Page 35

I headed to the table and studied the map. The Black Tower was marked in the top left corner, but it must have showed the side of the Tower opposite to the training grounds because I didn’t recognize any of the landscape near the structure.

Someone had marked five X’s in charcoal, but I didn’t have any experience reading maps to tell what was marked or why.

And I was sure I’d only spent a few minutes looking at it. Not nearly enough time for Kit to get to the stables, saddle his horse, and the team to leave. Even if Payne had already saddled Kit’s horse for him like he’d promised, the team was probably just leaving the bailey.

My gaze slid around the room looking for something to do and landed on the shirt and the sewing kit. I didn’t know who needed to mend his clothes. I’d thought I was the only one who’d been punished by having to sew the rip in my pants and not been able to exchange it for a new one with the quartermaster. But maybe the rule applied even to elite teams.

Regardless, sewing was something I could do, especially if it was something as simple as rip, and it was an easy way to repay their kindness and make sure enough time had passed.

With that decided, I sat on the couch, found the rip, and carefully stitched it back together. Some of the buttons were also loose, so I reinforced those with a little more thread.

It had been dusk when I headed down for dinner and now there was no light coming through the partially open bedroom doors. Surely enough time had passed.

Groaning, I stood, shuffled to the bathing room, and turned the fae light as bright as it would go. Given how sore and tired I was, I didn’t want to risk falling asleep. But I also knew I couldn’t do a quick wash. If the healing salts were going to help, I needed to soak.

Just like with the sink in my room, there was a plug large enough to plug the drain at the bottom of the tub. I set it in place and turned on the taps then doled out a generous handful and a half of the salts.

While the tub filled with warm water, I undressed, carefully setting out my clothes so I could jump out of the tub and redress as quickly as possible if necessary.

Not that my body would be happy with any quick movement, but I needed to be ready. If I listened carefully, I should be able to hear someone enter the sitting room, and I could only pray I’d have enough time to put something on before they opened the bathing room door. I wouldn’t be able to bind my breasts, but I could at least get covered.

I set the strips from my old dress aside, so I could toss a towel on them if I needed to, and stepped into the warm water.

Oh, shadows!

I groaned half in pain and half in pleasure. It had only been a rotation and a day since I’d had a bath, but sinking into comforting warmth had never felt better.

I, however, had never looked worse. The bruise staining my side and chest had turned an ugly yellow green, but was also mottled with darker, newer bruises, and I had bruises on my thighs and arms from where I’d been struck with the practice blades.

If Sawyer could see me now, he’d be furious. But I also couldn’t imagine Sawyer surviving half of what I’d already gone through. And that didn’t count any of the extra training from Mikel and his gang.

Father, I hoped he was all right. He was still within the Five Great Kingdoms, possibly still in Erellod, but it was still summer and he had a horse. He wouldn’t have to worry about bad weather or not being able to forage for food.

He could make it, and I would last long enough for him to do so.

I shifted and groaned, my aching muscles complaining with even that subtle movement.

I. Would. Last.

I sank a little deeper in the water, letting it lap at my lips and cheeks, and closed my eyes. I was determined not to fall asleep, but I also needed to relax or I’d waste the healing properties of the salts.

My thoughts drifted from where I thought Sawyer might be right now in his journey and how he was doing, to how I was going to handle Mikel and the others to what I was going to do when I finally let myself fall asleep and I returned to the Garden.

Something flickered at the edge of my sight and I heard a masculine yell. I jerked up but wasn’t in the tub anymore. I stood in a forest clearing, the trees gnarled and twisted, growing out of a rugged rocky landscape. Fae light, hanging from a horse’s saddle, danced around the clearing as the horse shied away from an enormous shadowy bear.

“Get back on your mount,” Payne yelled as he slashed at the bear with one of his large swords and shoved a limp body toward the horse. “Get him to the Tower.”

Grefin grabbed the body and the light flashed across the injured man’s face. It was Kit with a nasty gash down his cheek.

