Page 94 of The War of Wings
I slipped my arm from under Petra’s head, slowly sliding from the mattress and padding across the stone floor to pull on a pair of trousers and a tunic, then strapped my half-polished blade to my hip.
With one final glance at Petra to assure she was still asleep, I finally let out the breath I’d been holding when the door to the bedchamber clicked behind me. I was just steps from the door to our suite when I heard the sound of a blade clattering to the floor. My eyes narrowed in the direction of Miles’ bedchamber. Flickering light shone beneath his door. We had to be within a few hours of the sunrise. What the hell was he still doing awake?
He probably couldn’t sleep, same as me. Maybe he was sharpening his blade. Maybe he was cleaning it. I was about to start walking down the corridor to the library when a pained hiss filtered through the door.
I didn’t bother knocking. I burst into the room, my stomach in a knot as I scanned the scene before me. Miles shot to his feet from where he’d been kneeling on the floor, his chest heaving as he quickly reclaimed his sword from the ground and had it aimed in my direction in the span of a heartbeat. The blade fell to his side as soon as he saw it was me.
Miles glared at me. “What the hell are you doing?”
It was then I saw it. Blood coated his forearm, gushing from a slash across his skin just below the inside of his elbow. He caught my narrowed eyes, quickly taking a step back and making a shitty attempt at hiding the cut.
“What the hell am I doing? What the hell areyoudoing?” Something unsettling gripped me as I stared at him, at the wildness in his eyes, the way his chest was rising and falling too quickly. A bowl sat on the floor, its bottom coated in a layer of crimson. The room was silent aside from thedrip, drip, dripof blood flowing from his arm. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Miles answered, his agitation growing harder for him to conceal.
“Bullshit.” I marched forward, but he matched me stride for stride as he moved backwards, a trail of red droplets marking his path. “Show me your arm.”
“It’s nothing,” he repeated, his words harder.
We circled each other, me in pursuit and him in retreat disguised as nonchalance. “Show me your fucking arm, Miles.”
His back collided with the door. For a moment, I thought he was going to reach for the latch and try to escape my questioning. His eyes closed for a moment, as if he were convincing himself to stay here. Slowly, painfully, they opened again, and he extended his arm.
My jaw ground back and forth as I stared. The gash was too straight across his forearm, too even to be from anything other than a blade. It wasn’t a fatal wound, but the cut was deep enough that it could do with a few stitches.
“Malosym?” I asked, thinking back to when Miles had tackled him to the ground. Had he been struck and I’d missed it?
“No,” he answered simply.
“Miles,” I grunted, frustration rising at his unwillingness to give me even a single detail.
“It wasn’t Malosym.”
“Okay. Occulti?”
“I did it myself.”
My jaw slackened as the air in the room changed. This strange feeling slithered through me, a sickening sense of helplessness that crept around my stomach and constricted, and I was paralyzed in its unrelenting grip.
Everything I wanted to say felt wrong. I wanted to question why the fuck he’d do that, but he’d obviously done it for a reason. I wanted to tell him I’d help him, that he’d be okay, but it didn’t feel like enough. Every word felt pointless. So I remained silent. Maybe the quiet would give him the space he needed to find the words.
And when the silence between us grew so taut I was afraid it would snap, he finally spoke. “I found something that helps.”
There was only a split second of relief before it was washed away by a tidal wave of sheer panic. How badly had I hoped to hear him say those words? But these were not the circumstances I’d wished to hear them under. Not when he sat in his room bleeding and alone.
Miles’ hand hung awkwardly at his side in an attempt to keep the blood off his clothes. But every drop that hit the stone floor sent tiny specks outward, dotting his boots. “It’s…” he started, shaking his head as he looked down for a moment at his hand. “It’s in my blood, I think. So when I bleed…” His head tipped backward now, a heavy breath escaping through tight lips. “It seems to help. The darkness is not as powerful for a bit.”
My nostrils flared as I did everything in my power to keep a hold of myself. “How did you figure this out?”
I was frozen in place as he loosened the ties at the collar of his shirt, his movements stiff as he pulled it away just enough to reveal the bandage wrapped haphazardly around his shoulder and chest. “Occulti fucker got me tonight before I found you and Malosym.” The bandage was twisted and uneven, evidence he’d done it himself. That was when I noticed the pile of spare strips of cloth on the edge of the bed. “I felt it almost instantly, the relief. I could tell the wound wasn’t toodeep, so I didn’t try to staunch the bleeding at all. And the more I bled, the better I felt.” There was something in the set of his jaw, something in the furrow of his brow that wasn’t right.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked cautiously.
He shook his head, his eyes back on the ground again. “I’ve told you everything you need to know.”
“What the fuck aren’t you telling me, Miles?”
He rolled his head between his shoulders, averting his gaze. And when his eyes finally met mine, his anguish was so obvious, I felt it within my own chest, cold and razor-sharp. He shifted from one foot to the other, as if finding a more comfortable position to bear the weight he carried. “You really want to know?”
