Page 19 of Ties of Starlight (Tethered Hearts #2)

N yrunn focused on Idonea’s shallow breaths, inaudible under the thunderous roar of their horses’ hooves, but he could feel the slight motion as he stayed curled around her.

They’d long lost the Moon Elves.

He hoped the guards and the rest of the retinue escaped and were able to meet up with them, but his highest priority was Idonea.

While it should be because if she died, the ceremony would be ruined and they would continue to grow weaker until the next one, he didn’t care one whit about the Cometa Couple right now. The only thought running through his head was how he could not lose her.

He would not.

He didn’t care what it took. He was not letting her leave him like this.

He would not wait two hundred and fifty years for the chance to tell her how much he loved her.

They came racing into their camp, already set up, and it was immediate chaos. The sun had long since set and the stars shone down from the heavens. Nyrunn pulled his horse to a stop, avoiding crashing into a tent as he screamed, “Healer! We need a healer!”

Two of the guards had already dismounted and were by his horse. “Your Majesty, pass her down.”

Nyrunn was reluctant to let her out of his arms unless it was to a healer, but he did as they suggested.

Her eyes fluttered open briefly and she let out a pained whimper even as he did his best not to disturb her injury as he passed her down to them. He murmured, “Just a little longer, Idonea.”

The captain was dismounting as well, ordering his guards, “Get her to a tent! Don’t touch that dagger until we have a healer.” The captain looked over Idonea’s ghostly white skin and the blood dripping from the wound. “Or five.”

The guards carefully carried her away as Nyrunn swung off his horse. He turned on his heels, snapping, “Where are our healers?”

Lady Asa dismounted, but her legs crumpled under her the second her feet touched the ground. She was still violently trembling. “They—They were all b—behind us. We—We esc—escaped first.”

Frode quickly climbed off his horse as well, hurrying to her side and helping her up. She leaned against him, her legs still not supporting her weight. “I’m sure one of them will be here any minute, Your Majesty. The Constella too.”

“We don’t have minutes!”

“Your Majesty, take a deep breath.” The captain held his hand out, but had not dismounted. “I will double back until I find one of our healers. In the meantime, go and sit with your wife. None of us want her to die.”

Since he couldn’t summon a healer with pure panic, Nyrunn took a deep breath and nodded. He turned on his heel and followed the guards to where they’d taken Idonea as the captain turned back, taking a couple of guards with him. The two who had carried her off directed him inside, and Nyrunn hurried to her bedside.

She was on her back, the dagger still sticking out of her ribs and a broken arrow shaft out of her shoulder that he hadn’t even noticed until now. She was still breathing. Thankfully.

Nyrunn grabbed the chair in the corner and pulled it up to her side. He gently took her hand in both of his, brushing his thumb over the starlight lines as he bowed over it. He whispered, “Don’t you dare leave me. Don’t make me wait for you again. Don’t make me watch you in my last days live a life that will never have me in it. Stay with me. Live this life with me.”

She didn’t respond. Her eyes remained closed.

Nyrunn wrapped his fingers around her wrist and felt her pulse. He pressed his lips gently to the back of her hand as he clutched it. Her heart was still beating. As long as it was still beating, he had hope.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed, with him hunched over her hand, desperately clinging to her the way her body was clinging to life, until the tent opened. He looked up to see three healers rushing in, the captain outside behind them with the Constella, who was cradling a broken arm.

“Your Majesty, tell us exactly what happened!”

Two of the healers were already at her side, examining the dagger while the third approached him. Nyrunn let go of her hand and staggered to his feet, backing away to give them space to work. “I—In the fight—It happened quickly. She called out to me, and then she was pushing me out of the way. I was about to be stabbed, and when she saved me, the dagger was in her side instead. ”

Why? Why had she done that?

She hated him. She was terrified of him.

Starlight began to flood the tent as the first two healers began to utilize their magic.

“Get the top of this tent gone; we’re going to need all the starlight we can get!” one of the other healers called out as his hands moved, directing his magic.

Nyrunn looked back over right as the sound of fabric cutting ripped the air. The second healer was cutting through Idonea’s blouse, opening it up to be able to reach the wound to operate without it being in the way.

Idonea’s eyes fluttered open, but not fully. She let out a harsh, pained gasp when she was shifted.

“Your Majesty—”

Nyrunn could feel the agony on the other side of the bond. Idonea was sweating, huffing for breath with her eyes screwed shut. He turned to the healer. “Please, don’t send me away. Let me help. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

The third healer looked at Idonea and said, “Hold her shoulder down. Don’t let her move it and make that arrow injury worse while we heal her side.”

Nyrunn hurried to Idonea again, one hand braced against her bicep and the other at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. His fingers brushed the metal chain of the starry necklace that never left her skin.

