From Ash and Flame

24

YOU HAVE NO one. Give up.

Aeress Wynter twitched in the infirmary bed, her eyes blinking open in a glaze of sunlight. There was a light, muffled ringing in her ears.

Every part of her body was aching profusely, her shoulders growing heavier with every breath that escaped through her throat. Her arms and legs and feet were all devastatingly desensitized, all paralyzed in place underneath all the blankets.

Even her teeth throbbed.

With a hollow groan that left her chapped lips as she flexed her hands beneath the plain, flimsy covers, the Flame Wielder's eyes gradually started adjusting to the searing white around her.

Aeress saw the blurred shapes of white shelves first, each row overflowing with medical supplies, clean sheets and cloths, and stacks of books. Wooden chairs painted the same color adorned the corners of the room, and from where she lay, her head against a pillow, she could spot a lean figure rising from one of those chairs, midnight black hair undulating.

She tried to sit up.

A feeling like a thousand needles puncturing her flesh racked right through Aeress and right through the shards of her bones. The area just below her breasts floundered out in pain, and everything - every splintered memory of metal and darkness and agony speared her heart.

The Crown Prince. The Shadow Wielder. Her falling.

Aeress clasped a weak arm around her abdomen in a blind and useless method of suppressing the jarring pain in her stomach, the bandage swathing her scuffing her skin with a cold reminder.

She hissed through her teeth.

In the span of a heartbeat, the figure that had been sprawled in the chair at the foot of her bed was across the room, one hand pressed firmly against Aeress's shoulder while the other went behind her head, holding her perfectly in place. His warmth was familiar, and the numbness was gone for a brief moment.

She looked up at Theoden, the lines of his face still unfocused.

"You should be lying down," he reprimanded in that musical voice of his, the alarm in his voice still resonating clear.

Aeress blinked a couple of times, then cleared her throat with a wheeze. "I'm fine," she rasped, but she wasn't quite sure if Theoden had heard her as he gently pushed her back, her head hitting the pillow once more.

The Prince lingered over her timidly, propping himself up on his hands. He looked like he wanted to say something, but at the same time was afraid to do so, silver eyes like beams of light under the sun towering over the two of them through the window above. However, he withdrew a minute later, settling himself on the edge of her bed and reaching to fill her a glass of water. She drank slowly, savoring the cool waterfall of tasteless droplets that slid down her parched throat. Theoden set her back down again when she was done.

Then, he took one of her hands into his own, fingertips glancing across her skin. "Tell me what happened," he prompted, a nervous expression imprinted across his solemn features. He still seemed as carefree as before, though thin bags of dark purple stretched under his eyes, indicating that he hadn't been sleeping much recently. "One minute you were in the arena, and the next, Kaeus was dragging you out of that damned hole. You were hardly breathing." The last part was spoken with a whisper.

He should know what had happened, sitting up in that high seat of his with the wretched King. He'd been the person orchestrating this whole thing.

The sound of the loud laughter which had echoed around the Shadow Arena filled Aeress's ears, and the silver eyes she'd seen down there, ten times brighter and ten times purer than Theoden's, entered her mind.