Page 34 of Once the Skies Fade (Immortal Reveries #2)

Chapter 34

Matthias

I must have dozed off or passed out, because when I finally opened my eyes the forest had grown quite dim. The gash in my leg still throbbed, but it didn’t seem to be bleeding quite as profusely. Unfortunately my hands had gone numb, and my wrists and shoulders throbbed from the vines holding my arms upright for so many hours. At least I assumed it had been hours.

“How long—” I started to ask Asher, but the dragon was gone.

The vines in front of me now hung limply, uncoiled and empty. Others lay motionless on the ground, their ends still looped as if their captive had simply vanished. I blinked a few times and tried to turn my head to scan the area, but a vine had coiled itself around my neck. My attempts to move only earned me a tighter noose. Keeping my head still, I resorted to shifting my eyes to the left and to the right.

Still nothing.

No dragon.

No shadows.

No fae.

I dropped my head forward, closing my eyes. I couldn’t give in to defeat yet. I simply needed time to figure out a plan––except I didn’t have much time, if any. I shouldn’t have provoked the mercenary. Then I could have been on my way back to the castle, on to the next trial, and on my way to discovering the truth and completing this disaster of a mission.

“Rise and shine, general.” A too-cheery voice drew my eyes open. Asher stooped in front of me, looking up with his dimpled, smirking face—no longer in dragon form.

“How’d you get free? And how are you still free? Why am I still strung up?” My questions tumbled out of my mouth in a barely coherent mess, and Asher chuckled darkly.

“My limbs are quite a bit bigger as a dragon. Once I shifted back, I pulled free. Being unarmed kept them at bay long enough for me to find this.” He pulled the vial—my vial, I assumed—out from his collar.

“And you stayed to gloat, did you?” I asked, lifting a brow at him.

He didn’t answer my question but dropped the vial against his chest and stepped back, his head falling to one side as he tapped a finger to his chin.

“Why did you stop that fae from taking my head?”

I shot him a confused look. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Most—especially those I had just tried to kill—would have cheered him on.”

Lifting my brows, I feigned shock. “Wait, you were trying to kill me earlier?”

“You can drop the act, general.”

“What act would that be?”

He eyed me for a moment, and then his features relaxed in understanding. “I had a brother like you.”

“Handsome and charming?”

“Always quick to mask pain with a joke,” he corrected.

I frowned at him. “Oh, I’m not trying to hide my pain. I’ll describe it to you if you want. My shoulders hurt. I can’t feel my fingers. My head is pounding like crazy. And I have an itch between my shoulders that I can’t scratch.”

He didn’t seem at all amused. “You know what I mean.”

“You got me,” I said, shaking my head. I let my bottom lip tremble a bit. “It’s easier to make a quip than to acknowledge the deep-seated angst within”—I sniffed loudly—“but it’s just hard not having anyone to really confide in when life is tough. Everyone claims to care, but no one is truly willing to listen. You know?”

His face was cold stone, unmoving and emotionless.

“Would you listen, Asher?” I asked in as pathetic a tone as I could muster.

Looking up into the trees, he sighed loudly. “Are you ever serious?”

“I think so. Only when necessary, though. Life is too short to waste time lamenting shit we can’t change.”

Asher simply stared at me for several breaths, his expression unreadable. He drew in a long breath and scratched the edge of his jaw before finally speaking again.

“I don’t particularly like you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect you. You carried your competition through a deadly forest to ensure he survived. That’s admirable.”

“I didn’t do it to impress you,” I said, but he brushed aside my interjection with a wave of his hand.

“More importantly, though, you saved my neck—literally—when you didn’t need to. For that, I’ll help you out.”

I twisted my body as best I could given my restraints. “You mean you’ll get that itch for me?”

His lip curled in disgust. “No. You can take care of that on your own once I get you loose.”

“Going to give me back my pendant?”

Asher shook his head slowly.

“Then how am I?—”

“We’ll share it.”

“Not sure how that will work, unless you’re offering to carry me or something.”

He stepped forward, laughing silently as he lifted the chain up over his head. “You don’t know what it is, do you?”

“Am I supposed to?”

He shrugged. “I just thought you were supposed to be some wise warrior or something.”

“Battle strategies and political maneuvers I can manage, but guessing how a magical bottle works to curb a bloodthirsty forest is beyond my expertise.”