Once he was in position, the third healer looked back to the other two who had finished moving Idonea’s blouse away from the wound, leaving the dagger sticking out of her pale skin. He nodded at them and the first healer wrapped a hand around the dagger and pulled it out.

Nyrunn almost lost his grip on Idonea as she lurched forward with an earth-shattering scream. He pushed back with his whole weight, pinning her down. Her head fell back to the cot. The starlight was blinding, but Nyrunn couldn’t bear to look over and see how bad it was. He just stared at Idonea’s face and focused on the bond.

If it was possible to send her his emotions to calm her like he had that morning…

The lines on his hand glowed. He reached out and began to pull.

Nyrunn had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming in agony as Idonea’s pain began to flood into him. He couldn’t help but tighten his grip on her even as her thrashing slowed. Her head turned to the side and her breathing, while still pained, was far less agonized than it had been before. Nyrunn could feel his jaw get close to cracking from how hard he was clenching it as he kept taking Idonea’s pain from her. It didn’t stop.

The healer’s work constantly sent new waves of sharp pain through Idonea’s body, and Nyrunn, despite his own instincts begging him to let go, pushed past them and kept pulling the pain into his body. His lungs were burning and his side was pulsing as if the wound was his. He could feel the echoes of the healer’s starlight digging into it and finding all the cut and damaged organs and veins. It stopped right before his heart.

If the dagger had been a little longer, it would have pierced her heart and she would have likely been dead before the healers could reach her.

No wonder Idonea had been so certain this wound would kill her.

Nyrunn let out a long, slow breath.

The pain of the healers’ work was worse than the wound itself.

The worst part of it all was the fact that Nyrunn knew this wasn’t the only time Idonea had experienced this agony. Just one lifetime ago she’d been dying from a similar wound inflicted by one of his own blood. That wasn’t even getting into the other atrocities she’d had committed against her.

So Nyrunn could not let go. He may not be able to take any of that pain away, but he could bear this for her.

“Your Majesty.”

Nyrunn blinked before the words hit him. He looked over to see the healers stepping back to wash their hands. The wound on Idonea’s side was closed, but it was certainly going to scar. The first one to clean his hands began unrolling bandages. “If you’ll help us lift her, we can bandage this and move on to her shoulder.”

“It worked, right?”

The third healer nodded. “Yes. We’ll need to monitor both this one and her shoulder for infection, and we’ll have to take extra care with her as we travel while she recovers, but she will be able to finish the rituals.”

The rituals?

That’s what they were thinking about? That’s what they thought mattered to him?

The comet could drop out of the sky for all Nyrunn cared right now.

But he was still reeling from having absorbed so much from her, so that all he did was nod and move, sliding an arm underneath Idonea to lift her into a sitting position. The healers wrapped the bandages around her ribs before securing them and moving to the shaft still sticking out of her shoulder.

“If you’ll hold her upright and keep her still, Your Majesty. We got lucky with this one. She left just enough shaft we can push the arrowhead through to the other side. Far less painful and damaging than if she hadn’t.”

Nyrunn nodded and wordlessly shifted so he was half on the bed, holding her up, her head resting on his shoulder now as he kept one arm around her waist and the other wrapped around her head, keeping her braced while leaving the injured shoulder clear for the healers.

Unfortunately, it meant Nyrunn couldn’t look away when they grabbed the shaft and forced it through. Idonea’s eyes opened as she screamed again, tears flooding down her cheeks. The white-hot feeling of the sharp arrow ripping through her muscles ricocheted through the bond, and Nyrunn tried to take it but his frazzled grip was failing and some of it slipped away from him.

Idonea shuddered as the healers began weaving their starlight once more into the wound, trying to repair the damaged muscles inside. Nyrunn shifted his hand from gripping the back of her head to cradling it, gently stroking her hair as a few pained whimpers left her mouth.

The pain began to shift from an inferno to a duller roar.

The healers wrapped another bandage around her shoulder and shifted her arm into a sling. Idonea stilled, her breathing evened out.

“Your Majesty, do you have any injuries?”

“No.” He didn’t dare shake his head for fear of dislodging his wife. “As long as Idonea is healed, you can go. I’m sure there are plenty of others who need you right now.”

“We’ll be back soon to check on her. Until then, lay her on her back, don’t let her roll to either side.”

Nyrunn gave an assenting hum as they left the tent. Like he was letting her out of his arms anytime soon. His only movement was to shift so he was behind her and her back lay against his chest. He lay back, keeping one arm around her waist and using the other to pull the thin blanket of the cot up to her neck.

Nyrunn continued to take on as much of the ache in her wounds as he could, but its pervasiveness continued to outpace him. So, he instead focused on surrounding Idonea with the feeling of his love for her. She was alive.

She was still with him.

He didn’t even have any words left he could say even if she were awake to hear them.

Better to try and show her instead.