Chapter 16

I did not awake slowly. My entire body jolted, screaming for mercy. A gentle touch guided my head back against the earth, another pressing down on my side next to my stomach. My teeth ground together, wheezes slipping through them. Rhysand leant over me, holding a short, jagged ended stick no longer than his forearm that was dark on one end. He tossed it behind him.

"Annika? Just stay calm for me, darling." He extracted a hidden knife and then tore it down the length of the sleeve, stripping the fabric to just below his elbow. I went to grip my side with fire erupted but he pulled my hand away, placing his own down instead with the fabric of his sleeve folded between us. I crushed the hand fingers holding mine, the heels of my boots burrowing into the dirt. He let me turn his fingers a blaring red and white until I realised that the pain would not bring death. No. It was everywhere, from my head and wings to my side and legs, but the collection of pain would not amount to death today. He called my name twice before I could find his eyes. "Something happened, you understand that?. You were flying fine one moment then the next you drifted and hit a tree."

It flooded back to me. "Cass," I hissed out. "Cassian. I saw Cassian." Rhysand instinctively went to look around him, but of course, he was not there. "With my vision. He was fighting." I tried using the strength of his grip to pull myself up, but he slackened his arm. He twisted his fingers from my snake-like hold, curving them around where my neck and head met, lifting me from behind instead.

"At one of the camps?" Rhysand asked, settling me into the crook of his arm. "Who was he fighting."

I shook my head, the action sending a pounding through my skull. "No, he was fighting the camps. This has never happened before. I've never been flung into seeing something. I've always been in control."

His brows twitched into a furrow, but he did not look as surprised as I felt. "He'll be fine. He's a good warrior. He's held off more than his share of Illyrians before. We need to get you back though, you hit your head hard and I can't still the bleeding here."

"No." I clutched at the forearm of the hand still pressing the fabric to my bleeding side. "Please go to him, Rhys. This has never happened before, and I think he-he's hurt or in danger of being hurt. He's fighting alone against more than one camp."

Confliction battled on his face. "Where was he?" he only asked.

"There's…" My eyes shut as I caught the breath I could never seem to keep hold of. "There's this stream that goes between Yalhalla and Jurga." I knew it all too well. "They're fighting near the water."

I needed him to go. I needed him to make sure that whatever it was, was a fluke and that some subconscious part of my mind was just worried about him. Not that he was in actual danger. How would I have known if he was in danger? I still felt it, though. The impending sense of something happening and that I wasn't there to help.

I thought that I had convinced him, that he would go. Because whatever I saw—I saw it for a reason. I had no thoughts of the camps or Cassian when I was flying. There was no reason, intentional or not, for me to have seen it unless something wanted me to. Rhysand adjusted his hold on me. "I'll get you back to the House of Wind, then I'll go make sure he's alright."

I tried to shift myself away from him. "No-no, Rhysand, please. I can get back on my own."

Rhysand tightened his grip, pulling me flush against him. "Annika, you're in danger right now too." His tone rang with the commandment of a High Lord, edging on dangerous. I froze under it. "I can't stop this bleeding and your wing has a tear. You're not getting anywhere on your own."

My throat swelled, though I had no words to say, anyway.

With a softened voice, he added: "I'll go to him with Azriel as soon as I know you're going to be alright."

He was my High Lord and this was a command. I gave a meek nod. Rhysand hoisted me and rose to his feet. The world around us sucked away as he winnowed us into the city of Velaris. As soon as the world reappeared, he took flight, closing in on the House of Wind. Azriel was already outside waiting for us.

"I've got Madja on her way," he said evenly. "You think Cassian's hurt?" He must have reached Azriel through his mind.

"I tried reaching him, but he's distracted, and I couldn't get an answer," Rhysand replied. Azriel nodded obediently. He wore his Illyrian leathers, despite having retreated to his room earlier in the evening. As Rhys carried me through the halls, I allowed my eyes to haze white to try and find the fight once more.

It was blurry, possibly from my own fading concentration. I couldn't make out faces well in the dark and there was nothing to help me pinpoint Cassian amongst them. I gave in, knowing that it was draining me. Rhysand laid me on a bed that was not my own, Azriel lingered in the doorway. "Go," he commanded over his shoulder. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

Azriel left without a word.

"I'm fine here, Rhys. Madja will be here soon."

He knelt at the side of the bed, still pressing the soaked cloth against my side. "I'm going to stay until she is." He pulled his hand away, his fingers coated a glossy red. He dropped his torn sleeve and searched through the draws, extracting a white gauze-looking pad and held that to my side.

"You don't have to. I know I'm safe here."

"I'm staying. Cassian is going to be fine."

"I'm worried about him."

