Page 120 of Master of Storms
A single tear slid down her cheek as she brushed his hair off his brow. “Thank you,” she whispered, because no one had ever rescuedher.
And suddenly she wanted to cry, because it felt like that moment she’d begged her mother to start breathing all over again. Butthistime she’d arrived in time. This time she’d managed to get to him before it was too late.
Even if that smug prick had put two arrows in her.
Breathing hard, Solveig looked down at the front of her blood-stained shirt. The broken shafts of both arrows still stuck out of her. She didn’t think she even had the strength to push them through her skin.
Shadows moved to the left of her.
Tyndyr paced in front of her shield of air like a wolf eyeing a den full of baby rabbits.
He leaned on his bow. “I can’t come in. But you can’t come out. How are those wounds feeling, littledreki? Do they itch? Just a little?”
She hadn’t really noticed until he said the words.
Solveig wrapped her arm around Marduk and ground her teeth together. “When I get out of here… you smarmy little frogfucker, I’m going to tear your… head… from your shoulders.”
Tyndyr blew her a kiss as he backed away. “Darling, by the time an hour has passed, you’ll be scratching the flesh from your bones. Think of me when you claw your own throat out.”
22
“Damn you, wake up,” a voice hissed.
Something struck his face.
Marduk winced. It wasn’t as painful as the hole someone had slowly drilled between his eyes, but it was more immediate.
He tried to blink his eyes open, but he didn’t have the energy.
“Please” came a soft whisper. “Please wake up. I need you.” A gentle hand cupped his cheek. “I’m not proud to admit this, but I need you to wake up, because I don’t think I have much more… time.”
Time.
Goddess. Solveig.
He swam through levels of consciousness, urged on by the pain ravaging her voice. The ache in his temples felt like someone had put a pistol to his forehead and pulled the trigger, but he forced it aside.
She needed him.
She, who never begged. She, who never surrendered.
Marduk surfaced with a gasp. Pain flooded away. The dizziness sloughed off. She needed him, and that was all that mattered.
“Solveig,” he rasped. “What’s wrong?”
Solveig leaned back against the wall beside him, her entire body shaking as she shoved at something in her abdomen. Sweat dripped down her face, and she ground her teeth together before finally slumping back against the wall with a choked scream.
“One,” she whispered hoarsely.
Blood. He could smell blood.
Marduk scrambled to his hands and knees as she slowly toppled toward him. “Goddess’s mercy!” He caught her in his arms as an arrow head hit the cave floor with a metallic chink. Hot blood washed over his hands. She’d pushed the arrow through her flesh. “Are you all right?” What a stupid question. “How badly are you hurt?”
She shuddered and looked up at him with wide, strangely innocent eyes that made her look years younger. It was as though pain stripped away the hard layers she guarded herself with. “One to… go.”
He propped her against the wall and tugged the edges of her shirt apart, finding two bloody holes in her. The abdomen wound was probably the worst, though she’d managed to get the arrow out.
As for her chest…. The tip of an arrow breeched her skin an inch above her nipple, but he could see where the rest of it was caught against her ribs. A breath hissed through his teeth. “What happened?”
