Page 36 of Wicked Enemy

“Eve!”

“Levi…” Her normally so glittering brown eyes were glassy with pain as she at last turned to look at me. And her words were slurred as she spoke. “I’m gonna need you to… lock my legs to the saddle… with metal.”

“Are you—”

“Now.”

While we continued racing across the grass, I brushed my palms together and summoned a long band of metal that I wrapped around her legs before attaching it to the saddle.

“Tha…nks,” she slurred.

Then she passed out from what had to be enormous pain in the back of her thighs as they kept bumping against the saddle with every step of her horse.

I threw myself sideways and barely managed to grab her horse’s reins before she just slumped backwards.

“Fucking hell, spitfire,” I blurted out.

Slowing our horses to a walk, I touched my hands together again and extended the metal so that it was bracing her whole body. Then I spurred the animals on again. We had to get to my safe house before the worldwalker found us.

As our horses galloped across the grass, I glanced at Eve again. I could have carried her in my arms while we shared one horse, so that her thighs didn’t have to touch anything. But she was so fucking stubborn and independent and…

Pain tore at my heart as I looked at her where she sat, passed out from the sheer agony of trying to get through it on her own.

“Fucking hell, spitfire,” I said again, much softer this time.

When we at last reached the cottage, I jumped down from my horse and let the metal evaporate. Eve slid sideways, but I caught her in my arms before she could fall far.

The door to the cottage was thrown open.

“What are her injuries?” Gemma demanded as I ran towards her.

My lookout, a man in his fifties who lived in this cottage, immediately hurried in the other direction to take care of the horses. He was the reason why I had even found Eve in the first place. Usually, he was just responsible for reporting on trade movements. But as soon as I had read the letter from the worldwalker, I had contacted him and ordered him to find out where the guy was hiding. Thankfully, he had found their hideout just a few hours before the deadline, so I had been able to make it there in time.

“Her hamstrings have been severed,” I replied as I jogged after Gemma with Eve still in my arms. “The rest I don’t know for certain, but it looks like she has taken one hell of a beating.”

“Put her on the table.”

Scraping noises echoed between the walls as Gemma shoved aside all the chairs that had been surrounding the sturdy wooden table in the middle of the cottage. I quickly closed the distance to it and gently placed Eve’s still unconscious body on it.

“Help me undress her,” Gemma commanded.

Following her order, I grabbed the hem of Eve’s shirt and pulled it over her head. My heart stalled as it revealed a thin golden necklace with a small ruby at the end. The necklace I had given her before we crashed the alliance celebration. She was still wearing it.

It stirred up even more emotions that I couldn’t process right now, so I just blocked out that thought and instead tossed the shirt aside before helping Gemma ease Eve’s pants down her legs.

My hands were shaking by the time we had gotten them off. When she was lying there on the table in nothing but her underwear, there was no longer anything to hide that her usually so strong body was now a patchwork of discolored skin. Her entire left side was peppered with bruises, all the way from her neck and down to her foot. As if she had been lying on her right side, trying to protect at least half of her body, while they beat her.

“If you’re going to be sick, do it somewhere else,” Gemma said in the no-nonsense tone that informed me that she had blocked off all of her emotions and slipped into her work zone.

Shimmering turquoise blue light filled the room as she summoned her magic and got to work on repairing Eve’s hamstrings first.

I staggered over to one of the chairs and collapsed onto it. Exhaustion from the madness-induced fight in that cabin rolled over me like waves, and it was all I could do to remain upright on the chair. Leaning forward, I curled my fingers around Eve’s limp hand and held it, even though she couldn’t feel it.

Time lost all meaning as I just continued staring at Eve’s bruised face.

Slowly but surely, those bruises disappeared as Gemma kept pouring her healing magic into Eve’s body. I think I might have been holding my breath, because once the last bruise had faded from her skin and the final cut had knitted itself together, I sucked in a massive breath as if I hadn’t done that for minutes.

Tiredness blew across Gemma’s features as she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and dropped down on the chair next to me.

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