“Thank you,” I whispered at last.
Raidyn’s hand tightened over mine. “It won’t always be like this,” he said softly. “Even though it feels like it right now.”
“I’m scared,” I choked out, admitting the truth at last. “I’m scared to go to bed.”
Normally, such an admission would have made my cheeks flame with embarrassment, nervous he would take my meaning wrong. But somehow, I knew he would understand.
“Would it help if I sat with you? Only until you are asleep,” he quickly added. “Then I’ll go back to my room.”
His offer took the warmth from his touch and sent it straight into the depths of my heart. Oh, how I longed to say yes, except … “But you have to be up in a few hours anyway with my father. You need to be resting, not sitting with me because I’m such a mess.”
“There is nowhere else I would rather be.”
I didn’t have the willpower to refuse him again—not when the fear and panic hovered, waiting to swoop in. My eyes dropped to where his hand clasped mine against his chest and I whispered “thank you” a second time.
Keeping our fingers laced, he rubbed his thumb across my jaw once more, leaving a trail of heat on my skin. Then he turned and guided me toward my door, opening it for me and keeping our hands intertwined as I followed him across the threshold and into my room.
“Do you wish to change? I can leave if you do, and then you can open the door when you are ready or call out for me.”
“No,” I quickly responded. “I’ll go to bed like this tonight.” I’d changed out of the bloodstained dress for dinner; the one I was wearing was clean and I didn’t dare let him leave, afraid of how quickly the images might resurface if he did.
He nodded. “Would you like me to start a fire? It’s chilly in here. That won’t help.”
“If you think so.”
He had to drop my hand to place a few logs in the hearth. I stood a few feet back, my arms wrapped around my waist once more as he stretched his hand out. His veins lit with power, and then he sent a small blast of Paladin fire at the wood. The blue flames slowly morphed into normal orange and yellow as the logs caught and billowed warmth out into my room.
Raidyn turned to me. We stood there for a moment that drew out long enough to be both awkward and enticingly forbidden. We were alone, in my bedroom.
He cleared his throat and glanced toward the bed. “Why don’t you get comfortable and then I’ll tell you a story.” Without looking at me again, he strode over to the lone chair by my desk and carried it over to the side of the bed.
“A story?” I repeated, though I did as he bid and pulled my covers down, climbing into my cold bed with a shiver, despite the spreading warmth from the fire.
“Yes, a story,” he replied with a small smile—a true smile that lit his striking eyes with something even more powerful and beautiful than the Paladin fire in his irises. Something I’d so rarely seen that I couldn’t help but smile back, even though I was trembling again. “Lie back, and give me your hand.”
“I … I … can’t…”
“Trust me, Zuhra,” Raidyn murmured, sitting in the chair and resting his hand on the side of my mattress, palm up. “I promise to stay with you—to keep you safe. Give me your hand. Focus on the pressure of my grip and the sound of my voice. Wall yourself into this moment, with me, here, in this room. For right now, there is nothing else but you and me, and our hands, and this story.”
I inhaled deeply and then hesitantly lay down, my pillow compressing beneath the weight of my head. He nodded encouragingly, and I placed my hand in his. He squeezed it, firm but gentle.
“I can’t close my eyes. I don’t dare.”
“Then look at me. Look at my eyes. Listen to my voice. And just breathe. Slowly … in and out.”
“And if I don’t fall asleep?”
“Then I will keep telling you stories until the sun rises.”
I gripped his hand tightly, my throat thick with unspoken gratitude and so much more. I didn’t know why he was willing to do this for me—why he’d known to come, to be there for me tonight. Was it merely a sense of responsibility because of what he could sense through the sanaulus … or was it something more?
“Once, not so very long ago, there was a young girl who dreamed of flying,” he began, his voice low and smooth, the familiar melody of it washing over me as he spoke, my hand in his hand, his eyes on my eyes. I listened and felt and breathed and, miraculously, there was only Raidyn and me and his story and the warmth of the fire washing over us both as he wove a spell of comfort and calm.
And somehow, slowly, my eyes grew heavy, and my breathing steady, as he told me story after story, until eventually, I succumbed to exhaustion and was able to drift off to sleep, the memory of his blue-fire eyes on mine following me into my dreams, where I prayed they would keep the nightmares at bay.
THREE
INARA
Darkness crept across my room, stealing the final hint of daylight partially visible through my window next to where I lay, covers pulled up to my chin. Small noises came from the hallway, and I wondered if it was Zuhra. Part of me wished to go to her … but the other part of me, the part deep inside that was darker than the inky blackness spilling across the night sky, froze me in place.
Though I willed it not to, my heart began to thump hard, harder, harder. My face flushed hot; my arms went numb.
Terror.
Rising like a tsunami—something Zuhra and I had read about in a book years ago—a deceptively deadly wave that just kept coming, and coming, and coming, rising with unimaginable force, destroying everything in its path.
My breath burst out in short gasps, faster and faster, until the room spun along with my stomach.
You’re safe. He’s gone. You’re safe …
I repeated the phrases to myself again and again, but they were feeble blockades against the relentless wave of panic, crumbling with barely a hint of resistance.
“Zuhra,” I called out weakly, between pants. Zuhra … come to me. Help me.
It felt like I was dying again, not from a wound inflicted by a monster in the form of a man, from the monster inside of me. The massive, prowling beast that stalked through the emptiness where my magic had once resided. The physical wounds were gone, healed by Raidyn and Zuhra’s combined efforts. But not even their immense combined power could fix what his attack had done to me.
What it was continuing to do to me.
I threw off my covers, grabbed a dressing gown from my wardrobe, and began to pace my room. Sleep was not going to come, no matter how exhausted I was, no matter how drained my body might have been after the trauma I’d endured. I wanted my power back—needed it back. I would even have willingly accepted the roar again to have it returned to me.
I paused by my window, glancing out at the darkened grounds. The hole in the hedge was still there, a visible wound torn through our lives. The matching hole inside me throbbed, painful and raw, until everything blurred and I had to wipe at my eyes to clear my vision from the tears that kept gathering. Dizziness from breathing so hard and fast forced me to grip the window seal to keep myself upright.