Page 67 of A Sword of Ice
Because Ryker was hovering, she made him go find a bucket and a rag to clean his wounds, along with alcohol to disinfect them. The boat was bound to have some. After he got the supplies, she sent him away with a growl and a snap of her canines. He begrudgingly left, dragging his feet across the deck like it was just too difficult for him to walk away from the injuries.
She wanted to take her familiar down below deck, but Iona knew he wouldn’t fit through the door. She did her best to find an inkling of privacy on the far side of the boat, where she cleaned his wounds.
She winced every time she had to swipe the rag near his opened flesh. Tears prickled every time she added alcohol to disinfect. By the time she was finished wiping him down, his coat was gleaming white again, with patches of missing fur and skin. She wrapped his wounds and willed her magic to surround him so he’d be cold, just the right temperature to be comfortable.
When she finished, she dropped the rag in the bucket and took it below deck, staying there a moment to catch her breath and reinforce the strength of the ice covering the hole on the boat. She needed the solitude to process what had happened. It seemed like everything had unfolded so fast, and she hadn’t had the time to fully process. Starting from when Petey attacked her, to finding the Resistance, to her familiar being gone. Then she needed to cope with what she’d witnessed on that forsaken island.
Her heart broke over the fact she hadn’t been able to rescue the rest of the animals and Fae there. They never would have fit on the boat, and she despaired to think about what her and Shula’s combined explosive magic would have done to the island’s residents. Not the vile, evil humans, but to others. To the animals, the slaves.
Had she hurt them? Had they died?
She didn’t want to think about the innocent creatures who deserved so much more than to have been forced into slavery at the bleeding hands of mercenaries and pirates. Yet she tried to find comfort in the fact that their deaths would have been quick and preferable to the torture they’d endured.
Still, that wasn’t for her to decide. Their souls were Mana’s and Mana’s alone.
She sighed as she kicked the bucket to the side. Footsteps walking down the stairs pulled her out of her melancholy thoughts. She recognized the heavy fall of them immediately as they creaked under his weight.
She didn’t turn to meet him. She just felt suddenly so tired. The desire to sleep forever creaking through her bones.
“Saw you come down here,” Julius began quietly. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Iona sucked in a breath and turned to see sincerity in his gaze. She didn’t bother forcing a smile, knowing he would see right through it anyway. Instead, she leaned back against the wall and sighed.
“I have had better days.”
He prowled closer but didn’t touch her and didn’t speak. He stared, like he could somehow find the answers of his silent questions in her soul. The secrets of her life she kept tightly bottled.
His presence was grounding, like the roots of mighty trees. She’d never met anyone as steady as him, save for her father, but Julius wasn’t like her father at all. He was virile, strong. Her father had his own brand of strength that was different. But he wouldn’t have been able to deal with what Iona was now, with what she had become.
Julius could.
He’d lead her out of that place in her mind. He’d memorized the pattern of a ceiling he’d never seen and known to use it as her comfort to yank her out of a past that was sometimes too painful to face.
“Thank you,” Iona whispered, her voice echoing through the quiet of the room, making it sound too loud. She wondered if he could also hear her heartbeat. It wasn’t rapid, but steady. Like him. Because he didn’t make her nervous. But he did make her want, make herneed. And she wouldn’t fight a gift freely given.
“For what?” An orange brow rose. Not mocking, but slightly amused.
“For everything. For helping, for my familiar, for pulling me out of that place…” She swallowed.
She didn’t like contemplating the memories that dragged her under, but there was no denying that the past had irrevocably changed her in ways she never thought possible. She wanted to think they were good changes. That despite the mess the war had left behind, she was stronger because of it. Even when she was too weak to resist the pull of memories and nightmares that made her heart pound and her body break out into a cold sweat. Even when she felt like she was drowning and sometimes hated her body for betraying her, she always climbed out of it.
She had to keep telling herself she was strong, even if she sometimes didn’t feel like it. Because sometimes, when you said something often enough, when you prayed hard enough, everything you wanted had the possibility of coming true.
So that’s what Iona did. She prayed and she hoped, or else she’d truly be lost in her own past. In wars, ashwood, blood, and track marks in the sand, the evidence of a body the humans had dragged away.
“What do you see?” he asked softly. “When you go there?”
A lump formed in her throat. She’d never talked to another person, Fae or human, about this at all. Not even Henry, who had owned part of her heart. She found herself wanting to confide in Julius. Not just because he was her mate, but because she simply wanted to share that part of herself with someone else who might understand.
“It… varies…” She swallowed. “Sometimes it goes back to one-hundred and two years ago. The Jade Court, that’s where I’m from.” He nodded. “The sky is blue then gray, and the ground shakes as the soldiers invade. Then there’s nothing but screams and blood.”
And her sister’s body being dragged through the sand.
She didn’t say that part.
“Sometimes,” she continued, “I see the war. I’m back there, watching friends die. Or on the boat that was meant to take us to safety. But more often than not, it’s the water. I’m choking on salt and the acrid taste of fish…” She took a breath, willed her suddenly rapid heartbeat to slow back to their normal rhythm. She was safe. She was with Julius. She was safe.
“And your fingers… it brings you comfort.”
