Page 93 of Deadly Maiden

I don’t know. All I know is that I cannot bear to see him suffer so horribly any longer.

I shut my eyes as I place my hand on the bare skin of his shoulder.

I’m scared of what I’m doing, partly because I might make a mistake and do something that will hurt him more than the old injury that stops him from shifting. Mostly, it’s because we were not soulmates before.

If I lie from now on, this could break us.

There is no guarantee this will work, and if I tell him what I’ve done, it could, equally, destroy us.

As I did on the day the enforcers died, I let my mind and my presence sink into his flesh, searching for what I once repaired. I find it deep and hidden near where an etharum store seems to float, bulging with unleashed power, then I almost give in, for everything has returned. The damage is there. The dead matter is there. Mentally, I take a breath, steeling myself for what I am about to do, then I set to work knitting him back together.

When I’m finished and have returned to my own body, I stay there, kneeling beside him with my head bowed. I’m tired.

What if I have to do this over and over forever? There must be another way, a better way to heal him?

Assuming I have healed him, this time. I’ll go to bed, try to sleep, and hope to all the gods that he wakes whole.

Chapter 29

Rorsyd

I feel…great.

What am I missing?

It’s early. The window in the bedroom has the curtains peeled apart in the center. Dawn sneaks in a dab of weak light. The rattle outside in the streets is the cart merchants rolling to their sites.

Every part of me zings with pent-up energy—something I’ve not felt for a long while. Maybe since the last time I shifted. My thoughts have been submerged in a vast gray sea of misery this past week, or was it two weeks?

I crank myself onto my elbow, slowly, afraid this change will vanish beneath a grind of aches, remorse, and misery.

Nothing bad happens. It’s a start.

My palm, splayed on the floor, looks more real than it has, my claws arch out, shining with health. That dull green tinge my claws have never exhibited before? Gone. On the bed to my right, the sheets have been tossed back.

The bed is empty. Wyntre’s sleeping place. This is when my mind decides to remind me of my pitiful showing ever since we came here.

I’ve been drinking even more than before I met her.

I’ve ignored her, slept here on the floor, drank myself into a foggy oblivion. Anything to avoid what has become painful. My failure. A soulmate should not be a pathetic reflection of himself.

I run my hand through my stiff hair and the quilt over my legs slips to reveal a pooled darkness at the bottom, past my feet.

What. Is. That?

The creature lies curled up, nose to tail. It has small ears. It might be the cat I saw at the lake?

A pair of blue eyes springs open, and it blinks lazily at me, smiles what I can only call a sheepish grin with a set of supremely white fangs. Then it runs into my clothes closet.

A whole week of past conversations with Wyntre trundles through my head while I stare at the closet. We said nothing about this? Maybe?

Have we adopted a stray animal while I was being a fool?

Maybe you should stop drinking?

I thought collecting meant you didn’t use it?

Rorsyd? Are you coming to bed or drinking more wine?

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