Page 57 of Immortal Origins (Chronicles of the Immortal Trials #1)

F ire rose up on either side of Ambrose.

Burnt orange flames that threatened to consume her as she ran through the forest, no longer enchanted by the scenes around her.

The garden had none of the Magick she felt before as it died all around her and flames rushed from every direction.

Ahead, she could make out the figure of a man robed in crimson holding a small boy, no more than nine, his blond hair matted to his face with sweat and blood as he pleaded for help.

Antony!

His small face was scrunched with fear as tears slipped down his cheeks and he reached out for her. But no matter how hard she ran. How fast she willed her legs to carry her—she couldn’t reach him.

She cried out his name but no sound left her lips as she glared at the crimson-robed mage that held him in his grasp, a dagger to his throat.

No!

She ran faster. Faster. Faster than she ever had in her life but instead of carrying her closer, the disciple and Antony only got further away. She pushed her legs until they screamed in protest but she couldn’t reach them.

The disciple smiled triumphantly as he pulled his knife and slit the boy’s throat.

Ambrose tried to wield her magick. Any Magick. She didn’t care which one answered her call, but nothing came as Antony clutched his bleeding throat.

She couldn’t reach him.

She couldn’t reach him!

The disciple’s laughter rang in her ears as he turned and ran deeper into the forest, his robes leaving a bloody trail behind him. She reached her hands towards him and saw them covered in blood.

She looked down, her white servant gown was soaked as well, covering her head to toe in blood she couldn’t wipe clean.

This wasn’t happening.

This wasn’t happening.

She dropped to her knees as the disciple disappeared in the shadows that reached and danced for her, growing claws and teeth as their shrieks assaulted her mind. The screeches of the Alkijin surrounded her as she screamed, covering her ears, but there was no escape…

* * *

Ambrose woke screaming, heart pounding in her chest as she brought her shaking hands up to her face.

No blood.

But she was covered in sweat.

The salty mixture fell down her face into her mouth, making the taste of her dream last bitterly on her tongue. She sat up in bed and willed her heart rate to calm itself. Akadian lay next to her, exactly where he’d fallen asleep, somehow undisturbed by her sudden outburst.

The daylight had long gone and been replaced by the silver moonlight pouring in from the small window.

She was safe.

It was just a nightmare.

A horrible nightmare.

She’d become accustomed to them almost every night.

Often dreaming of the guard she killed, but finding nowhere to escape to.

Caught and executed every time. But this nightmare was so much worse.

She could still see Antony’s little eyes staring at her, pleading for her to help as she climbed out of bed and realized she was still wearing her leathers.

Eager to wash away the sweat and memory from her mind, she made her way to her bathing chamber and started a bath.

Hot steam poured from the faucet, the roar of the water a welcome distraction from her thoughts as it filled the copper tub below.

Just a nightmare.

She unclasped the armor plate Magnus had made for her and gently set it on the ground.

Then, she ripped the leathers from her body wishing to never see them again—dried blood still caked into them from the horrors of the night before.

She told herself she’d find a way to burn them later.

Fireproof be damned, she’d find a way to destroy them forever.

She poured some rose oil into the tub and grabbed a bar of soap as she climbed in, welcoming the hot water as it lightly burned her skin. Skin covered in dirt and blood that wasn’t all hers.

Tears streamed down her face, mixing with the water below, destroying all evidence of their existence.

“Bad dream?”

Ambrose snapped her head up. Akadian leaned against the doorway, staring at her softly. She was too tired to feel embarrassed that she was naked before the prince—even if the tub was big enough to hide anything to be embarrassed about.

“That’s an understatement,” she replied pulling her legs into her chest, doing her best to suppress the shivers that wanted to take her. The heat of the water failing to keep them at bay.

“I have them too,” he said, pulling a stool up to the edge of the bath. “May I?” He extended a hand to her.

Ambrose handed him the soap and he lightly grabbed her wrist, running the bar gently over her skin, washing away the memories. All traces of the night before mixing into brown and pink swirls in the water.

