Page 18

Bria

W hen I return from the cellar storeroom, Evander is gone. Ashbel and Quinn appear to be arguing about something, but that isn’t surprising. I hurry into the room and place the bandages on the table in front of them, throwing my hands up.

“Where did he go?” I ask, annoyance lacing my question.

“To bed,” Quinn answers shortly. He doesn’t look at me, keeping his head angled down, staring at the glass in his hands.

I want to ask why—why they let him go when he was so clearly wounded, why they were arguing and stopped when I entered the room. But I have that feeling in the pit of my stomach, the one that tells me I’m to blame for whatever went down in this room while I was downstairs.

“Which is where we all should be,” Ash says, rising from her chair and gathering the dishes from the table.

I watch the two of them for a minute, Ash busying herself, avoiding a conversation, and Quinn continuing to stare at his drink, swirling the melted amber around in a circle.

I may not have been privy to the conversation that occurred in my absence, but their behavior tells me enough.

They are no longer in the mood for company, or at least not mine.

Not even bothering to say goodbye to my sour friends, I grab the bandages and slowly make my way up the creaking stairs.

The exhaustion returns now that I’m not thrumming with adrenaline and it’s seeping into every pore, weighing me down.

The hallway laid out in front of me feels so long, never-ending it seems, as I walk.

But as I near the door to my room, I set the bandages next to Ev’s door, knocking softly before slipping through the entrance to my own room.

No matter what happened, he’s still going to need them tonight and I’m willing to bet whatever sent him out of that room in a hurry will keep him from going back to get them later.

As I ready for bed, I think about his arm and the deep wound. It was clean at least, and I know infection will have no home in his flesh. But I hope he binds it tonight. I wonder what I did to make him leave so abruptly. Did I push too far? Was I too bold in the way I touched him? Probably.

Ash certainly thinks Evander is interested in me, but I’m not so sure now. How could he be? I’m a walking corpse, a nightmare set to leave a path of death and destruction in my wake. I can’t blame anyone for wanting to avoid that. To avoid me.

I drag myself into the bed, not bothering to change my clothes, the fatigue enveloping me as I pull up the thick blankets.

I succumb to the embrace and let my thoughts drift to Nimai again—of her blue-black hair, the way she appeared in the last dream.

At some point my thoughts shift to Evander—the slice in his arm, the slightly tanned skin of his chest flecked with the smooth pink skin of scars.

They bounce back and forth, surging between Nimai and Evander as I try to fall asleep.

And just before I do, I feel warmth flooding through my body.

Pinpricks of heat run along my spine and tingle in my palms, making them itch.

Magic surges through me as my thoughts whirl into dreams and the weariness finally takes over.