Someone screamed and Lewin staggered into sight clutching his leg. The bear roared and the horse reared back on its hindlegs. The fae light flashed in my eyes, sending light then darkness washing across my vision.

The scream came again, the sound wrenching at my soul. The guys were in trouble. I had to help, do something, save them.

“Hold him,” someone barked. “We need to get this jerkin off him.”

I blinked, clearing my vision, but now I stood in the infirmary, the bright fae light illuminating Kit and his team in horrific brilliance.

Kit writhed on a table, blood pouring from where his hand used to be onto the polished stone floor. His jerkin was torn open and more blood oozed from his chest. Two guardsmen helped cut away his jerkin and shirt, revealing the deep gashes in the fae’s chest, while Flint placed his hands on the man and used his magic.

“Fuck,” he said. “I need two drams of wistellel.”

One of the guardsmen grabbed a rolling table with medical supplies and the other rushed to grab a jar from the medicine cabinet and pour it into a small cup.

“You have to save him,” Payne moaned, and my vision jerked me around the room.

Lewin lay unconscious on the next table, his right thigh shredded down to the bone and a growing pool of blood forming beneath his torso, while Grefin sat in a chair, holding one towel to the side of his head and the other to his calf.

Payne leaned against the wall next to him, clutching a severed hand, his eyes blank and stunned and his complexion gray. “Save him. Save him,” he hissed over and over. “You have to save him.”

“He’s losing too much blood.” Flint hurried to Payne and grabbed the severed hand.

“Save him.”

“Working on it,” Flint hissed between clenched teeth as he brought the hand to bleeding stump.

He closed his eyes, his expression tight with concentration. The guardsmen who’d moved the rolling table closer started wrapped a bandage around the connection as if fae magic was all that was needed to reattach a hand.

And while that might have been the case, sweat beaded on Flint’s forehead and his breathing grew heavier as if he were running the trail and not just standing there with his eyes closed.

Then Lewin screamed and his breathing turned short and sharp.

“Damn it.” Flint turned away from Kit to take care of Lewin. “I need to stabilize him.”

The man with the medicine rushed back to Kit and tried to get him to drink, while the other man cut away Kit’s pants, revealing more injuries.

Father, he must have been mauled by that bear. It was a miracle he was still alive.

“I can’t believe there were five of them,” Grefin groaned. “How the fuck were there five of them?”

“Please,” Payne said. “Save him.”

“He needs to drink,” the guardsman said.

But Kit screamed, the medicine dripped out of the side of his mouth, and he started to convulse. His foot slammed against the table, knocking it over with a crash and sending the medical equipment flying, and one of his arms caught the guardsman with the medicine in the face, sending him stumbling back.

Payne suddenly gasped. His eyes flashed wide and he clutched at his heart before dropping to the floor with a thump.

My pulse lurched.

No. Please no.

“Fucking hell.” Flint leaped across the room and grabbed Payne’s hand. “Shadow venom?” His gaze shot to Grefin. “I thought you said you fought bears, not serpents.”

The guardsman who’d been trying to get Kit to drink, rushed back to the medicine cabinet, pulled out another jug, and started to pour.

“Stop,” Flint said, and the vision wrenched my gaze back to Flint and Payne. “It’s too late. We’re seconds too late. It’s already reached his heart.”

I jerked up, sloshing water out of the tub, my chest tight with panic.

They were there.

Right now.

Everything within me screamed that at that very moment Flint was trying to save Kit and Lewin.

And Payne was going to die if I didn’t do anything.

Oh, Father. I’d never been able to change one of my visions before. My father had died. My brother had died. And so had my mother.

I’d hoped when I’d taken Sawyer’s place that I had changed things, but I had no way of knowing if I had, not until I knew for certain he was safe.

But this time?—

Please.

I had to save Payne. I had to change what I’d seen. Tonight had to be the night I succeeded.

To be continued…