Page 26 of A Warrior's Fate

“Isla…Isla!”

Disconnected.

It felt like someone had gone at Isla’s body with a sledgehammer. Like she’d been broken apart, shattered, and put back together piece by piece but the wrong way. Everything was heavy. Her head, her legs, her arms.

Her arm. Goddess, her arm hurt.

Isla’s eyelids, like all else, felt like lead as she peeled them open. A light overhead greeted her promptly, piercingly bright and making her wince. Her mouth felt like sandpaper. She groaned, a dull ache rising in her chest.

Where the hell was she?

This wasn’t the Wilds. It couldn’t have been.

The scent of sulfur, though lingering, had diminished. Breathing felt too easy—so much so that she had to check herself to keep from gasping down too much of the fresher air. And the earth didn’t sink beneath her feet.

Actually, her feet weren’t on the ground at all.

She chanced another glance upwards, squinting against the glare.

White—everything above was white, but she wasn’t dead. Death shouldn’t have felt like this. Heavy and painful.

Isla turned her head sluggishly to the side, only able to process bare minimum information; the observable details.

No, she wasn’t dead but was in a room as monochrome as the ceiling. The walls, similar to the rest of the area, were barren, save one dull gray-cast portrait of what looked to be a lake. There was a single cabinet and a sink, both white. And then, what held her attention the longest, a window, the panes painted an eggshell that seemed to overlook miles and miles of forest. But she was sick of seeing trees, even if these ones were teeming with life. She was more evoked by the sunlight spilling through the glass, casting sunflower beams across the plain tile floor.

This definitely wasn’t the Wilds.

Isla drew her eyes over the ivory gown she donned, following the cloth down to her blanket-covered legs and then over to something that startled her.

She wasn’t alone. A man was at her bedside, sitting in one of the few items of some vibrancy. The cobalt chair was pulled up against the mattress, enough so that he was able to rest his forearms and head beside her. His face was turned away, but Isla could recognize his silhouette from anywhere.

Dragging over a shaky hand, she whacked Adrien across the head, maybe a little retribution for the multiple times he’d pissed her off recently. The hit was frustratingly weak, barely enough to displace his dark tresses. She followed it with a hoarse and painful, “Hey.”

Thankfully, it didn’t take much to jostle the Heir.

Adrien snapped up, though still half-asleep. Lids narrow, he let out a grumble and stretched as if he’d forgotten this wasn’t his bed back in the grand estates of Io, and just…wherever they were.

As he scanned the subdued décor for an assailant, he skipped directly over her still frame.

“Good morning.”

At the rasp, Adrien’s gaze darted over, his eyes wide as if he were seeing a ghost. “Holy shit, you’re awake!”

Isla cringed at the volume.

“Not so loud. Goddess,” she chided, but the corners of her mouth still slid up.

“How do you feel?” Adrien didn’t miss a beat in his urgency.

How did she feel…what a loaded question. Though in every sense, she could sum it up the same way. “Like hell.”

“You look it.”

Isla snorted, bringing about more nagging pain with the jolt of her ribs. “Asshole.”

His intentions were not lost, judging by his smile, and she welcomed the small sense of normalcy. She wanted—needed—to relish in whatever ignorant bliss she could.

With every moment her eyes were open, every second she spent back in the realm of consciousness, her sense of reality rematerialized.

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