Page 60 of The Royal Curse

He blinked, slowly refocusing on my face from where he’d been staring off over my shoulder. “Your Highness, you shouldn’t ride out alone,” he said, and his eyes rolled back in his head, his arm going limp around me.

Chapter Twenty-Two

For a frozen, horrified moment, I simply stared at him, time stretching into infinity around us, the men’s voices and the calls of birds and the horses’ whickering fading to a murmur.

And then everything came rushing back in, unbearably loud and fast. Andreas slumped and tipped to the side, inexorably falling from the horse as I desperately caught him in my arms, sliding with him, shouting for Salvius—and a cry of alarm went up, men rushing forward to catch us as we tumbled down.

We landed in a heap with me sprawled on top of Andreas and a sharp pain in my knee where it’d struck a branch embedded in the mud. Someone I didn’t know, a scruffy soldier in studded leather armor, crouched at Andreas’s head, holding it up off the ground. He’d probably kept him from snapping his neck and saved his life.

I laid my hand on Andreas’s cheek again. It seared my palm—even hotter than it had been a moment ago. Salvius skidded to a stop behind the soldier, mouth open, eyes wide.

“Oh, gods,” he said. “He said it was nothing, that it barely went through his mail! No one more stubborn than our command—”

“He was wounded?” I choked. Of course he had been, because no one, no matter how skilled a soldier, could’ve come out of that fight unscathed. And then he’d mounted his horse and ridden after me, saved me, when he… “In the ambush. He was wounded. And he—fuck. Fuck!”

For an instant I almost passed out again, a wave of vertigo nearly carrying me away. I closed my eyes, sucked in a deep breath, focused on the rough several-days’-growth of Andreas’s beard beneath my fingers.

I found my center at last and opened my eyes. A circle of men surrounded us: Salvius, the soldier I didn’t know and three others in similar armor, and Ludo and Piet, two of the men who’d come with me from Surbino.

No Carlo. No Rinaldi, who must’ve fallen in the ambush. Their loss cut deep. My fault. Dario’s fault too, of course, and that of the bastards he’d commanded and whoever had given all of them their orders. But if I hadn’t insisted on this journey…

Gods, I couldn’t break down. Because everyone had their eyes fixed on me as they waited for me to tell them what to do. And Andreas…unable to help myself, I reflexively glanced down again, instinctively seeking his strength and decision and judgment.

I’d never seen him less than entirely competent, exuding power and command. But he lay still, mouth slack, breathing far too fast, fevered and helpless. At his side, his hand lay empty and bereft, limp in the dirt, the fingers curled as if searching for his sword hilt. Or for me.

Terror constricted my chest and wormed its way into me, clawing at my insides. I couldn’t lose him.

I’d placed my trust in him, put my life and my body and my soul in his hands.

Now it was my turn. Andreas needed me. Rising to the occasion wasn’t optional.

I looked up. “Do we have any kind of canvas, a shelter? Move him under those trees and set something up, light a fire, and make camp as comfortably as you can. We’re not going anywhere for a while.” They stared at me. “Now!”

All at once, they burst into action, a flurry of talk and motion. Salvius began to repeat the same orders I’d given, only more loudly. I lurched to my feet heavily, sliding my hand down to grasp Andreas’s. The curled fingers stayed lax and loose, but I gripped him hard enough to hurt, willing him to feel my touch, to know I was there.

Ludo and two of the soldiers maneuvered Andreas onto his cloak and lifted him, bearing him off toward the scant shelter of the trees, with me trotting alongside, my gaze fixed on Andreas’s face. It was gray where it wasn’t hectically flushed.

I had to let go of him for a moment as the men carefully laid him down on a hastily assembled pallet of blankets. As soon as we lost that point of contact, I went cold and numb all over. He wouldn’t really die if I didn’t touch him, but…fuck, it had to be my imagination, I knew it did, but my fingertips twitched to the rhythm of his heartbeat, too rapid and too weak. His labored breaths rasped in my ears and strained my own lungs even though I couldn’t possibly hear him over the hubbub around us.

“Your Highness, we’ll have a fire lit in a moment,” Piet said, rising from next to Andreas’s legs. “Hot water? You’ll want that, I’m thinking. And we’ll have something to keep the drizzle off in a few minutes.”

He bustled off without waiting for an answer, and I dropped down to my knees beside Andreas, taking his hand again. Did he feel somehow weaker? That had to be my imagination too. You couldn’t tell that from holding someone’s hand. But he hadn’t opened his eyes since he collapsed. Except for the fevered flush, he looked like a corpse.

I shook my head and scrubbed my free hand over my face, swallowing hard around the lump in my dry throat, and then started to pat at Andreas’s body, looking for any sign of a bandage or blood or…anything at all. But he was wearing his mail, and Salvius had said the cut had barely gone through it, but I couldn’t even find the rent in it.

“Salvius!” I called, and a moment later he crouched down beside me. “Where the hell is he wounded?”

“Along his right side,” Salvius said. “He said it was only a scratch. He wouldn’t wait for anything.”

Wait for anything to follow me, Salvius meant. Andreas lay here now, desperately ill, because of his devotion to me.

Tears stung my eyes despite my determination to stay in control, and I blinked them away, hoping Salvius wouldn’t see them.

I carefully laid Andreas’s hand by his side and started to tug at his tunic. How many times had we torn each other’s clothes off, with or without magic, his hot mouth at my throat and his deep voice murmuring his desires in my ear…gods, not often enough, not nearly enough, and I’d give anything to have that again. To have it forever. But right now I had to get him undressed for a much less pleasant reason, and it was a lot harder without his cooperation. Finally I shoved his damp, heavy wool tunic up far enough to expose his chain mail shirt.

And there it was: a jagged rent in the side of it, only a few links snapped. It looked like nothing at all.

It took Salvius’s help to get the mail pushed up out of the way, both of us grunting and cursing, and me so impatient I could’ve screamed.

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