Page 7 of Oracle of Ruin

I wrap my fingers around his wrist and he steps back to allow me to stand. The cool air assaults my skin and speckles it with gooseflesh. The sheen of sweat coating my body does nothing for the chill, and accepts the cold instead. This is our routine. I have a night terror that wakes up the whole camp, Rowan is there helping me, and then we all pretend like nothing happened the next morning.

In the beginning, it was different. Everyone would rush into my tent to find me screaming in my bed, thrashing as if fighting off an invisible enemy. They gave me my own tent back then, trying to allow me space to process. After a week of the same thing happening, Rowan moved in with me, and when the nightmares ceased, he would be there with a bucket and soothing smile. He doesn’t ask questions—he made that mistake the first few nights, but now he helps wordlessly.

A breeze brushes against my feverish skin, slick with sweat. I use the rag to wipe down my arms before placing it on the back of my neck and tilting my head back.

The blond mercenary before me watches for permission before helping me step out of my pants. Once free of the soaked garment, he carefully helps clean my legs as well, then removes his shirt and hands it to me. Gratefully, I slip out of my shirt and into his, sighing when the fabric graces the middle of my thighs. I used to turn around, embarrassed and afraid of what Rowan might think. Now I just don’t care.

No one has said anything to me. I know Kya and Rowan don’t allow them to, but it is hard not to notice how my body has begun to waste away these past few months. Where I used to boast muscle and soft curves, there is now nothing but hollow shapes and protruding bones. I struggle to keep up when on the run and know that if my powers and pureblood strength weren’t coursing through my blood, I would have fallen behind months ago.

I look as if I died in that palace and they dragged my corpse from the rubble.

Perhaps I did.

Rowan interlaces his fingers through mine as he walks back to his own bed and I follow closely behind. He sits first, propping his back up against the makeshift headboard Derrín made for each of us. I crawl in after him, settling between his legs with my back against to his chest. He presses a slow kiss to my temple, then pulls the covers up around us.

His heartbeat thuds against my skin, a slow rhythm that lulls my mind to comfort. I sigh as his arms wrap around my midsection, and bury my face in the crook of his neck.

“Will you remind me, please?” I whisper, my voice hoarse both from slumber and sickness. I don’t need to elaborate for the mercenary to know what I mean.

Rowan flinches as my warm breath tickles his neck, but he nods. His fingertips press patterns against my side as we settle in. “When someone is used as a sacrifice for dark magic, the magic consumes their body. There is nothing left of them after the process is completed. They are completely erased from existence.” He inhales deeply. “There was nothing left of her to be turned into a Kijova.”

I hum sleepily. We never talk about Tanja unless we are alone. Emilie told me that the day Blaine found out Tanja was dead was the day he nearly drank himself to meet her. They found him convulsing in a puddle of his own bile, four empty bottles lining the wall behind him. We all know he blames himself just as much as I blame myself. Between his drinking and my night terrors, we have all resolved to never speak of her.

There are a few exceptions to that—nights like these, for example, when I beg Rowan to remind me that she hasn’t been turned into a monster. It is a sick form of comfort, but he provides every time.

However, the thought of her being completely erased from existence has never sat well with me either. How could someone go from being so light, filling each room she wandered into, to having no place in this world at all? How could she be here one moment and then gone the next? It isn’t fair. None of it is.

I bite back the sob that threatens to form in my throat. I haven’t cried since that day, and I refuse to start now. It was my weakness that placed that dagger in her heart. I won’t let it take anyone else from me.

Sensing the well of emotion rising, Rowan tightens his grip and adds, “She’s at peace. Her soul lives on. It lives in you.” It is the most anyone has spoken of her in months, and his voice threatens to break. She had been a sort of friend to him too.

Someday, I hope to believe him, but I can’t. Not now. Not while my every moment is haunted by the sounds of her screams, the image of her slit throat, her death rattle of a breath as she told me to run.

I squeeze my eyes shut and grip Rowan’s shirt in my hands, causing the fabric to ride up my thighs. The mercenary pulls it down and lifts his fingers to my hair. He toys with the strands, listening to the hitch of my breath to know if he pulls or catches a hair. My muscles begin to relax and the bile lowers in my throat.

“You can sleep,” he murmurs, his voice softly caressing the outer shell of my ear. “I’ll be here all night, and forever.”

“Forever? I like the sound of that,” I offer with a small laugh.

Being with Rowan is comfortable and safe. Even as my world fell apart, he was the one I went searching for. He was the one to bandage my wounds and carry me to these mountains as the Kijova chased us from the palace. We came together quickly, and yet it feels as if he has always been there.

Yet he never told me about Blaine. He lied about who he was, even if I did the same. Our relationship was essentially built on a lie. That small voice in the back of my head is screamingdangerandslow down, but I can’t. I need him, now more than ever.

Even as we talk in hushed whispers, the heavy hand of sleep pulls at my consciousness. I still have tomorrow. I can think of the consequences of the world tomorrow. I allow my eyes to flutter shut and welcome the darkness of unconsciousness with open arms.

Chapter4

Rowan

The warmth pressed against my side is my only reminder of Vera’s presence throughout the night. She feels so frail—no, so close to slipping away and never coming back. She murmurs occasionally, or calls for either Tanja or Torin. My own heart shatters with each of her cries while I lay here, helpless to stop it. All I can do is offer a warm body to hold her, and empty, placating words for comfort.

She hasn’t slept well in months, and the lack of sleep and her inability to keep food in her stomach has been detrimental to her health. Jutting bones have replaced her hip dips, and perpetual dark circles halo the undersides of her eyes—her personal fallen crowns.

Yet aside from the state of her physical health, I worry about the war in her mind the most—the images that plague her in both the dream and waking worlds that I am powerless against. Her laughter—a sound I would die to hear again—is a rarity these days, and even then, it sounds hollow. Empty. A death rattle from her ribs.

She doesn’t joke with Kya and Derrín like she used to. She doesn’t pick fights with Amír as often, or point out the beauty of trivial things to me. She’s a shell of the woman I fell in love with, and yet I keep hoping… My fingers tangle in her hair, mussing the indigo strands until her soft whimpers subside.

Hope is a dangerous game. It is only a hurt you inflict upon yourself. I’ve seen this path before with my own mother and father, seen how their story ends. A part of me wonders if Vera and I are wandering down the same path, and yet…

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