Page 60 of The Starlit Ring (The Chronicles of Liridin #1)

“ F uck,” Marius said, staring at his hands, then at his torn shirt, still littered with shards of stone. “Fuck.”

“Marius,” I cried. Shock thrummed through me. I tried to stand, and found that my legs were weak, shaking.

“Talina,” he said, holding out a hand to stop me. “Stay there. Stay right there, alright? Everything is going to be?—”

But he choked on his words. Gave a violent, full-bodied shudder, and then a confused blink. He swallowed. Tried again. “Everything?—”

A violent cough. A strangled gurgle. Without warning, he dropped to his knees. Toral darted from Fallamor, still struggling with Ria, to kneel beside him. “Marius! What’s wrong?”

Marius shuddered again, crashed onto the palms of his hands. “I?—”

Vomit splashed against the floor. He stared down at it in dismay and groaned, arms and legs twitching.

“Shit,” said Toral, with none of his usual sophistication. “Hey, hey, look at me?—”

“My wife is bleeding out,” said Marius through clenched teeth. “Please?— ”

He convulsed, hard enough that I feared he’d collapse into his own vomit.

“Did you poison him?” Fallamor demanded, twisting Ria’s arm with such force that her entire torso lifted from the floor.

“N-no!” Ria whimpered. With great effort, I lifted my head, and saw that she, too, watched Marius in horror. “I swear!”

“Lies,” sneered Fallamor, twisting harder. Ria cried out.

“Stop!” I said, but my voice was too weak. I felt the heat of my blood as it blossomed beneath my hands and knew without looking that my injury was serious. “You’re hurting her!”

Marius dropped to the ground. A sound like the cry of a dying beast echoed across the room, high and anguished. He thrashed and shook, twisting this way and that as if trying to shed his own skin.

A red stain spread across his coat. Marius’s back swelled like he’d suddenly developed a hump. The fabric stretched around it, drawing tighter as the bulge grew from the size of a fist to a sack of grain.

Toral ripped the dagger from his pocket—the same one he’d used to prick our fingers only a few minutes ago.

I sat up, and managed to prop myself against the altar. “Marius?”

His answering groan was low and guttural—I doubted he’d even heard me.

Marius twitching on the stone floor. At his side, Toral inhaled sharply, braced himself, and thrust the blade into Marius’s spine.

“No!” I shouted. But I was too late.

There came a ripping sound. The back of the coat split open in a gush of scarlet and gore. Something red and flimsy spilled out, shining with blood. I blinked, but I couldn’t make out what it was. Marius’s exposed organs? That seemed impossible. But what else could it be?

“What the fuck?” said Fallamor, mouth agape.

Even Ria stopped struggling. Her arms fell limp at her sides as she let out a shocked gasp.

The pile of organs on Marius’s back began to shift, slithering like snakes. One extended into something long and wet, and slapped against his back like a spare limb.

My scream nearly unhinged my jaw as it ripped from my lungs and up my throat, tearing into the world raw and forceful.

Toral snarled, and sliced the remainder of Marius’s coat open.

I crawled over to them, one hand clamped to my belly. My blood was slippery against the marble floor. Exhausted, I dropped from my hand to my elbow.

The grotesque mass on Marius’s back spasmed—like something with a heartbeat.

No sound escaped him. Had he fallen unconscious? I prayed that he had, that he wasn’t awake to suffer through this.

“Is he dying?” I whispered, stalling to a halt mere paces away. My vision swam. I forced myself to stay conscious, to keep focused on the scene before me.

“No,” growled Toral. His gaze flitted to my injury. “You’re hurt.”

“Yes,” I said. Every breath I took was shallower than the last. “I think it’s probably bad.”

“Fuck,” said Toral. His gaze lingered on Marius and his twitching organs, then moved to me. “I need you to lay on your back. Can you do that for me?”

“Listen to him, Talina,” said Ria, her voice frantic, hoarse. I barely registered her words.

I didn’t lay on my back. I just collapsed against the stone floor.

