Page 39 of The Coven of Ruin
“You always,” he grunted as he took some of his weight off her again. “Call me…” His eyes rolled back, and his hand slipped from where it had landed on her shoulder. “By my name.” And then he was gone, falling into the other realm.
All she could do was cushion his fall with her magic in this one.
Chapter XVII
“Ares?”Tristasteppedtowardhim to kneel by his head. He didn’t respond even as she placed her hand on his cheek. The god burned so hot that she pulled her hand back in panic. “It’ll be fine,” she assured even as she looked around the room, momentarily lost as to what to do.
Springing up, she ran to the door, pulling it open quickly. “Grae?” she shouted, her voice echoing in the circular landing. “Brune?” She waited, holding her breath, but no one responded. Never had she wanted the godly crew to be there as she did in that moment.
Curse it.
To get another witch healer would take precious time they didn’t have, and she wasn’t even sure if their magic could help him. Spinning around, she hurried to the adjacent room connected to his. It served as a bedroom and bath. She instinctively moved to plug the tub and run cool water.
Dashing back into the main chamber, she searched for an ordinary knife. She ransacked his desk, opening its unlocked drawers, and scanned the shelves around it, but there was nothing. Walking between the seats toward the fireplace, she spied a hilt sticking out between the cushions of the wide settee. Not thinking too much on how it was somehow logical for a god of war to have a knife between the cushions, she pulled it out. When she returned to his prostrate form, his chest barely moved with the effort of inhaling, but it was there.
Still breathing.
Carefully, she cut his tunic from him so as not to knick him. She stared at the unknown death magic for a long moment before the sound of running water snapped her out of inaction.
There was no way she would be able to lift him. Calling on her magic, she focused on it like a guiding light. Even as her entire body began to ache with the effort, her magic lifted and levitated him across the room, holding him up as if on a bed of air. Though she had spelled many a patient before to get them into a cot or move them, it was usually with the aid of her althea.
And not an overly muscled, stubborn, infuriating god of war.
Bumping his head once against the doorframe as she directed him across its threshold, she muttered, “I can’t say you didn’t deserve that.”
Turning the water off, her essence gently guided him into the tub even as his weight became increasingly difficult to hold. She hiked her skirts up and sat down at the opposite end of the spout, on the tub’s edge. The wide basin sat within an alcove and was large enough that his knees had to only be bent slightly while he was positioned half-seated against her legs.
Panting, she let her magic go. His upper body slumped against her. Trista conjured a sponge as sweat beaded on her forehead. Conjuring took a hefty toll, but so did levitating a heavy god.
Wetting the sponge, she let the cool water run down his face and neck as she did. His brow still held a crease as if he was brooding even in his fevered slumber. She wiped his black locks away from his face, the strands silky and thick as they passed through her fingers. A thought made her pause mid-action. He would hate her if he knew she was doing this. Any of it. And if the god had been awake, she would have never been able to touch him in such a way.
She could only hope that the water was helping to bring down his body temperature as she still felt uncomfortably heated with the god against her. Setting the sponge aside, Trista channeled her magic to her fingertips. She tentatively tapped the black creeping veins below his collarbone and met only resistance.
This was unlike any dark magic she had ever come across. It was as if it didn’t know the foundation of their magic at all. It was similar to what she felt in the mage at the Akeso after the demi gods’ attack. True darkness, or something else entirely. She dug a finger into the middle of the gash, and her stomach lurched as the death spell latched onto her. But she persisted, forcing her magic to fill the wound. It took her over twenty minutes before his flesh stitched together again in some semblance of healing.
She hadn’t saved him from whatever darkness the injury held, merely slowed its effects for a time.
Sighing, she shifted herself so she could sit more comfortably, causing his head to turn so his cheek rested against her outer thigh. She summoned one last item—a tincture that would hopefully slow the infection further and calm the fever. Pulling the cork out of the small bottle with her teeth, she spat it out unceremoniously into his room. She dripped the milky liquid into his mouth, careful not to pour it all at once. Satisfied but exhausted from her magical expenditure, she leaned back against the wall.
Trista hadn’t pushed her limits this hard in such a long time, if ever. Picking up the sponge again, she resumed idly dabbing his heated skin.
She couldn’t fully trust that he would recover without knowing what magic was killing him. A vision of his comrades finding her sitting with their dead brother in a basin came unbidden to her mind.
If she could justseewhat had caused the wound, she could help him better. Her essence tingled tauntingly. She made herself take several deep, calming breaths. Since she didn’t know how to control what she saw, Trista would see more than his injury if she could even find it in the labyrinth of his memories. A nagging thought arose of whether she could find anything else about why he was there or even about the curse. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Closing her eyes, she let her magic surface again. And suddenly, she was touching two worlds. Between realms. She was aware of the sponge in her other hand and the burning god against her legs, but she also viewed what lay within him.
At first, the visions came like quick flashes. Ares dressed in armor, his sword dripping with layers of blood. His movements were fluid, like a dancer whose art form was death. She watched as he cut down one, two, three people, their blood splashing upon him—an offering to The God of War. Thousands of battles, countless deaths, scars, and unimaginable violence flashed before her eyes.
These battles were separated by small moments that should have been happy. Laughing in a war camp with men around a fire. A beautiful woman standing close to him and smiling up at him. Grae tackling him, forcing him into an embrace while a lithe and tall woman laughed. A godling rushing up to him as Ares swooped him up, spinning him high above his head, the twin suns of Olympus smiling on them. But even those moments seemed to drip with a sort of sadness, a disconnect. An unease. As if he were present for them only in body.
She grounded herself in the present as she let the sponge drop into the water, the splash seeming far away. Resting both of her hands on his cheeks, she blew out a controlled exhale.
And then she was pulled into a fuller, clearer memory. Ares before a large man in a hall in the skies. He was younger and had fewer scars. Carefree, a god with youth and excitement bubbling in his veins. Zeus, identifiable by the lightning bolt dagger he carried, walked up to Ares and made a small cut in the middle of his chest. Ares’ jaw ticked, the only hint of his discomfort.
The God King swiped a finger through the blood, placing it within the dagger’s hilt. “Mortal and powerless,” Zeus’ voice boomed.
“I will be victorious, father.” His voice was the same, except the tone was that of someone happy to be alive, eager to prove himself. It had a life in it that the present-day god’s lacked. He looked at Zeus with barely reserved adoration and pride. And Trista thought maybe even with love. The God King merely nodded at Ares, who turned on his heel and strode out of the hall, now a mortal.