“You talk too much.”

“So I’ve been told. Are you going to explain it, or do you really want me to guess?”

Asher carefully removed the stopper from the vial, placed his finger over the opening, and tipped the bottle slightly. When he lifted his finger, he revealed a spot of dark red that slowly began to trail down his skin.

“Blood?” I asked, and the pieces clicked into place. “Of course. Calla’s?—”

“The queen’s, you mean,” Asher chided.

I ignored his correction. “Do you happen to have another vial, or some other container, on you?”

He shook his head. “I figured we’d just”—he waved his hand in the air, palm toward me, like he was washing a window—“smear some on you.”

“Why not on you?”

Asher regarded me, looked down to the vial in his hand, and then peered up to where the vines still held my wrists.

“Because you’re the desperate one here. Not me.”

I started to protest that desperate was a bit of an exaggeration, but then, he wasn’t actually wrong. Without his help, making it back to the castle on time—let alone surviving the forest at all—would be nearly impossible. I didn’t have the luxury of failure here, not when Connor and Lieke were relying on me.

“Fine,” I said, sighing. “Smear away.”

I winced as the blood painfully rushed back into my arms and hands, and even shaking and stretching them out, it took longer than expected for the feeling to fully return. The first step I took brought a fresh burst of pain down my leg and through my hip, and I hissed through my teeth as I reached down to the wound and found it bleeding again.

“Shit,” I muttered, and Asher—who had already started to walk off—stopped mid-step and looked back over his shoulder.

“Need something?” he asked.

I started to shake my head no, but his gaze dropped to my bloody hand and he turned fully, making his way back to me.

“You’re not going to make it far on that leg,” he said.

“I don’t need to make it far. I just need to make it to the castle?—”

“Which is far considering your condition,” he noted.

Another wave of pain stabbed my hip, pulling my expression tight and straining my voice as I added, “And find a gold medallion on the way, of course. No point rushing back if I don’t snag one of those first.”

Asher appeared to be waging some internal battle as his jaw pulsed with tension. His shoulders slumped in seeming defeat, as he said—with an almost regretful-sounding tone—“I might be able to help with that.”

“Oh?” I asked, ignoring how my face twitched again from the worsening pain. “Can you sniff out gold or something?”

Pressing his lips together in a thin line, he hesitated before finally admitting quietly, “Actually, yes.”

“So you really are like a?—”

His expression darkened, lips curling as if he were about to snarl. “Don’t say it.”

“Fine, fine. But how do we find it? And quickly?”

A sorrowful sigh fell from him, his hand falling forward as he shook his head, as if he were arguing with himself again.

“I’ll carry you,” he said.

I could barely keep the amusement from creeping onto my face, and I started to ask him to repeat what he’d said just for fun, but thought better of it.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to be a burden.”

“Too late for that,” he said. “But you saved my life, and you seem to be somewhat decent. Compared to the rest of the remaining suitors, I’d much rather have you win the hand of my friend than have her shackled to a heartless prick who chops off toes for fun.”

“How is the hand, by the way? Or was it your foot?”

He held up his left hand and wiggled his fingers. Where his index finger should have been, a single bony nub remained.

“He didn’t take the whole toe?”

“Oh, he did,” Asher said, smiling as if he had a secret. “We heal fast. Should be good as new in a few days.”

“Wait, are you saying you regrow limbs?”

“Depends on the limb, but yes. Legs and arms don’t regenerate quite as thoroughly, but appendages like fingers and toes?—”

“And…other important appendages?” I asked hesitantly, cursing my curiosity as I swayed precariously on my feet.

Asher laughed heartily. “Never tested that, honestly. Never want to, either. But I thought fae were supposed to heal quickly too.” He pointed toward my injured leg. “Why are you still bleeding?”

I looked down at my leg and nearly toppled over, the world spinning around me. “Ah, shit. The poison?” Pressing my fingers to my neck, I checked for a pulse and found it still strong. If it had been poison, it wasn’t the potent, fatal kind at least, but how had Korben gotten a hold of it? And why didn’t it affect Asher?

“What poison?” Asher asked.

Jerking my head up, I tried to blink away the dizziness, but it only got worse. I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could utter a word, I was falling into darkness.