. But I knew the callused roughness of his palm like it was my own, the angry breath he held before releasing it all in a rushing sigh. Sometimes he pressed his forehead to mine, like we used to. Sometimes he just sat beside the bed and held my hand like he was waiting for something.
Riordan was quieter still.
He would creep in, dragging along a mantle of guilt, his magic brushing over me, careful and steady, commanding me towake up. But I couldn’t, then his guilt turned to sorrow and his steadiness turned to desperation and as much as I wanted to reach out and touch his hand and tell him it would all be okay, my body no longer followed my brain’s instructions.
Something was terribly wrong.
I could feel the wrongness, buried beneath the layers of magic and silence and dreams.
There were flashes. Not memories, not quite—more likeflares. Pain. Deep, radiant, all encompassing. It came like lightning behind my eyes, and I would sob against the onslaught bruising my insides—then the world would flood with cool relief. Spells. Elixirs. Shadows of comfort, becausethe pain always returned, carving out that place beneath my heart, a little at a time.
And always,always, the voices returned.
“...too much magic…”
“…separated too long…”
“…nothing we can do…”
“You need to prepare yourselves…”
“She’s dying.”
I wasn’t supposed to hear that last part, but I did, Blake muttering something wicked enough to make me cringe, and a door slammed, then the room was empty for a long time before he came back, his feet scraping the floor.
This was an unraveling in the marrow of my bones.
In the hollows between heartbeats.
In the electric impulses between my thoughts and the next wave of pain, in the second between waking and sleeping. Something so elusive, that even I—a prisoner in my own body—couldn’t pinpoint what, exactly was broken.
I was falling apart.
And nobody could fix me.
I dreamed of black castles and red lightning. Of silken sheets and amber eyes. Of big, taloned hands that were impossibly gentle and golden chains that made me feel safe. Of a midnight voice whispering across a sea of shifting sand.
But I couldn’t hold onto a single thought long enough for anything to make sense.
All I knew…something wasgone.
And I had no idea how to find what I’d lost, or even where to start looking.
42
BLAKE
Ihad never known silence could be so goddamned loud.
Beneath us, all around us, Laith Castle hummed with activity. Hundreds of guards, and visitors, and members of the Shadowsend royal house heads coming and going. Rowan Forge held daily audiences, Finn had a security briefing every morning, Nash had moved most of our personnel here, along with Sylvester.
