A Court of Thorns and Roses
Page 77
It hit the earth and lashed its massive body to the side, anticipating the strike to kill me, but a wet, crunching noise filled the air instead.
And the worm didn’t move.
I squatted there, gulping down burning air, staring into the abyss of its flesh-shredding mouth, still open wide to devour me. It took me a few heartbeats to realize the worm wasn’t going to swallow me whole, and a few more heartbeats to understand that it was truly impaled on the bone spikes. Dead.
I didn’t entirely hear the gasps, then the cheering—didn’t quite think or feel very much of anything as I edged around the worm and slowly climbed out of the pit, still holding the bone-sword in my hand.
Silently, still beyond words, I stumbled back through the labyrinth, my left arm throbbing, but my body tingled so much I didn’t notice.
But the moment I beheld Amarantha on her platform at the edge of the trench, I clenched my free hand. Prove my love. Pain shot through my arm, but I embraced it. I had won.
I looked up at her from beneath lowered brows and didn’t check myself as I exposed my teeth. Her lips were thin, and she no longer grasped Tamlin’s knee.
Tamlin. My Tamlin.
I tightened my grip on the long bone in my hand. I was shaking—shaking all over. But not with fear. Oh, no. It wasn’t fear at all. I’d proved my love—and then some.
“Well,” Amarantha said with a little smirk. “I suppose anyone could have done that.”
I took a few running steps and hurled the bone at her with all my remaining strength.
It embedded itself in the mud at her feet, splattering filth onto her white gown, and remained there, quivering.
The faeries gasped again, and Amarantha stared at the wobbling bone before touching the mud on her bodice. She smiled slowly. “Naughty,” she tsked.
Had there not been an insurmountable trench between us, I would have ripped her throat out. Someday—if I lived through this—I would skin her alive.
“I suppose you’ll be happy to learn most of my court lost a good deal of money tonight,” she said, picking up a piece of parchment. I looked at Tamlin as she scanned the paper. His green eyes were bright, and though his face was deathly pale, I could have sworn there was a ghost of triumph on his face. “Let’s see,” Amarantha went on, reading the paper as she toyed with Jurian’s finger bone at the end of her necklace. “Yes, I’d say almost my entire court bet on you dying within the first minute; some said you’d last five, and”—she turned over the paper—“and just one person said you would win.”
Insulting, but not surprising. I didn’t fight as the Attor hauled me out of the trenches, dumping me at the foot of the platform before flying off. My arm burned at the impact.
Amarantha frowned at her list, and she waved a hand. “Take her away. I tire of her mundane face.” She clenched the arms of her throne hard enough that the whites of her knuckles showed. “Rhysand, come here.”
I didn’t stay long enough to see the High Lord prowl forward. Red hands grabbed me, holding tightly to keep from sliding off. I’d forgotten the mud caked on me like a second skin. As they yanked me away, a shooting pain shot along my arm, and agony blanketed my senses.
I looked at my left forearm then, and my stomach rose at the trickling blood and ripped tendons, at the lips of my skin pulled back to accommodate the shaft of a bone shard protruding clean through it.
I couldn’t even glance back at Tamlin, couldn’t find Lucien to say thank you before pain consumed me whole, and I could barely manage to walk back to my cell.
Chapter 37
No one, not even Lucien, came to fix my arm in the days following my victory. The pain overwhelmed me to the point of screaming whenever I prodded the embedded bit of bone, and I had no other option but to sit there, letting the wound gnaw on my strength, trying my best not to think about the constant throbbing that shot sparks of poisoned lightning through me.
But worse than that was the growing panic—panic that the wound hadn’t stopped bleeding. I knew what it meant when blood continued to flow. I kept one eye on the wound, either out of hope that I’d find the blood clotting, or the terror that I’d spy the first signs of infection.
I couldn’t eat the rotten food they gave me. The sight of it aroused such nausea that a corner of my cell now reeked of vomit. It didn’t help that I was still covered in mud, and the dungeon was perpetually freezing.
I was sitting against the far wall of my cell, savoring the coolness of the stone beneath my back. I’d awoken from a fitful sleep and found myself burning hot. A kind of fire that made everything a bit muddled. My injured arm dangled at my side as I gazed dully at the cell door. It seemed to sway, its lines rippling.
This heat in my face was some kind of small cold—not a fever from infection. I put a hand on my chest, and dried mud crumbled into my lap. Each of my breaths was like swallowing broken glass. Not a fever. Not a fever. Not a fever.
