Page 112 of Iridian

Two of them who stood on the other side of the room stepped forward.Shall we awaken him?

“Goddess, no,” I breathed, raising my hand on instinct. “No, I?—”

The bracelet was around my wrist. Cold and heavy and fitting me exactly right.

I lowered it again, brought it to my chest. “Let him rest,” I whispered. “Stay with him while I clean myself up.”

Yes, Mistress,the voices said, and I, pretending that I knew what I was doing, that I was strong enough to handle all of this, went for the bathroom door that was right next to where the soldier was standing by the wall.

I looked at him, and his name was Lind,and I thought,Don’t call me that, Lind,this time only in my mind.

He said nothing.

I didn’t dare look in the mirror or anywhere near it in the bathroom. I’d already seen more than enough through eyes that weren’t mine. The water of the shower fell on my head and it was like a touch caressing my skin as it washed away the blood and dirt. I kept my eyes on my feet, on the pale pink tiles while the water went down the drain. But by the end, that same water that comforted me became too heavy on my shoulders, each drop a reminder of all those memories in my head that weren’t mine.

It was over. Everything was already over. The memory of the look in Helen Paine’s eyes said so. The pain that had sliced through Taland’s body and mine said so, yet I still couldn’t convince myself of it. It was going to take a while.

In the closet, I avoided the mirror again, eyes on my feet until I got dressed in my own clothes that felt as foreign to me now as every other thing I’d ever put on that didn’t belong to me. But when I went back into the room, nothing had changed. The soldiers were still there and Taland was still sleeping, and I don’t know why there were tears in my eyes, warm and stinging.

Those, too, I ignored when I grabbed towels and a small bucket from the bathroom, filled it with water, and went to sit at the corner of the bed to clean his face, at least. I don’t know how long I did it, but eventually my hands stopped shaking every time I wiped the blood off his cheeks and forehead and cleaned his neck and chest. Eventually those tears I was pretending didn’t exist stopped falling, and the more I focused on his steady breathing, the more grounded I felt.

Then I wondered where Madeline was and what she thought of this whole thing, if she was going to?—

Outside, Mistress.

The voices that popped into my head brought all my other thoughts to a halt, and that wasn’t all. Suddenly I was being dragged down that tunnel again, violently. I stopped breathing and suddenly I saw a lot more than what was in front of me.

I saw the hallway outside my bedroom through the eyes of a soldier who must have been standing right in front of my doors, and I saw Madeline with two of her guards near the wall across from him, waiting.

Stop!I shouted in my head, and then I was back to seeing from my own eyes, and Taland’s clean face was there again while I breathed like I’d been racing.

Goddess, how was I ever going to live like this? How was I ever going to get used to this? Taland had made it look so easy. I’d never once heard a word of complaint.

“Wake up,” I whispered, touching his cheek gently, and I wished he would open his eyes for me, but he didn’t.

He needed rest. The thought of how he’d been torn apart, clothes and skin and flesh right in front of my eyes, terrified me. He was going to need a lot of rest.

So, I put the towels and the bucket away and I pressed my hand in the middle of his chest and I called for a healing spell, even though he looked okay. I called for a simple one,second degree, to search and mend minor damages, just in case Madeline had missed something. Highly unlikely, but I needed to feel like I’d donesomething.

Colorful magic rushed down my arm, slipped out of my skin and into his, heating his chest for a moment.

A deep breath later, Taland’s breathing fell in a steady rhythm again. His eyes remained closed.

I stood up and went to the door, feeling like there was no ground beneath my feet.

“Sta—” I stopped myself.

I thought,Stay with him.

Yes, Mistress,the voices responded, and I no longer wasted another thought to tell them not to call me that. I just grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.

The hallway was much brighter than my room, where I’d only had the nightstand lamps on. Ricardus, the guard whose eyes I’d seen through just now, stepped to the side, and my breath caught in my throat to find Madeline right there, exactly like I’d seen her. Red suit without a wrinkle in sight, silver hair perfectly done, red staining her lips, and those round golden earrings I didn’t think I’d even recognize her without…

She was here.

“Rosabel,” she said, and her voice echoed in the high ceiling—or maybe it was just me. I forced air down my lungs without ever giving the slightest expression, but the way she was looking at me suggested she wouldn’t have noticed even if I’d have flinched. Her focus was on my eyes, which I understood. I’d seen myself, too, through the soldiers in my room, and I knew what they looked like.White,completely white. Just like Taland’s had become. The reasonwhywas there, scratching the surface of my brain, trying to get my attention, but I was barely coping with all these new memories and views and thoughts and senses beingdumped into my brain at the same time so I was constantly blocking everything I could block on instinct.

“You healed us,” I said, and my voice sounded even worse than earlier.

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