Page 66 of Blood King, Part I (Crowns #4)

Chapter fifty-two

A heavy beating thrummed in his ears. Or maybe it was throbbing.

Loud. Everything was so loud. And painful. In his head, in his chest, throughout his body. It was as if he were being crushed and pulled apart at the same time.

“Cyrus!” Everan’s voice called to him. Was it Everan’s voice?

Cyrus couldn’t see. He couldn’t speak.

Essandra replied, but he couldn’t understand her words.

“Cyrus!” Everan called again.

He couldn’t answer.

Then came the fire—creeping over his shoulders and down his back. He tried to scream but couldn’t.

It spread. Around his sides and up his chest. Scorching. Searing. Scalding.

“Why is he so hot? His skin is burning.”

“Don’t touch him,” Essandra ordered.

Cyrus knew what it was. It was a pain he hadn’t forgotten. She was giving him more markings—the same as she’d done in the arena. Staves , she’d called them. She’d said it was to keep the power from killing him.

The burn spread farther, down his arms to meet the markings he already bore from his wrists to his elbows, and up his neck, choking him in a collar of fire. If the cursed bonding wasn’t going to kill him, these markings surely would…

But then a cool settled over him.

His lungs filled with air, and he gasped desperately for it.

“Is it working?” Everan asked.

“I think so,” Essandra replied. “But I don’t know how effective the staves are when placed afterward.”

“You should have given them to him before you did this,” Everan snapped.

Slowly, his body started to respond to him. Cyrus was finally able to suck in a full breath, despite the stabbing pain that still clawed his chest. His arms, his legs—the skin pulled tight, threatening to split as he shifted.

“He’s moving,” Everan said. “Cyrus. Cyrus, can you hear me?”

He blinked his eyes open. Gradually, things came to him. He lay on the stone floor of the throne room. It was cool against his skin, and he desperately wanted to stretch across it. He reached up and squeezed his temples, where a pulsing pain refused to relent.

Essandra knelt over him. “Cyrus? Can you hear me? Can you stand?”

“I don’t know,” he rasped, testing his voice. He rolled to his side.

“Easy,” Everan said, reaching for him, but Essandra pushed him back.

“I said don’t touch him! The power is unstable.” Despite her warning to others, her hand gripped his shoulder.

Cyrus pushed himself up and tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t hold him, and he dropped back to his knees.

Essandra caught him, still barking at Everan—who was desperate to help—to back up. She shouldered herself under his arm and pushed him up as he tried again. This time, he made it, although he swayed unsteadily.

Warmth trickled down his upper lip, and the taste of metal filled his mouth.

“He’s bleeding again,” Brant said.

Pain pierced his skin, just below his chest, and he groaned. More markings.

“Stop doing that!” he snarled. It took nearly all his energy to speak.

“Your body’s overwhelmed by the power,” Essandra told him. “You’re supposed to have some natural protection, but it doesn’t seem to be very strong, if it’s even working at all.”

He didn’t even know what that meant. “It hurts” was all he could say.

“Where?” she asked. Her own breaths came in pants now, under the strain of his weight.

“Everywhere.” But especially where she marked him.

“Get Teron,” Everan said.

“Teron can’t help him,” Essandra said. “Not with this.” She gripped him tighter. “You need to rest,” she told Cyrus. “Let’s get you back to your chamber.”

With only Essandra helping him, the walk to his chamber felt like an eternity.

She warded off Everan and Brant more times than he could count.

When they reached the three-stair landing that joined the throne hall to the main hall, Cyrus stumbled, nearly dropping them both to the stone floor.

But she caught him. Gods, she was strong.

They reached his chamber. Essandra helped him stagger to the bed, then she dropped him onto it. Cyrus’s entire body protested, and he groaned again.

“He needs to rest,” she said as she waved off Everan and Brant.

“We’ll wait,” Everan told her.

Brant added, “We’ll be quiet.”

“You’ll be waiting a long time, then,” she said shortly. “This will put him out for a while.”

“It’s all right,” Cyrus told them through labored breaths. “You can go.”

“I’ll send for you when he wakes,” she assured them.

Everan sighed, and Brant frowned, but they finally acquiesced and shuffled out of the room.

Essandra moved back to the bed and took a seat on the edge beside him.

Another trickle of warmth came from his nose, and he wiped it. More blood. “You’re killing me, woman,” he told her.

Worry lined her brow. “I’m afraid I actually might be.” She put her hand on his chest, and the searing pain came again.

Cyrus twisted and snarled through his teeth. “No more!”

