Page 96 of Royal Captive
I gazed down at the dying female, undecided.
“Ellis! Please! She took care of me when we first got here. She was kind to me. She could tell us more about the rebels.Please.” Eve’s desperate face looked up at me, her eyes begging me to make it better. Fear and anxiety shot through my veins. I didn’t know if I could. Back home, I’d been the black sheep of my family—the one who’d brought shame to our name. How could Eve look at me like that, as though I were the hero in her fantasy world? It wasn’t right. I was no hero. I hadn’t been able to keep her safe; others had done that. If anything, Eve was my hero.
Still, I couldn’t ignore the desperate plea in her eyes to make it right. It might not matter in the grand scheme of things, but it was real.
Without another word of protest, I grabbed a rock and heaved it away. The female twitched, pain etched across every inch of her face.
“Don’t bother. Nowhere is safe,” the female whispered, her lips barely moving. If we didn’t free her soon, she’d likely die. Even the fae had their physical limits, it seemed.
Eve kept looking at me with that same pleading and desperate need for me to make it all right. I didn’t know what else to do, so I dug deep and pulled the magick that was lying dormant in my veins, like a sleeping cat waiting to pounce.
“Eve, get down.”
I pulled the heat forward from my magick and pushed it into the rocks as hard as I could just as she ducked.
BANG.
A few rocks around us exploded, and the female shrieked with fear, but only a few bits of shrapnel pelted us on our arms and face. The largest rock pinning the female shifted and changed, melting down into a black, porous type of rock. I drew back as I neared the end of my strength, reluctant to give it all if I didn’t need to.
Tentatively, I reached out and touched the black rock, surprised my fingers weren’t burning. Grasping it in my fingers, I pulled it toward me, and it rolled it off her. The heat hadchanged its properties, turning it into something much lighter; a porous stone with little mass.
Eve’s horrified gasp drew my eyes down.
The female’s leg was unrecognizable just below her thigh: a twisted mess of flesh and bone in a pool of congealed, dark blood. An idea came to my mind.
“Leave me,” the female pleaded. “I—”
“Shut up,” I snarled, knowing I needed to do it before I lost my nerve. I summoned the scraps of magick left that I hadn’t used up and pushed my hand down on the worst part of the wound, where her leg hung on by barely a sinew mid-thigh.
She screamed as fire shot through my fingers, scalding her flesh and cauterizing the wound. Behind me, Eve screamed as well, but I didn’t stop. This was the only way I might save this female’s life. The scent of burning flesh filled the air and I breathed through my mouth to block out the smell.
Thankfully, she passed out.
Glancing down, relief went through me as the bleeding had stopped. I wasn’t sure what to do about the mangled, dangling part of her lower leg, however. I wasn’t a healer. I didn’t even know how to treat a cut from a piece of parchment!
“C-carry her. I’ll … I’ll hold her leg.” Biting her lips and with her face as white as a sheet, Eve grasped the bloodied leg as I gently lifted the female in my arms. We moved together to keep the leg attached and not jostled as best we could. Her face was as white as the female fae’s, but she swallowed her fear and marched on.
My proud, brave queen.
I glanced around helplessly. We were in the middle of a war zone. Fae and humans and half breeds alike screamed and ran, nobles fleeing their homes as the people rioted and fell upon the castle.
“I don’t think the castle is the place to go,” I muttered.
Eve nodded.
“If the barrier is open, let’s just go home,” Eve suggested, her voice strained. “We can take her with us unless we find Shyllon or someone else to help.”
“Do you know where the barrier is?” I asked.
She shook her head, and my heart sank. With a hiss of pain, she stopped suddenly, clutching the mark on her neck that asshole fae had given her. Al-ah-asshole, or something like that.
BOOM.
A building twenty feet away exploded in shrapnel as more lightning hit, raining rocks and debris down onto us.
Right, we definitely couldn’t stay here.
“North,” croaked out a voice.
