“Can you hear me?” His voice was raw like the void in Gandrett’s chest where her magic must have been a moment ago—or a lifetime.
A warm hand touched the back of her head, stroking over it so gently she wondered if it could be him. Sobs were breaking the silence otherwise filling the chamber.
With a swimming head, she tried to piece together what had happened—what she had done. The canyon. The collapsing ceiling.
Out. They needed to get out.
Dust and stone pushed into her cheek, cutting into it as she shifted her head to glance up at Armand. She sucked in a breath through gritted teeth.
“Thank Vala.” Armand’s face was above her in an instant, one hand gliding under her neck and shoulders as she rolled to the side in a slow and rocky movement. “I’ve got you.” With some effort, he pulled her up into his arms, cradling her against his chest, shaken by more sobs.
“It’s over,” he whispered in between, arms closing around Gandrett more tightly.
Gandrett just rested there for a moment, letting his rocking movements take her away from the horror of what she had done.
“Linniue?” She shot out of his embrace, nearly hitting her head on his chin, and blinked at the thin lines the tears had cleared along his blood and dirt-smeared cheek.
He shook his head, and Gandrett knew who those tears were for.
“She betrayed my mother. She betrayed me. She betrayed all of us.” His voice hitched.
Gandrett couldn’t tell if she had ever seen someone so broken. Even the children they brought into the priory every year cried from fear, from being homesick—not from the deep-rooted sense of betrayal that shone from the hazel depths of Armand’s eyes.
There were no words that may soothe him, not when the pain was that of a fresh wound to the heart, so Gandrett sat up and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him tightly to her like she used to do with her brother when he was little, like she had done with the new arrivals every spring at the priory. Like she hadn’t been held since the day she’d stopped crying.
Over his shoulder, she could see Linniue’s body draped over the altar, blood streaming from her pierced chest. It hadn’t been Gandrett who had killed her, but Linniue herself who had plunged the dagger into her own heart. What had been her last words? There must be a sacrifice.
Gandrett didn’t dare consider the meaning of Linniue’s words or the consequences of her actions. For now, all she could think of was the broken man in her arms and the sensation of relief as the glowing of the symbols faded and the flickering of the flame of dragon fire above Linniue’s body dimmed.
“We need to get out of here,” Armand reminded her. “And Addie, too.”
Gandrett pulled away, releasing him from her arms to turn and check on Addie.
The girl still lay face down on the ground, but the blue tint on her skin had vanished—as had the frost on the ground.
To Gandrett’s surprise, the icy air had turned warmer, letting her breath leave her mouth and nose unnoticed, no clouds of haze hovering before her face as she exhaled. She glanced over her shoulder and noticed that dragon fire had almost gone out, making it nearly impossible to see.
“Help me.” She grabbed Addie’s legs from the side, waiting for Armand to lift her torso. “Carefully,” she cautioned as the blood on the unconscious girl’s back started to spread on her clothes. “We need to get her out now.”
They didn’t look back as they groped their way along the now lightless tunnel that led back to Armand’s chambers, nor did they wonder about the sudden warm breeze that seemed to wash through the air. All Gandrett could do was put one step after the other, and again and again, until the dim, flickering light of a torch beckoned them from afar.
Her legs almost gave out under Addie’s weight as they stumbled toward the light where a worried Joshua greeted them, rushing to aid them with Addie. Gandrett’s heart started racing in alert anew, and it cost her all her willpower to remind herself that the Joshua who had locked her up and tried to kill her wasn’t this Joshua before her. The man whose emerald eyes were so much like Brax’s and whose hands were reaching out to help rather than hurt. “Take this.” He pushed the torch into Gandrett’s hand at the same moment he reached under Addie’s legs with the other, relieving her of the weight. Gandrett took the torch, and together they headed back toward the hidden passageway that connected Armand’s and Gandrett’s chambers.
“What happened?” Joshua wanted to know, his eyes on Addie’s bloodied dress as he and Armand gently laid her down on the couch. His emerald eyes glanced up at Gandrett, who wasn’t certain if she should be afraid of him or thankful for his help.
As Armand recapped how Gandrett had found the invisible door, how Linniue had brought Addie down into the dragon lair as a vessel for Shygon—a blood sacrifice to buy Joshua power—Joshua listened in silence, his hands busy with the vigilant movements of cutting open Addie’s dress from the shoulder down. He lifted the fabric inch by inch, so slowly that no additional tissue would tear from her wounds, and folded the dress to the sides, leaving her hips and legs covered.
Only when Armand mentioned that Linniue was dead—how she had died—did Joshua pause and look up, deep sorrow shadowing his features. “I wish I had been there to stop her,” was all he said, and there was silent mourning in his movements as he walked to Armand’s bathing chamber.
Armand stepped to her side as she bent over Addie’s back, examining the wounds—bruises with bits and parts of split skin. The horrible evidence of being beaten with a rod.
She swallowed as phantom pain spread on her own back and arms. No more. After she got out of there, after she delivered Joshua to Ackwood and stayed with her family for a year, she would no longer live at the priory. She would be sent on missions all over Neredyn, far away from the place that had scarred her so deeply.
“She is barely breathing,” Armand noted with a huff of exhaustion.
“Don’t you have any of that Dragon Water left?” Gandrett didn’t look up from the array of blooded streaks as if her gaze itself could soothe them.
Without another word, Armand darted from her side and followed Joshua into the bathing chamber from where they emerged together, carrying a bowl and one of Deelah’s flasks, along with a fistful of towels.
Gandrett took a towel from Joshua’s fingers and reached into the bowl before she gingerly dabbed at the wounds, careful not to hurt Addie more than necessary. The girl had suffered enough.
A groan escaped Addie’s lips, flooding Gandrett with relief. She was coming around.
“You’re safe, Addie,” Gandrett told her and placed one hand on the girl’s forearm. “You’ll be fine.”
Armand added a few drops from the flask into the warm water in the bowl, took a piece of cloth himself, and joined Gandrett in her efforts from the other side of the sofa, his eyes cautiously on Addie’s raw back. “She’s lucky to be alive,” he murmured as he got to work, watching as skin slowly knitted itself back together where he touched it with Dragon Water.
When Gandrett studied him as he dabbed along one long slash, she noticed that his hands and face were clean, all traces of those tears gone, but the endless sorrow in his eyes remained.
“Maybe I should clean up, too,” Gandrett realized, a welcome excuse to buy some time to sort her thoughts now that she knew Addie would be all right.