The mass at Marius’s back shuddered again. A long, spider-like limb pulled free, and flopped against his spine, leaving behind a streak of blood and slime.

Then it unfurled like a roll of parchment, fanning out pale and green. The image of a half-moon was burned into it.

Fallamor’s gasp cut the silence. “That’s impossible. ”

I’d gone completely limp. Toral struggled to flip me over. The wound at my side pulsed and throbbed like its own entity.

“It’s not impossible,” he said grimly, heaving me onto my side, so that I had a better view of my fallen husband. “Just unlikely.”

Another spider leg fell from Marius’s back and began to slowly unravel.

It reminded me of a moth’s wing, I thought, as Toral ripped the sleeve from his shirt. How funny. Was Marius a moth the entire time?

Everything was turning red. I blinked. My hand lay in front of my face. The ring was loose around my finger. The ruby-red sphere was gone, replaced by a smear of blood.

How strange , I thought, as the room faded around me. How very strange.

I woke in fits and bursts. Once, to Toral’s frantic’s face. The stars shimmered above him. I fell into that endless darkness and was gone.

I thought I heard Marius, his voice low and pleading, but when I blinked, it was only Valeria, whimpering and frightened. My throat ached. Voices rumbled in the distance like thunder. My vision went dark like a storm at sea, but not before I glimpsed a stone wall, and sheets white as stars.

Marius’s snarling voice roused me. “Then stab me and be done with it!” I imagined the way he might throw his arms into the air, the way his sleeves would billow with the motion.

Stop inciting violence! I wanted to tell him. But I was already drifting down into darkness, and I didn’t have the fortitude to fight against it.

When I woke properly, it was to my brother, Rowan, slumped in a chair, snoring lightly, his neck at an angle that couldn’t be comfortable. Two or three days’ beard growth scoured his jaw, and he smelled of sour whisky and sweat.

I wrinkled my nose. “Rowan?”

He jumped with such force that the chair scooted back and smacked against the wall. “Talina! You’re awake!”

I wasn’t entirely sure of that but didn’t have the energy to contradict him. “Where ‘m I?”

The room was just barely large enough for one bed, a cart loaded with potions and supplies, and two rickety chairs. Sunlight slipped between the drawn curtains, so bright that I had to look away.

“You’re in the healer’s ward,” said Rowan. “Hold on a minute, I need to get help.” With a final, worried glance in my direction, he slipped out the door.

I laid there thinking that this must be what a fish felt like in those moments before death—too weak to flop anymore, dry and parched like a wrung-out sheet, lying on the beach with an eye pointed toward the sun, unable to look away.

Outside my room, footsteps raced. The door opened. In peered a face I only faintly recognized—Iana the healer, I realized with a jolt—and my father, ruddy-faced and angry.

I tried to shrink away from him but couldn’t coordinate my limbs. All my strength leaked away.

The door opened again, and Rowan squeezed inside, wringing his hands.

“Talina,” said my father, approaching my bedside.

His gait was slow and stiff. Tears glistened at the corners of his eyes.

“Talina, I have never been so angry in my life.” He sank into Rowan’s empty chair while Iana bustled around me, first pressing a finger to my pulse, then pulling back the blankets to check my abdomen, covered by a great wad of bandages.

How odd. “And I’m so glad you’re awake.”

Some of my fear trickled away. “I’m so sorry,” I said, tearing up, too. “I made so many mistakes. ”

“I know,” he said, leaning forward, wrapping his enormous arms around me in an awkward, crushing hug. “I know.”

“Where’s Ria?”

He shushed me. “Don’t worry about her right now. She’s fine.”

“Where’d she go?” I slurred, on the verge of hysterical. I needed to see her. Needed actual proof that no one had harmed her.

“She’s fine ,” he growled. “She’s getting ready for her wedding.”

“To Marius?!” I cried, sitting up. That was a mistake. My stomach ached horribly. I felt as if I’d been stabbed.

Which I had been, I realized. Memories came flooding back. Valeria screaming. The knife in my stomach. A flash of silver at Marius’s throat. The entrails seeping from his back.