“Trust me, they’re helping you.”

They didn’t feel like they were helping him. But as the pain abated, his body relaxed. The weight in his chest lessened.

Essandra moved to the side table, where she poured a little water from a pitcher into a basin. She dipped a clean linen into it, then wrung it out. Stepping back to the bed, she took a seat on the edge again and started to wash the blood from his face.

Inside him felt like a maelstrom. If there was a bond that came from her touching his blood, he couldn’t feel it because of the noise. He tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down.

“The staves augment your natural protection to keep you from being consumed by your power,” she told him. “But your shield seems… defective.” She thwarted his effort to sit up again. “As is your brain if you think you’re going to do anything but rest right now,” she added. “Stay down.”

“Why don’t you need markings?” He wasn’t sure if he’d asked a coherent sentence. A deep tiredness pervaded him.

“I draw the power of the Aether through you, which means your body takes the consuming chaos. I also have the protection of my magic. Unlike a seer’s power, a witch’s magic is protective magic.” She paused. “Well, most of it is. Dark magic isn’t.”

Finished with the wet cloth now, she dropped it onto a small pile of clothing beside the bed. But she didn’t get up. He hoped she wouldn’t. He didn’t want her to go. Perhaps she felt it. She brushed the hair from his brow. His eyelids grew heavier.

“Does that mean the Aether is dark magic?” he asked.

She paused for a moment. “Some people think so. Some kingdoms ban seers who are able to draw from its power.”

Her hand rested on his chest. Her warmth permeated his skin. He let his eyelids drop closed as her sweet scent filled his nose. He breathed her in. She said something else, but he didn’t hear it.

They attacked from all directions, a flurry of swinging swords. It was a battle the likes of which he’d never seen before. Not a battle—a war.

Havoc roiled around him, sprawling the rocky terrain like fields sown with violence.

Silent violence.

Snow covered the ground, but it was stained red by the dead and dying.

So many dead and dying.

But so many still fighting.

Shadowmen surrounded him. They didn’t see him, and Cyrus moved through them like a phantom. They fought against an opposing army at the base of a mountain stronghold, an army he didn’t recognize.

Then he froze.

Brant battled a Shadowman with a fury and desperation Cyrus had never seen from his friend—his face twisted, his eyes blazing. He bared his teeth in a silent scream at something behind Cyrus.

And Cyrus turned, just as another Shadowman who held Teron dragged his dagger across the old healer’s throat.

“No!” Cyrus bellowed.

He bolted upright in bed, his chest heaving, his heart pounding.

Essandra startled beside him. “Cyrus!” She grabbed his arm to steady him. “You’re okay,” she told him. “You’re okay.”

“Teron!”

She didn’t let him go. “You’re okay. Teron can’t do anything. You just need to rest.”

“I don’t need…” His words dropped as his eyes tore around him.

He was in his own bed, in his own chamber. Essandra sat on the bed beside him. A book lay overturned on her lap, its pages bent underneath.

Sweat beaded his brow. He wiped a rough hand over his face. It had been a dream. His recent conversation with Teron had to have prompted it. But it was just a dream. He tried to push it from his mind.

“How long have I been asleep?” he asked.

She picked up her book and smoothed the pages before closing it. “Two days.”

He stilled. “Two days?” That couldn’t be right.

“The bond creates a constant flow of power through you now,” she explained.

He could feel it. It was like being filled and emptied all at once.

Essandra swallowed as she crossed her arms and hugged the book to her.

“I underestimated how much power would come. I thought it would be the same as when I drew it from your blood, but it’s more.

” Her fingertips absently kneaded the leather of the book spine, her nails leaving small crescents. “Exponentially more.”

“Does that mean you’re stronger than you thought you’d be?”

She swallowed. “Yes,” she said quietly, almost guiltily.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

“It is when it comes at the cost of consuming you.”

He glanced down at the markings that covered his skin. They ran up his arms to his shoulders and across his chest and stomach. He didn’t need to look to know they spanned his back as well—he remembered feeling the burn there.

“It’s too much for your body. Unfortunately, it’s not something Teron can heal. But a lot more staves and some good rest seem to have done the trick.”

Cyrus snorted. Then he paused. “Were you here the whole time?” He glanced around, and the realization came to him. “In my bed?”

She stood briskly and smoothed her dress. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. You woke every time I tried to leave. Fortunately for you, I had a lot of reading to catch up on.”

“For two days?”

Her lips thinned in irritation. “I said I had a lot of reading.”

Cyrus couldn’t help a smile. “What are you reading about?”