“What’s in your nightmares?” she asked, hoping to distract herself from her own.

Akadian reached his hand out for her other wrist which she handed to him and turned her body. He began to wash that too, making sure to get all the caked gore from under her fingernails.

“They’re different every night…” He twirled his finger, motioning for he r to turn her back to him, which she obliged.

“Sometimes, I’m being summoned by one of the gods.

Usually to destroy a town I didn’t even know existed.

I hear the screams of the citizens as they burn, though, I never see any of their faces.

” He ran the soap over in his hands and massaged it into her scalp.

“Sometimes, it’s the gods coming to punish me for refusing one of the requests.

” He poured hot water over her head and the soap ran down her back.

She drank in how nice it was to have someone care for her in such a vulnerable way.

There was a time she would have thought herself a fool to let herself be so exposed to the prince, but she hadn’t ever felt so safe.

“What was it this time?”

“What makes you think I had a nightmare?” he smirked, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it.

“What was it this time?”

He poured more water over her head and she closed her eyes and enjoyed how it ran over her hair and down her back. The warmth of it a small comfort as she squeezed her eyelids.

“This time…” he choked slightly and it took him a while to answer. “I watched you die. I was too late to save your from the metal mage’s attack and there was nothing I could do. I watched you bleed out.”

Ambrose couldn’t see his expression but from the sound of his voice, it must have been twisted in pain.

He rested one hand on her shoulder as he worked the soap into her back and she laced his fingers with her own.

“But you did make it in time. You saved my life,” she assured him. Though, she knew her words would do little to take his nightmares away. Not when she knew her own so well. No one could save them from their own minds.

“I almost didn’t,” his voice cracked.

She turned to face him, water lapping off the sides of the polished tub. “But you did.”

“I just keep thinking about what would’ve happened if the healing mage hadn’t been there.” He swallowed. Hard. “You would’ve died.”

She squeezed his hand and held his gaze. “But I didn’t. ”

She was too tired to wonder why the prince cared so much.

Why her death would haunt him in his dreams. Maybe he was so much better than she ever gave him credit for.

Maybe, every death he’d ever been forced to cause or witness haunted him night after night.

But there was one death he’d prevented. Hers .

“Thank the gods I made it in time.”

Against her better judgment, Ambrose lifted her hand and placed it on his cheek. “Thank you .”

“What was your nightmare?” Akadian asked, the look in his eyes matching the one she knew was mirrored in hers.

She couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.

The nightmare may not have been a real memory, but the ones from the night before were.

She didn’t know how to escape the sinking feeling so deep inside her heart, dragging her down to the depths of despair.

There was no hole in the wall to escape through.

No magickal answer that could come save her.

She failed.

Tears welled in her eyes and her breath hitched in her chest. The only thing she could manage to get out before the sobs racked against her body was—“Antony…”

Akadian swept her into his arms, soaking the leathers he was still wearing as he cradled her close to his chest. He scooped one arm under her legs, softly pulling her from the tub as his other hand simultaneously wrapped her in a fluffy towel.

He held her close as she laid her head in the nape of his neck and didn’t stop her tears from coming. Couldn’t stop the pain and grief that flooded out of her, shaking every bone in her body as the memories crashed into her. She couldn’t stop the flashes of small ocean eyes, begging her for help.

Akadian dipped his head so his mouth was right next to her ear, and he whispered two words, “I know.”

He held her, soaking wet as she clung to his chest and screamed.

She failed Antony.

She failed Marybeth.

She failed Felius .

She failed them all.

He carried her back to bed where he tucked her in and climbed in next to her. He pulled her into his chest, wrapping his arms around her that were so big, they swallowed her head as she cried.

He didn’t scold her. Didn’t tell her to stop.

He held her not like she was breakable or shattering, but like she had seen something truly horrible and lived to remember it for the rest of her life. He held her like he knew.

She wrapped her arms around him and let go of everything she held tight inside her.

Let everything she had to feel the last twenty-four hours wash away with her tears.

Releasing all her despair out in waves until they finally stopped coming and the last tear fell.

