Page 66

Story: Blood Rains Down

I could feel Andrues’s heart pounding wildly inside its cavity, pumping furiously as the beating of my own did not come fast enough. I tried to focus on the sound in my head, the sound that muscle made when pushing and pulling blood away from my chest, but the ocean I usually heard rushing there was silent.

Every one of my senses began to flee from my body as I sank deeper into the darkness the world around me was beginning to drown in.

Ice ran through my blood as consciousness crashed back into my body and my limbs thrashed in water I didn’t remember getting in.

My head broke the surface and my lungs gasped for air as Andrues hands clasped both sides of my head, his thumbs digging into my temples. His eyes went wholly white as he chanted three words in a language I did not recognize.

He dropped his hands as soon as the words left his lips, the deep blue seeping back into his irises as I leaned over the lip of the bath and vomited.

Andrues knelt beside me, his muscles clenched tight, his breath heavy as he watched me lean back into the bath and rest my head against the copper walls.

Sucking in a sharp breath, I forced myself to look at him and shame exploded through every vessel coiling under my skin.

“What did you take?” he asked slowly. I could hear it in the wavering at the edges of his voice—the fear that hid behind the rumble of his timbre.

“Nothing,” I snapped, turning my gaze away from his as I tried to hide the crimson that was flooding my face.

This was none of his business.

He shouldn’t have even been here, should have never been in my quarters in the first place.

“Ataliia.” Andrues dragged a hand over his face, and as I watched his bare chest flex with the movement, I suddenly felt very aware of my naked body on display.

I resisted the urge to pull my knees to my chest to cover myself.

I had never been self-conscious of my body, never cared who saw it—but there was something about the look in his eyes, like he could see the turmoil swirling just underneath my breasts that made me want to hide every inch of myself from him.

“I tried waking you for fifteen minutes before your eyes finally opened and your screaming ceased,” he said, taking in a deep breath as his voice softened. “I am a necromancer, Ataliia, and a healer. I could sense the death that was coming for you and Iknow an overdose when I see one. I just need to know what it is you took so I can give you a tonic to remove the remnants of it from your system.”

I wanted to tell him to fuck off—scream at him that it was none of his business and to get the hell out of my chambers.

But I didn’t have it in me to hate him.

I didn’t have the energy to hate anyone other than myself.

Cin was right, Ardanwouldbe ashamed of me, disgusted that I had let myself become this vessel of rotting flesh.

My eyes began to sting and I cursed the tears that rolled down my cheeks, but for the first time since holding his limp, bloody body in my hands, I didn’t try to stop them.

I lay there in silence, buried in the ice water that felt scalding against the frost running through my veins, and stared at the wall across from me. Andrues’s features softened as he watched the tears stream down my face and he reached out a tentative hand, brushing a strand of dark, wet hair from my forehead.

The gentleness in his touch broke something inside of me, cracking open the walls I had so carefully constructed. A strangled sob escaped my lips as I met his worried eyes.

“It was just supposed to help me sleep—to stop the nightmares,” I whispered through the tears. “I just want to sleep, I want to sleep without . . . without seeing his face every time I close my eyes.”

Understanding dawned on Andrues’s face as he leaned further back onto his heels, his shoulders falling slightly. Sorrow flickered behind his eyes as they met mine.

That was the look.

The sight that I couldn’t stand to see.

The pity his gaze held made my intestines twist around each other.

I was pathetic.

“What did you take?” Andrues asked again, his voice firmer this time.

“A tonic; I don’t know what it was,” I answered, my voice barely audible over the lapping of the water against the sides of the tub.

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