Page 83 of The Horned King

Half of the crowd pushes at my guards, attempting to flee. The other half screams and wails at the horrid display of violence before them. Bloody footprints lead in every direction, giving me no idea where to begin looking for who did this. All of them would have been so under the Syren song they wouldn't have even noticed Elva being sliced open.

"If she dies, so does every person in this room," I promise them, fully intending to follow through. "Get me a fucking healer, or you're all corpses the moment she is."

The sobbing intensifies as I stare at the silent, nearly lifeless Elva before me. She's already lost too much blood, all of her muscles completely and utterly slack as I press against her stomach, desperately trying to hold the blood escaping inside her. It's a pointless endeavor, even I know that. Too much is gone.

But she's not yet. While her mind is completely silent and unconscious, her heart still beats. Slowly, but with every beat in her chest, there is still hope, even as each beat pushes more and more of this sticky red substance onto the floor.

My healer finally lands beside me on his knees, reaching for her wordlessly. He smells of drink and tart, foul smoke. "She's lost too much blood," he tells me, his hands against her stomach anyway.

"No, she hasn't," I bite. "I can't feel her yet, so somewhere in there, Elva still lives. Now fix it, or you'll be dead before she is."

"Your Majesty," he pleads. "Look at her."

"I am." I can't look away. "Fix. It."

"I'll heal the wound, but there's no guarantee that it'll be enough," he tells me, already doing so. Too slowly, her wound stitches back together. Her skin melds, leaving behind nothing, not even a scar. But she doesn't stir. And I know she won't. The blood on the floor is more than any person should be without.

She's whole again, and yet, so wholly not. And there's no way to know if or when she'll wake. "That's all that can be done, Your Majesty," the healer says. "It's up to her now. She'll have to decide if she wants to fight back from the brink of death."

"She will."

He pauses, then agrees with me, even if only to save himself from my wrath, "Yes, Your Majesty."

"No one leaves this room," I announce. "None of you until she wakes. And if she doesn't, this will be all of your graves."

Twenty Three

Kairon

As I carry Elva to the hidden door at the back of the room, the guards push every person away from the doors. I make a note of who I see through their eyes that could have been involved, anyone with even a spot of blood on them. The Syren I killed walks toward me, looking entirely alive to the untrained eye.

Another woman in the crowd screams, desperately asking Sia what she's doing.

My guards grab her as well, having at least two people to begin questioning. The entire band and lead singer are all detained, too.

A familiar head of hair sticks out in the throngs of people, even as he tries to blend in and make himself small.

Shan.

Shan escaped the dungeons. He did this.

A guard drags him with a large armored hand around his throat, pulling them through the door behind me and immediately taking them down to my interrogation rooms. I haven't needed to use them in years, and I'm sure the devices down there are immensely rusty by now.

But I'll dole out their punishments and seek answers after I take care of Elva. So carefully, I carry her up to our chambers, taking care to keep her from being jostled too much.

I can't stand the blood in her hair; I can't stand the way it contrasts so much with the lack of color in her cheeks. All that warmth that usually lives in there splattered across the surface instead. After throwing my helm and cloak to the floor, Raya and I gently, thoroughly cleanse every drop of it from her body. Raya doesn't ask if she'll be alright. She doesn't ask anything; she just lets the tears fall down her face as we work. And I don't bother asking her where she was when it happened, knowing full well that she and Maren had snuck off together long before Elva's attack.

Once clean and dressed, I tuck Elva into my bed, her head cradled by pillows, her body wrapped in the blankets to keep her warm and aid her healing.

Pulling up a chair to sit beside her, I finally let myself tell her the things I meant to say earlier.

"I need you to stay with me, Elva," I confess. "I'll accept it, even if it's not right here in this room or in this country. But you have to stay on this mortal plane. I can't bear the thought of living in a world you're not in."

This is what I asked for, isn't it? A way to tell her everything without her hearing it at all. And I wanted to see her coated in blood. Anyone's, I had said, but never, in my worst nightmares, did I think it would be her own. This is a cruel trick of fate. A malicious play on what I wished for.

"You can't die." I hold her frigid hand in mine. "I haven't shown you everything yet. You have to see Slawyth. You have to see the basilisk tracks we talked about."

Silence. Silence I knew would happen and cuts me open all the same.