Lord of the Night

Chapter 36: The Escape

Bright warmth. Too bright, and too warm. Was this what it was like to die?

My fuzzy mind drifted. I hoped Kardki had led the others to safety and that Fraschkit's group had succeeded in the barn. I hoped they would protect my father. But what would Isalio do? He wouldn't be able to persuade the Guardians to allow him to join them, but he couldn't stay in the palace either.

"Remgar? Remgar!"

The brightness dimmed a little, and my surroundings came into focus: the cell, the dead Demons, and Isalio. He knelt at my side, breathing heavily, black hair drenched with sweat, eyes wide and feverish. Two cuffs circled his wrists, which puzzled me. Hadn't I taken them off?

He brushed a stray curl from my forehead. "Can you hear me, Rem? Please say something."

I ran through an assessment of my body and was surprised by the lack of pain. Though I was still struggling to wake up, my fingers and toes moved when I asked them to. When I glanced at my arm, I found no claw marks. Had I passed out and dreamed the last events?

But then I noticed something even stranger—my ankle. When I massaged the place where I had broken the bone, everything was intact. Even rolling my ankle produced no pain. Reaching for the other injured spots, I found torn clothing but unblemished skin.

"I'm fine," I said, baffled by the truth in the words. I pushed up to sit and examined him more closely. "You're shaking. Are you cold?"

He dragged a cuffed hand through his hair, yanking at the roots. "Am I cold? Really, Rem? After I..." His voice spiraled out of control, shaky and fast. "You know what? No, I'm not even taking blame for this. I warned you I have less control when I'm weak. You took off my cuffs, and you touched me. Why the fuck would you do that? What were you thinking? I could have...I almost..."

What had I been thinking? I mostly just remembered his limp body, his icy skin, his heart barely beating. At that moment, I didn't see a Demon or an enemy. I just saw the imminent death of someone I cared about.

"But you didn't," I said. "You didn't kill me, and not only that, but you..." I rolled out my ankle again, still struggling to believe it. "My ankle was broken, and now it's not. How is that possible?"

He sank back to sitting and studied me with a furrowed brow. "I don't know. I guess I...gave some back."

"Gave some back?"

"At the end, when I realized what I was doing, I started pushing instead of pulling. Seems like it reversed the flow somehow."

"You can do that?"

"No...or at least, I didn't think I could. Only the Duchess—" He broke off to hack a cough into his arm, a dry chuffing that quickly grew deeper and wetter. When he stopped, a patch of bright crimson stained the sleeve of his shirt, and the wet fabric clung to his skin. Red rimmed his eyes, and his shoulders and hands shook harder than before.

My chest constricted. "You gave back too much. You're still not well."

He folded his arms over his chest, covering the red patch on his sleeve with trembling fingers. "That doesn't matter. It's inevitable, anyway."

"What's inevitable?"

A sound from the corridor drew our attention to the door. One light set of footsteps, and something rough swishing over the smooth floor. I glanced at Isalio, raising a hand to tell him to stay put. With a return to near full strength and only one attacker, I could handle this.

"Stay," I commanded. "Don't move."

He drew his knees closer to his chest and nodded. I located the mace and stepped over the guards' bodies toward the door. Raising the weapon, I widened my stance and prepared to swing the moment the intruder arrived.