Leaving her eyes red and swollen and her body exhausted as though she hadn’t slept at all.

He stroked her hair as her breathing evened out and she took her face from his chest and inhaled a deep breath.

“Thank you.”

“Get dressed.” He smiled down at her. “I’m sure you’re starving. I’m going to wash up and find us something to eat. I can hear your stomach from here.”

He slipped into the bathing room, shutting the door behind him while she shifted through the wardrobe until she found a light purple nightgown made of silk and slipped it over her freshly cleaned skin. All reminders of their battles erased from it, but not her mind.

Akadian slipped from the bathing chamber with nothing but a towel around his waist, leaving very little for Ambrose’s imagination.

Even through her grief, her heart skipped a beat seeing him so…

bare. She tried not to think of the half-naked prince stalking out of her bedroom for a change of clothes, or that he’d used her bathing chamber instead of his own.

Tying her hair back into a loose braid, she double-checked herself in the wardrobe mirror.

Dark circles wound their way under her eyes that almost matched the color of the nightgown she chose.

Her skin was paler than it had been the last few weeks, losing its usual golden undertones.

She’d lost some fat and gained some muscle from the countless hours of training she’d been doing with Magnus and Lily, but her ribs poked out just enough to tell her she still wasn’t getting enough calories.

She gave herself the time she needed with her thoughts before she stepped out of her doorway and into the space she shared with Akadian, who was nowhere to be found.

“Um…” She looked around the empty space, the chairs empty and the doorway sealed shut. Maybe he was still finding them something to eat?

“In here,” his voice called from his bedchamber. She slowly followed it, heart racing at the idea of going into his chambers, even though he’d been in hers a handful of times now.

Akadian’s bedchamber was twice the size of hers.

A massive bed with dark blue silk sheets and a matching blanket accompanied by the skin of an animal, sat against a large, open window.

The fur unlike any in the kingdom so she ventured a guess that it was foreign.

He had his own bathing chamber with a tub big enough for two people.

Against the back wall a desk made of cherry-oak homed a matching chair.

Her eyes followed the wall and found Akadian—still shirtless—wearing black leather pants, bent over a stove cooking.

In a kitchen that would make Ms. Asquith shake with jealousy.

Copper appliances and two huge ovens with a stove big enough to cook for a small army.

“You’re cooking.” Ambrose couldn’t help sound surprised.

“Don’t act so shocked,” he chuckled.

“I guess I just assumed none of the royals cooked for themselves. Not with Ms. Asquith and a whole kitchen of servants at your disposals’.

She sat on his bed and practically sank to the bottom of it, her feet dangling off the floor, it was so tall.

She wasn’t a short woman but his room made her feel tiny.

“I eat in the dining hall when the king requires it, which is usually breakfast to show a united front for the day in front of the nobles and servants.” He flipped whatever he was cooking and the smell of oil and spices wafted over to her.

Her stomach rumbled and she was sure he could hear it clear across the chambers.

“Dinner however, I usually get the luxury of eating alone.”

Ambrose shifted nervously, running her hands over each other. “I don’t mean to intrude, I’m sure I can find something in the kitchens.”

He shot a look at her over his shoulder. “You stay.”

It was an easy order to obey.

She let the herbs and spices fill the room as her head swam.

She didn’t realize how hungry she was until the smell of food completely entranced her, taking over every one of her muscles but in particular the ones in her stomach.

It wasn’t much longer before Akadian had a plate of perfectly golden chicken, chopped potatoes, and sweet carrots in front of her that would’ve made Ms. Asquith hate his very existence.

He handed her a goblet of mango wine to pair it with and she didn’t know where to start. It smelled so good.

He sat next to her with a twin plate and goblet as he bit into the chicken drumstick and grease dripped down his chin.

Ambrose looked from her plate to the doorway. “Are you sure you don’t want to eat alone?”

He smiled at her between bites. “I can’t imagine anyone else I’d rather have dinner with.”

She returned his smile and turned her attention to her own plate, devouring every delicious bite in sight.