My eyelids were heavy, stinging. I couldn’t go to sleep. I had to make sure the wound wasn’t infected, I had to … to …
The door actually did move then—no, not the door, but rather the darkness around it, which seemed to ripple. Real fear coiled in my stomach as a male figure formed out of that darkness, as if he’d slipped in from the cracks between the door and the wall, hardly more than a shadow.
Rhysand was fully corporeal now, and his violet eyes glowed in the dim light. He slowly smiled from where he stood by the door. “What a sorry state for Tamlin’s champion.”
“Go to Hell,” I snapped, but the words were little more than a wheeze. My head was light and heavy all at once. If I tried to stand, I would topple over.
He stalked closer with that feline grace and dropped into an easy crouch before me. He sniffed, grimacing at the corner splattered with my vomit. I tried to bring my feet into a position more inclined for scrambling away or kicking him in the face, but they were full of lead.
Rhysand cocked his head. His pale skin seemed to radiate alabaster light. I blinked away the haze, but couldn’t even turn aside my face as his cold fingers grazed my brow. “What would Tamlin say,” he murmured, “if he knew his beloved was rotting away down here, burning up with fever? Not that he can even come here, not when his every move is watched.”
I kept my arm hidden in the shadows. The last thing I needed them to know was how weak I was. “Get away,” I said, and my eyes stung as the words burned my throat. I had difficulty swallowing.
He raised an eyebrow. “I come here to offer you help, and you have the nerve to tell me to leave?”
“Get away,” I repeated. My eyes were so sore that it hurt to keep them open.
“You made me a lot of money, you know. I figured I would repay the favor.”
I leaned my head against the wall. Everything was spinning—spinning like a top, spinning like … I kept my nausea down.
“Let me see your arm,” he said too quietly.
I kept my arm in the shadows—if only because it was too heavy to lift.
“Let me see it.” A growl rippled from him. Without waiting for my reaction, he grabbed my elbow and forced my arm into the dim light of the cell.
I bit my lip to keep from crying out—bit it hard enough to draw blood as rivers of fire exploded inside me, as my head swam, and all my senses narrowed down to the piece of bone sticking through my arm. They couldn’t know—couldn’t know how bad it was, because then they would use it against me.
And the worm didn’t move.
I squatted there, gulping down burning air, staring into the abyss of its flesh-shredding mouth, still open wide to devour me. It took me a few heartbeats to realize the worm wasn’t going to swallow me whole, and a few more heartbeats to understand that it was truly impaled on the bone spikes. Dead.
I didn’t entirely hear the gasps, then the cheering—didn’t quite think or feel very much of anything as I edged around the worm and slowly climbed out of the pit, still holding the bone-sword in my hand.
Silently, still beyond words, I stumbled back through the labyrinth, my left arm throbbing, but my body tingled so much I didn’t notice.
But the moment I beheld Amarantha on her platform at the edge of the trench, I clenched my free hand. Prove my love. Pain shot through my arm, but I embraced it. I had won.
I looked up at her from beneath lowered brows and didn’t check myself as I exposed my teeth. Her lips were thin, and she no longer grasped Tamlin’s knee.
Tamlin. My Tamlin.
I tightened my grip on the long bone in my hand. I was shaking—shaking all over. But not with fear. Oh, no. It wasn’t fear at all. I’d proved my love—and then some.
“Well,” Amarantha said with a little smirk. “I suppose anyone could have done that.”
I took a few running steps and hurled the bone at her with all my remaining strength.
It embedded itself in the mud at her feet, splattering filth onto her white gown, and remained there, quivering.
The faeries gasped again, and Amarantha stared at the wobbling bone before touching the mud on her bodice. She smiled slowly. “Naughty,” she tsked.
Had there not been an insurmountable trench between us, I would have ripped her throat out. Someday—if I lived through this—I would skin her alive.
“I suppose you’ll be happy to learn most of my court lost a good deal of money tonight,” she said, picking up a piece of parchment. I looked at Tamlin as she scanned the paper. His green eyes were bright, and though his face was deathly pale, I could have sworn there was a ghost of triumph on his face. “Let’s see,” Amarantha went on, reading the paper as she toyed with Jurian’s finger bone at the end of her necklace. “Yes, I’d say almost my entire court bet on you dying within the first minute; some said you’d last five, and”—she turned over the paper—“and just one person said you would win.”
