She was nothing. Nobody. Useless. Barely magical at all. Oh, she might have survived the tests and trials of her heritage, but there was no doubt that she was the least powerful Fae I’d ever met. She was trouble wrapped in a delicious package. A danger to me and to my brothers.
“Careful, Sorrell.” Roan’s voice deepened on a growl. “I’m protective of the Changeling, and I don’t like your tone.”
“I’m well aware of your feelings for the girl,” I snapped back. “Don’t let it slip your notice that despite your constant ignoring of my advice—the only voice of reason among us, I might add—I have kept to your deranged plans.” I might have hated it, and I might have called them ridiculous imbeciles, but I would not leave them as they had never left me.
Orion put a restraining hand on Roan’s shoulder when he would have moved forward at the cold tone in my voice. “We don’t have time and this certainly isn’t the fucking place,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet.
I straightened. He was right. I glanced back down the corridor and was thankful that no one had come upon us. My emotions were edging toward precarious unruliness. I gripped the control I wore around me like a well loved cloak and pulled it back from the brink, letting a white mask of cold indifference fall back into place. There was no other way to be in the Court of Frost. And who knew when we’d be able to go back to our Court of Crimson, if we’d ever be able to go back at all.
“Alright,” I said in a clear voice. “Tell me what happened.”
And as they did, I could feel that control I’d hauled back and locked into place slipping just a bit more and more.
Chapter 14
Cress
When my senses slowly began to filter back in, I couldn't focus on anything other than breathing and how much it hurt. I could no longer smell the cold. My nostrils didn't burn from it as they had while we were traveling; so did that mean I was dead? That would really suck if I was dead. Despite my avoidance of said action—dying, that is—I’d always pictured myself old and gray surrounded by heaping plates of food as I drifted off into a long, deep sleep. Yeah, that would’ve been a better way to go. Not being eaten by wild animals.
Then again, would I ache this much if I was dead? A moment later, a low male voice answered my question when a hand settled on my shoulder. “Easy, don't try to move too much. You’re still healing.”
I pried my eyes open and prayed to Coreliath or whoever was listening that I was inside and not having some weird sort of hallucination. Four walls. A ceiling. A bed. It was better than I could have hoped for.
The man appeared in my line of sight and I could tell, just from his clothing and the way that his hands glowed as they moved over my body, that we were in another Fae court—the Court of Frost presumably. Never let it be said that Cressida of Amnestia was an idiot. I could totally figure stuff out on my own. I took a moment to examine the man hovering over me, his brows drawn down in deep concentration. He looked like he had been up all night, and the long white cloak that was wrapped around him was stained with blood. As I stared at those crimson drops, I was reminded that this man was new to me. Where were Roan and Orion? Whose blood was that? Mine or theirs?
I tried to think back. There was the tree and then … the eyes. I shuddered, the motion making an ache spread throughout my limbs. Gods, I was sore. But despite the shudder, my mind replayed the memory again. Waking up to the eyes and the low growls and falling, oh falling, and then my scream as Roan reached for me, his hand barely grazing me—not quite fast enough. Then a white light and nothingness. It didn’t quite make sense.
“You've sustained injuries from your encounter with the bortugals. You're lucky to have survived at all with how little magic you have. The princes are brave indeed for coming to your aid the way they did," the man said, as a movement out of the corner of my eye alerted me to a new figure. A woman with a severe looking face and white-blonde hair—similar to Sorrell’s—stepped forward and began folding down the blankets that were covering me. Cold air assaulted my body, making me break out in goosebumps and shiver where I lay, which only made the ache in my skin that much worse.
“The princes,” I began, swallowing around a dry throat. “Are they okay?”
“For the most part,” the Fae doctor acknowledged. “A few new scars added maybe, but that's the price of taking the lower pass.”
"We fell," I said defensively. I coughed as the air seemed to freeze my lungs.
"So I heard," the doctor replied, his tone sounding both bored and doubtful.
The nurse peeled back some kind of bandages they had put over my stomach and shoulder. Bandages I understood, but the sticky, foul smelling goo underneath? That was a new one. "What is that?"
"A healing balm. Do you not have these in the Court of Crimson?" he asked. His tone sounded bland but curious, and the way he was looking at me … it was like he was searching for any weaknesses he could find, other than the obvious injuries that his fingers were beginning to probe.
“Oh, um, I’m sure they do,” I replied carefully. “But I’ve never needed them.” That much was true because I hadn’t been in the Court of Crimson long enough. No lies there. I honestly had no idea if the Court of Crimson had a healing balm, but I wasn't about to give him an opening by playing ignorant or admitting that I was a Changeling—at least, not until I talked to the guys. They probably had a plan they wanted me to go along with. They always had a plan. Or rather, Sorrell usually did and even if he was an ass, he was an intelligent ass and I would do what Prince Prick wanted me to so long as it kept me alive. I was a giver like that.
I hissed as the doctor touched the tender space around my ribs. "The area has begun to repair, another day with the bandages on and you should be healed,” he said before turning to his nurse. “Her magic will replenish with time and exercise, but the pass seems to have taken most, if not all, of it for the moment. Make a note.”
I winced when he pressed a tender spot once more. His eyes dipped to me for a moment before his probing fingers moved to my shoulder, with a much less gentle touch. I could have been a corpse and received more attention.
"The Queens have requested her presence," a new voice said from the door.
I leaned up as much as I could to see who spoke. Even doing that much sent shooting spikes of agony down my back and sides. Through the pain and some deep breathing I’d once seen a pregnant woman who’d come to the Abbey to give birth do when she was in the middle of her labor, I managed to focus on what was happening around me. A young man stood in the entrance, his hair cut short to his scalp. His cold eyes drifted across the room, settling first on the doctor and nurse and then me. There was fear in his eyes, hidden, but there. And that, combined with the fact that I saw neither Roan nor Orion—I would’ve even taken Sorrell at that moment; for all his grouchiness he was still familiar to me—gave my heart a kickstart. Was I in danger? Had they already found out about Nellie? Or me?
No, no, stop thinking like that, I urged myself. They would’ve sent you straight to the dungeon if that were the case, or you wouldn’t have woken up at all. You’d just be dead.