Page 30 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

Hallie’s breath came heavier and faster as they finally reached the archway. “Much prettier, yes, but you need a medic’s touch, not a pretty face.” She paused. “Maybe I should go get Fely.”

“Rest first.”

A wave of heat rolled over them, like the one in the tunnels beneath the ruined statue temple in the valley below. Hallie didn’t seem to notice; she kept tugging him forward until they reached a giant foyer and turned right.

“Can you make it much further? The healer’s wing is too far, but the kitchens are through the corridor there. They’ll have water taps and a place to boil it.”

Her skin had gone white as goat’s milk. Her golden eyes were no longer dark and sorrowful, but brimming with fear. He gave a curt nod. “I can make it.”

Even though he felt anything but capable of that. He couldn’t show weakness. Not in front of her.

She helped him down the corridor, and he’d never been more grateful. If she hadn’t been holding him up, he knew he would’ve collapsed. He hoped it wasn’t obvious just how much he leaned on her.

Right, painful limp left, right, excruciating limp left.

He repeated the steps in his head to remind himself to keep going, to focus on walking instead of the fire that was now his leg. Stars, he’d never had an injury that had hurt this badly. It was hard to think past the next step ahead. He clenched his teeth until they ached.

How had it reopened? Had her power truly failed? The wound felt as fresh as when he’d first been hit.

His head still felt lighter than a feather, and a storm raged in his stomach.

When they rounded the corner, the turn jostled his leg. The pain erupted into a firestorm. His good leg gave out, and he collapsed, Hallie with him. She shouted as she fell right on top of him.

His leg screamed. An involuntary, strangled cry escaped his hold. He would not yield more than that. He would pass out before he let that happen.

Hallie rolled off him. “Niels, what happened? Can you…did something else…is it just your leg? Oh stars, oh stars. It’s my fault.”

He was able to summon a choked chuckle. “It’s okay. ‘Tis but a simple flesh wound.”

Seemed he could remember how to speak all proper-like when he was in pain. Or maybe he was simply descending into madness. As if in answer, his Fogs headache flared; blackness flickered in and out, so swiftly he wasn’t sure how much time he lost.

When he blinked, Hallie was flinging aside shirts and pants and anything else in her pack. Niels barely saw her through the haze distorting his vision, one that told him the next blackout might be permanent. Her panicked words were now garbled nonsense in his ears.

Hiking the mountain had been too ambitious. His leg had always been a ticking time bomb, and now his time was up.

His vision went in and out. One second Hallie was ripping things out of his pack and hers, the next her panicked eyes floated above his. “I don’t have time to go down the mountain and back. I don’t have time—”

“I’ll be…fine…”

He didn’t think she heard him. He wasn’t even sure he’d spoken out loud.

White-hot pain bit into his leg and radiated down to his toes before bouncing up into his chest, climbing all the way to his neck. He clenched his eyes shut, a few searing tears escaping. A few seconds later, cold air pierced the heat like a dagger. It didn’t last long before the heat returned.

Fingers, hot and inquisitive, poked his wound.

It took everything in his power to keep the scream from ripping through his throat at the stinging pain that lit through his leg over the next few seconds. Light blazed against his lids.

The tension left his body, but the headache stayed. The pain in his leg receded to a mild sting, like he’d been stung by a mountain hornet. His breathing still came in gasps, and sweat ran in rivulets down his face, but he was able to open his eyes.

It wasn’t bright in the corridor. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and the light floating through the window above them was a dull, fading gold, streaked with red. Firstmoon would be rising soon.

“Niels? Can you hear me?”

Hallie sounded oddly breathless, like she had run a marathon before speaking.

He turned his head to find her crouched near his injured leg.

His trousers were missing below his knee, the stiff material slashed and frayed.

She’d cut it off. Blood coated the floor beneath his leg and the knees of Hallie’s trousers.

“Yes,” he croaked. She looked worse than he felt, like she was about to pass out herself. “What did you do?”

She shifted back on her heels, swaying a little with the motion. She clutched those stupid goggles in her right hand. She wiped her brow before holding out her hand, a bullet sitting in the center of her palm.

He blinked. “What—did you take—how did you—Fely said that it would kill you!”

“It was close to the surface.” She looked away. “I had to.”

“But why? Why would you put your life at risk to even try?”

Niels scanned the floor for a knife, a pair of shears, anything that she might’ve used to extract it. Because she couldn’t have been so stars-blasted stupid as to use her power again when Fely had said it would probably kill her.

Yet there she sat, armed with nothing but her own hands, breathing heavily and wiping her brow of sweat again and again. He shifted a little; his leg protested with the movement, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been earlier. It was even better than the first time she’d tried to heal him.

Hallie fiddled with her hands in her lap. “Because I couldn’t let you die.”

Niels sat forward, taking one of her hands. She didn’t resist, but she still wouldn’t look at him. “Hallie.” He rubbed her fingers until she looked up. “Thank you.”

She smiled as she slipped her fingers from his. “It’ll probably open up again, but at least you’re not in too much pain.”

He stared at her hard. She was still the same Hallie he’d known. Same stubborn hair refusing to be tamed even though she’d rebraided it before hiking the mountain. Same dusting of freckles across her nose. Same perfect lips.

But her eyes.

She’d always been spirited and unafraid to berate you for misquoting part of her favorite passages from The Odyssey . The fire that burned in her eyes now wasn’t spirited. Those eyes could have incinerated with one glare, shaded by her brow with her back to the dimly lit corridor.

He didn’t know what had changed that. It made her even more the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He would help her heal from whatever had made her eyes that way. She would always be his Hallie.

And he thought he’d figure out a way to get over her. Stupid.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her to him, catching her lips with his.

No matter how hard he tried not to, he’d imagined this moment for nearly three years.

Whether the daydream was about her returning home to him or him going to the capital, it ended the same way every single time—him kissing her like she’d never left him standing there in middle of a dust-ridden mountain road.

Like she’d never wanted to leave.

Her lips were slightly chapped and stiff. She didn’t move or respond until a second later, when—

When she pulled back, she pushed herself to her feet and grabbed her pack.

“Hallie…”

She didn’t say anything, nothing at all, only walked down the corridor and around the corner.

The joy and relief evaporated as quickly as they had come upon him. He tried to get up, but his leg was still weak. She’d only reset it to where it had been a few hours ago.

Why had she left? Why was she always leaving?

A coldness seeped into his chest as he stared at the corner she’d disappeared around. He’d pushed it. He’d acted on instinct, not by any scientific measure or calculated move. He followed his heart instead of his mind, and now, he might have ruined any good grace he’d gained.

“I’m such a stars-idiot,” he muttered as he hit his head repeatedly on the metal wall behind him.