Insulting, but not surprising. I didn’t fight as the Attor hauled me out of the trenches, dumping me at the foot of the platform before flying off. My arm burned at the impact.
Amarantha frowned at her list, and she waved a hand. “Take her away. I tire of her mundane face.” She clenched the arms of her throne hard enough that the whites of her knuckles showed. “Rhysand, come here.”
I didn’t stay long enough to see the High Lord prowl forward. Red hands grabbed me, holding tightly to keep from sliding off. I’d forgotten the mud caked on me like a second skin. As they yanked me away, a shooting pain shot along my arm, and agony blanketed my senses.
I looked at my left forearm then, and my stomach rose at the trickling blood and ripped tendons, at the lips of my skin pulled back to accommodate the shaft of a bone shard protruding clean through it.
I couldn’t even glance back at Tamlin, couldn’t find Lucien to say thank you before pain consumed me whole, and I could barely manage to walk back to my cell.
Chapter 37
No one, not even Lucien, came to fix my arm in the days following my victory. The pain overwhelmed me to the point of screaming whenever I prodded the embedded bit of bone, and I had no other option but to sit there, letting the wound gnaw on my strength, trying my best not to think about the constant throbbing that shot sparks of poisoned lightning through me.
But worse than that was the growing panic—panic that the wound hadn’t stopped bleeding. I knew what it meant when blood continued to flow. I kept one eye on the wound, either out of hope that I’d find the blood clotting, or the terror that I’d spy the first signs of infection.
I couldn’t eat the rotten food they gave me. The sight of it aroused such nausea that a corner of my cell now reeked of vomit. It didn’t help that I was still covered in mud, and the dungeon was perpetually freezing.
I was sitting against the far wall of my cell, savoring the coolness of the stone beneath my back. I’d awoken from a fitful sleep and found myself burning hot. A kind of fire that made everything a bit muddled. My injured arm dangled at my side as I gazed dully at the cell door. It seemed to sway, its lines rippling.
This heat in my face was some kind of small cold—not a fever from infection. I put a hand on my chest, and dried mud crumbled into my lap. Each of my breaths was like swallowing broken glass. Not a fever. Not a fever. Not a fever.
My eyelids were heavy, stinging. I couldn’t go to sleep. I had to make sure the wound wasn’t infected, I had to … to …
The door actually did move then—no, not the door, but rather the darkness around it, which seemed to ripple. Real fear coiled in my stomach as a male figure formed out of that darkness, as if he’d slipped in from the cracks between the door and the wall, hardly more than a shadow.
Rhysand was fully corporeal now, and his violet eyes glowed in the dim light. He slowly smiled from where he stood by the door. “What a sorry state for Tamlin’s champion.”
“Go to Hell,” I snapped, but the words were little more than a wheeze. My head was light and heavy all at once. If I tried to stand, I would topple over.
He stalked closer with that feline grace and dropped into an easy crouch before me. He sniffed, grimacing at the corner splattered with my vomit. I tried to bring my feet into a position more inclined for scrambling away or kicking him in the face, but they were full of lead.
Rhysand cocked his head. His pale skin seemed to radiate alabaster light. I blinked away the haze, but couldn’t even turn aside my face as his cold fingers grazed my brow. “What would Tamlin say,” he murmured, “if he knew his beloved was rotting away down here, burning up with fever? Not that he can even come here, not when his every move is watched.”
I kept my arm hidden in the shadows. The last thing I needed them to know was how weak I was. “Get away,” I said, and my eyes stung as the words burned my throat. I had difficulty swallowing.
He raised an eyebrow. “I come here to offer you help, and you have the nerve to tell me to leave?”
“Get away,” I repeated. My eyes were so sore that it hurt to keep them open.
“You made me a lot of money, you know. I figured I would repay the favor.”
I leaned my head against the wall. Everything was spinning—spinning like a top, spinning like … I kept my nausea down.
“Let me see your arm,” he said too quietly.
I kept my arm in the shadows—if only because it was too heavy to lift.
“Let me see it.” A growl rippled from him. Without waiting for my reaction, he grabbed my elbow and forced my arm into the dim light of the cell.
I bit my lip to keep from crying out—bit it hard enough to draw blood as rivers of fire exploded inside me, as my head swam, and all my senses narrowed down to the piece of bone sticking through my arm. They couldn’t know—couldn’t know how bad it was, because then they would use it against me.