"Damnit, Annika," he hissed under his breath as though not to direct it to me. "I need to stay here with you, and I want to." I shrunk into the bed. "It was Cassian. I had a link to his mind when we arrived at the camp and as soon as you were standing in front of us, he screamed into my head to get you out of there. Do you know what he would do if I left you here to go after him? He would kill me, or close to it."

Cassian? Cassian? I hadn't even known him, and he did not know me. I tried to remember that day; what he had said and done. He was angry when he saw me. Not at me, but at Delvon.

"Don't mistake my actions of being out of duty," Rhysand spoke. He was quiet and I knew that he had broken a promise, which are not things I imagined that he would take lightly. "I would stay here even if I knew Cassian wouldn't have my head. But I need you to understand that leaving you alone does not do anybody any good."

I was saved from making any sort of acknowledgement as Madja strode the door. She ushered the High Lord away from my side. Rhysand stood back and tall, watching her inspect the wound. As though the Fae could feel his presence over her shoulder, she said, "She will be fine, High Lord. A few days rest and tending."

Rhysand nodded but strode around to the other side of the bed. He leant down, using his thumb to brush away a section of short strands that lay over the point of my temple and cheek and then pressed his lips to my skin. Like Azriel, he said nothing in his leave, simply disappearing from the room silently.

I answered Madja's questions quietly, but my mind was too far away to take in much of what she said. I lost a few millimetres off my teeth when she stitched my side closed. I tried again to watch over the fight, hoping to see their siphons but the pain kept bringing me back. Then another fear struck me. What if they found out? I knew where the scrimmage was being held, and I knew that it would be between Yalhalla and Jurga. I had started something that I did not wait to see through. I took my chance and ran, betraying two camps at once.

Xx

The better part of an hour passed before I heard anything other than Madja's shuffling. The healer had left me be to sleep but said she would remain until the other returned, so I was not left alone. It was late into the night, but I couldn't sleep.

I heard three voices talking quietly. Three awake voices with no intone of pain. I pushed against the mattress of the healing chamber's bed and waited for them. Cassian rounded the corner first, holding his arm.

"I hear you should be lying down," is the first thing he said with a gentle smile.

Rhysand and Azriel trailed behind him. "She should be," Rhysand said.

I ignored him, watching Cassian dig through a draw and take out some gauzes and a stitching kit. "Are you alright?" He looked fine. Scuffed around, no doubt but I still had to ask.

He pulled out a stool and sat on it. Azriel wordlessly went to his side and began prepping the stitching materials. Cassian gave a lopsided grin. "Perfectly fine except for one bastard that got me good." I could see now under the window moonlight the tear in his leather across his bicep. Normal as ever, I noted otherwise. Clearly my worrying was overdone then. He wiped away as much of the blood he could then rested his arm on the countertop. Azriel dug the needle into his flesh but there came nothing but a wince in his eye. Rhysand stood to the side of the room, arms crossed and watching everybody. "Rhys told me what happened."

It didn't surprise me. "I wasn't sure if you were in danger."

"It's relative." He huffed mirthfully to himself. "Thank you, for caring." I nodded once. He looked to the High Lord. "Found out why they were fighting. Lord Frior from Yalhalla thinks one of the lords in Jurga stole his 'bride to be'. Jurga thinks that she was loyal to them and that Yalhalla killed her but wanted a reason to fight so they're blaming it on them."

I laid back against the propped pillow silently. "Do we know the actual story?" Rhysand inquired. "Or who this woman is?" They would hear my heart, no doubt. But at least I could brush it off as the pain.

Cassian shook his head and hissed. "Watch it, Az. Poke my bloody vein." He looked back to Rhysand. "No, that's all I got out of them before they started fighting. Obviously, the woman isn't with any of them."

"Won't end the fighting even if she was. Both sides think they have claim," Rhysand noted.

"I could look into it," Azriel offered. "See if anybody knows of the woman. She's probably hiding in one of the other camps. If we get her story, then we might know what really happened."

"And then what?" Cassian shrugged, wincing at his own action. Azriel rolled his eyes. "She ran to get away from them. We make the lords sit down and apologise to each other? Leave her out of it, I say. Let her hide."

Yes. Let me hide.

"So what are we going to do about the camps?"

"Let them fight," Rhysand decided. "It's between them and as long as it doesn't draw in more then they can sort it out themselves. They hate me in any case."

I didn't sleep that night. It was too quiet after everybody returned to their own quarters. I still had no answer as to why I was forced into my Sight. Cassian had been fighting his entire life, but this was the first fight that he has been in since I've known him. Did I somehow know? Or maybe it had nothing to do with Cassian at all. Maybe my body knew something was happening between them camps and Cassian happened to be there.

And it was him. It was Cassian that asked Rhysand to take me away from the camp.

I…

I turned onto my better side, wrapping myself in my own wings. Another day, I promised myself.

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