I began to weep, loud and unrepentant. Exhaustion crashed over me, and I couldn’t think, couldn’t calm down. All I could do was cry. I was in agony, with a skull full of cotton instead of brains, and Marius was injured, and…

“She’s marrying Prince Gavin,” said Rowan, hurrying to push me back onto the bed. His face hovered over mine, but he wasn’t looking at me.

“Right,” I mumbled between sobs. “I already married Marius. But?—”

Father scowled. “That wasn’t legally binding.”

What ? “No,” I said, struggling to remember. “We signed a form. There were witnesses.”

Satisfied that I wasn’t going to sit up again, Rowan took a step back, skirting deftly around the healer to stand guard by the door.

“You acted without the approval of the court,” said Father. Disdain flooded his voice, even as he fought to keep his expression guarded. “Two foreign representatives don’t count.”

Fallamor was a prince, but I wasn’t sure if that meant much to my father.

Iana busied herself arranging bottles on the cart, looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t want to be here, either.

“Where’s Marius?”

“Never coming within a mile of you again,” snapped Father, leaning back in his chair. It creaked beneath his weight.

Numbness spread from my stomach to the tips of my fingers.

“ Father ,” said Rowan forcefully from his place by the door.

“He died?” I asked, searching Father’s face for answers.

“No!” Rowan cried, shoulders taut, rage flashing in his eyes. “No, he’s not dead. Father, this is just cruel. Don’t do this to her.”

“Do what?” I asked. My head throbbed. My eyes burned. My stomach felt strange, like the bandages had been wrapped to tightly around my waist.

Iana plucked a vial from the cart, uncorked it, and handed it to me. “Drink this,” she said. When she looked at me, it was with sympathy. I wanted to flinch away from it.

“What is it?”

“It will dull the pain,” she said, dipping her chin deeply enough to assure me that it would help in more way than one way.

I lifted the vial to my lips and drained it in one gulp. The liquid burned all the way down.

“Do not upset my patient,” Iana told my father sternly. With a final nod to me, she disappeared from my bedside, and out the door, empty vial in hand.

Rowan glowered.

“Is Marius dead?” I asked again.

“No,” said Father, closing his eyes. His beard trembled. “But he is no longer eligible for the throne. You are not to see him again.”

“But I married him.”

“That marriage was a sham, Talina. The ring didn’t even accept it.”

“Because I’m not royal,” I said, nodding. The movement made my head ache. My brain rolled in my skull like a loose stone.

My mother had cheated after all. I expected to feel upset, but a strange sort of acceptance rolled over me, not unlike the lapping of waves against the shore on a still morning.

What would happen to me now? Would Father still claim me? Would I have anywhere to go but my mother’s land? Could I stay in Tocchia?

“Because Marius isn’t the prince of Tocchia,” Rowan interrupted.

My jaw dropped. “That’s preposterous.”

“It should’ve been,” said Father, shaking his head. “Can’t believe they let something like that happen.”

Wait, what? A thousand possibilities flashed through my mind, each more ridiculous than the last.

“Marius is the lost heir of Liridin,” Rowan informed me, grim-faced.

I remembered the spider’s leg protruding from Marius’s back, and the way it unrolled like a banner. That was a wing, I realized. A soaking wet, bloody moth’s wing.

Marius hadn’t died. Hadn’t somehow ejected his own organs out of his back. He’d just… grown wings.

I must have gone mad. Nobody just grew wings out of nowhere. That was impossible.

The room began to blur. A strange sort of calm settled over me, but I fought against it. I couldn’t sleep until I knew what happened to Marius. Why he wasn’t here with me right now, at my bedside, when he claimed to have loved me?

“The lost heir?” I breathed. “But he’s the prince of Tocchia. How did that happen?”

Rowan started to answer me, but Father interrupted. “It’s not important. Right now, I want you to rest, and stop worrying. We’re due to return to Olmstead as soon as you’re well enough to travel.”

My eyelids were heavy. I wanted to protest, but the bed was soft enough that I felt like I’d been sucked into it .

Father continued talking, but I was lost to the world, dissolving like poison in a goblet.