Page 66 of Of Nightmares & Fire
“He will be back, but right now, all I care about is making sure you are ok. Can I look at it?” She asks attentively. I wasn't aware I was holding my throat. When I drop my hand, it comes back dripping with blood, and a wave of lightheadedness rolls through me. I thought there was bruising. I didn’t realize I had been bleeding. I look down, and I suck in a breath of shock. The tunic I was wearing is shredded down the front, and my skin beneath is stained crimson.
“I hate to say it, Princess, but if we don't get that healed, Kyros will be the last of your worries.” My eyes lift to Cole as she pleads with me.
“Please, let him go get help.” She takes my bloody hands in hers, and I finally relent. I guess they are right. I will deal with Kyros.
“Fine, but first, can I have water?” I croak, swallowing hard with my raw throat.
“Oh, Divine! Yes.” Cole jumps up and runs across the room, coming back to hand me a metal cup. The cup is cool as she puts it in my hands, and slowly I let the water soothe the ache in my throat.
“I’ll be right back.” Viltarin says before glancing at the door and then back to us. “I will only be a minute.” Cole nods and then starts fussing over me. She took the basin from the corner of the room and moved it to the bedside table and is now wringing strips of cloth in the water. Who knows where she found the cloth? She avoids my eyes as she stays busy.
“Colette?” I quietly call for her attention, and she finally meets my gaze. As soon as she does, I realize why she has avoided it. “Why are you crying?”
“I should have been here. I was not here when you needed me again. Kyros told me not to leave you, and I was just in the hall for a short while. I was right outside your door, and look what happened!” The tears spill over her lashes and run down her cheek.
“There is nothing you could have done to stop this.” I whisper, reaching for her hand and twining our fingers together. She looks down at my blood-soaked chest, and I watch as her jaw clenches and she nods. “This isn’t the first time, and I have a feeling it won't be the last.”
“We have to do something. Maybe there is someone here who can help. They have magick here. They use it openly. Things are not as your father makes the kingdom believe. The people with magick are not the monsters. I mean, I knew that before, but finally seeing it with my own two eyes. It's different.” I can't help but smile at her as she stops rambling. “I’m talking fast.” She says, smiling too.
“I love you, Cole.” I say, tears now beginning to well in my own eyes.
“I love you, too, Astraea. Always.” She takes the fabric strips from the bowl and begins cleaning the wounds on my neck as Viltarin comes striding back into the room, and behind him, Mavros. He looks a bit disheveled and holds a tin jar I recognize as the healing balm.
“Shit.” Mavros curses, the sleepy look on his face vanishing. “You said she got hurt in her sleep. I thought she fucking fell off the bed and got hurt somehow. You look like you were attacked by a fucking animal. What happened?” He asks, taking Cole's place as she stands and backs away. The room was already small, and now with the three of them hovering over me, it feels even smaller. Colette seems to notice and places her hand on Viltarn’s arm where it is folded over his chest.
“We will be right outside. Mavros, yell for us if you need us.” She says, dismissing herself and Viltarin without a backward glance. Mavros keeps his eyes on the wound at my neck. He pushes his sleeves up and shakes his head.
“He’s going to be fucking feral.” Mavros says seriously. I’m taken aback by his tone. It’s so unlike the Mavros I’ve come to know. I don’t have to ask who he means. Kyros has been more than possessive lately.
“Is it ok if I touch you to apply the balm?” He asks as he opens the tin; his pale hair isn’t braided back like it normally is and falls into his eyes as he looks at me, waiting for my response. The spicy scent of the healing balm immediately fills the room, and I’m taken back to a time when I was a child. The memory I couldn’t pinpoint when I first smelled it floods my memory. My brow cinches together as I recall the image of my mother rubbing the same sort of balm over a cut on my elbow. She had pressed her finger to her lips. The corners curved up into a secret smile.“Our little secret, my bright star.”
“Mavros?” I say, and he stops with a scoop of balm on his fingers. “This balm… Can it be prepared by just anyone? Like the ingredients, are they easily accessible?” I ask, and his brows drop.
“I mean, I suppose the balm itself, yea, but the healing properties have to be imbued by a dweller to truly be a Creshian healing balm.” He gestures to my neck, and I lift my chin, allowing him to rub the balm on the wounds there. I know that this is the same smell from when I was a child. Did my mother seek out a dweller, or was she a part of the Neer people? A magick sympathizer?
“Hold still, let me get every mark. Maybe we can get the worst parts healing before Kyros comes back and loses his shit.” He says, blowing air out his cheeks. “Fuck, I don’t see how he’s not going to.”
“I don’t see why, though? There is nothing that could have been done. If he wants to be upset, then he can be upset with himself. The nightmares haven’t been happening when he is around. I think it’s afraid of the magick Kyros pushed back at it.” I say, glaring past Mavros and to the broken door to the room, as though the man we are speaking of may storm through at any moment.
“Kyros pushed magick back?At your nightmare?” He asks warily, dipping his fingers back into the balm and slowly applying more to the wounds. “Like he wasseeingyour nightmare?” He finishes. His face is stern, rigid with concern, and it's confusing to me. I thought that Kyros would have told his brother about this.
“The nightmare creature stabbed him. He—fought him off—with magick. This is the first time the nightmare has returned since.” I say. He is quiet for a moment as he wipes his hands on acloth and secures the lid back over the jar. “And you saw all of this happen?” He asks, and I hesitate. Of course I saw it. What does he mean? “It’s just usually, the dreamer can’t really see us in their dream state, meaning there is a reason you can… or you were awake and your nightmare crossed the threshold of realms.”
Pounding footsteps sound in the hall, and Mavros’ lips purse looking at the wound on my neck like it makes him angry. What he has just said doesn’t make sense to me, but I know nearly nothing about magick or its workings. Kyros using magick around me is the only time I have seen it. Other than stories from drunken men in hushed tones, I wouldn’t know the first thing about details like that.
Mavros’ face is stern as he looks up to the doorway, and I know it's Kyros who approaches. I can feel his presence.
“Shula?” Kyros skids into the doorway; the broken door, pushed further out of the way in his haste to get into the room, falls with a loud bang. I flinch. “Are you—” His words are stopped with a rope of shadow whipping out and twisting around his neck. My eyes go wide as Mavros holds his brother still in the center of the room.
“Mavros?” I say warily, eyes locked to the way Kyros’ coloring deepens from lack of oxygen.
“You failed to mention this whole little nightmare situation, brother. Seems you are keeping secrets from everyone lately… Which one should we delve into first?” Mavros sneers with his lip curled back. His shadows whirl and twist along his skin like churning clouds in a storm. The look of them against Mavro’s pale eyes and hair gives a whole new appearance to the shadow magick. Kyros lifts his hand, fingers splayed wide, and hell in his eyes. When he closes his fist, the shadows all fall away. Mavros’ eyes narrow before he hurls himself at Kyros. The brothers crash to the floor so hard that dust from the wooden floorboards plumes into the air.
“What the fuck?” Viltarin comes to the doorway, Colette right behind him, wide-eyed.
“Stop them!” I call out between their grunts from savage punches and kicks to each other's bodies. Viltarin shakes his head.
“No way. They will stop when they have worked out whatever is going on…” He says with his eyebrows high. “It's been a while since I’ve seen them fight like this.”This is ridiculous. They are fighting, rolling around on the floor like children. I stand up from the bed. My feet are still bare, but at least the pain has subsided in my throat. I stomp over to where Kyros holds Mavros in a headlock, and I put my hands on my hips, staring at him. He looks up, and the man has the audacity to smirk.
