Page 15 of Amethyst and Iron
He laid his hand over mine. “I know. I know, Lazriel.”
I grimaced and blinked away the emotion welling in my eyes. “We don’t trade lives, okay? Do you hear me? So if that’s something you’re planning to—”
My words caught in my throat as we rounded a piece of roof wreckage, and I caught sight of Velra and Cassius two hundred feet in the distance.
Shit.She’d been blown really far from the wreckage. That would have been incredibly damaging all on its own, and then if her brother had attacked further like Victor had alluded to… fuck me.
“There,” I told Sylas, pointing in the distance.
I grabbed his hand, then sped us the rest of the way to them.
As we came to a jarring stop, my stomach lurched.
Cassius was unconscious in a heap beside Velra, one of his palms flickering intermittently with his white power. I couldhear his heart beating, so hewasjust unconscious and not… worse. Although, his pulse was worryingly weak.
And her?
Shit…I couldn’t… it was bad. Really fucking bad.
“Motherfucker,” Sylas uttered on a strained breath.
Her beautiful face was a canvas of lacerations and bruises. There was a nasty gash in her head, blood oozing over her face and even into her eyes. The grass all around her was stained and soaked. Her top was lifted up on her left side and I saw Cassius’ magical mark there, where he’d obviously tried to heal her but had been too pained and weak to manage it. Maybe it had been what had knocked him out. The wound was so horrific it looked like her side had been blown open. The blood loss was beyond severe.
That would have been recoverable for a supernatural being, but things were worse than even that.
The dagger protruding from her heart made that terrifyingly clear.
Especially as I scented it and identified the blade as being made of iron.
I darted forward in the next second and ripped the accursed thing out, crushing it to kindling in my hand with a fearsome growl.
And then I tore into my wrist with my fangs that were still dropped after the Victor Halrow situation, hurriedly cradled Velra against me, then fed her my blood.
“Fuck, Lazriel! The toxicity! You have open wounds and now you have her blood all over you!”
“I don’t care.”
“Her heart isn’t beating. It therefore can’t carry your blood through her body to actually heal her. And I can’t restart it with a shock of magic. Not in this case. It’s not that simple.”
Sylas dropped to his knees, his pants being soaked by the blood all over instantly like mine. He lifted the front of her top and we both gasped as we saw the site of her Soul Brand that aligned with her abdominal center, near her belt line.
“She’s not dead,” he assured me, gesturing at Cassius’ now flickering white line still being crossed by a faint trace of black flecks.
“Her shadow magic.”
He nodded. “Her Wraith side.”
As much as I didn’t want to, I eased back from her, then hauled Cassius up instead and started feeding him my blood.
“So she activated it before the dagger plunged into her heart and it’s… what… holding off death? It must just be slightly because I can’t hear or feel her pulse.”
“She’s at the edge of the Veil. For now.”
“For now? What the shit does that mean?”
“She’spartWraith. While that aspect can technically straddle the line between life and death, a Dark Fae cannot.”
“You’re saying she’s trapped?”
