A Court of Dreams and Promise

Chapter Fifty-Five

Velaria

There had been intermittent flashes of pain after Rhysand had stabbed her. The betrayal she had expected to feel never set in, even as Rhysand's angry gaze turned to frozen fear.

Azriel caught her when she fell, whispering as he stroked her hair. "Vel. Vel, please. Vel, no. I won't lose you again."

Her eyelids yearned to close and she felt her limbs grow heavier.

"Hey, Vel. No, no." Azriel gritted his teeth. "Vel, stay with me. Keep your eyes open for me, love, please. Vel."

She blinked up at her beautiful, strong mate. His eyes were full of pain, his expression stricken with worry. He was going to lose her again, and she knew it. She reached up to hold his hand. "I...love you," she said, her voice fainter than she expected it to be.

"I love you, too." A tear slid off of her mate's beautiful cheek and onto her own. "So stay with me."

She wanted so desperately to stay, to be with him, to have that time that her brother, Cassian, and everyone else had been promised by the Cauldron. She wanted to have the time to live.

Maybe it was always within her fate to lose, every time.

Her eyes slid closed.

Azriel began to shake her shoulders, but she felt herself slipping away. Further and further she drifted from the sensation of Azriel talking to her, from the room she was bound to die in.

It grew fainter and fainter still.

Even as Azriel began to tug hard on the bond, she felt herself drifting far away, getting closer to wherever she went when they died.

Stay with me. Azriel's voice pulsed through the blurry nothingness, again and again. Stay with me. Stay with me.

She tried to respond, tried to push a message back, but she couldn't. She couldn't speak to her mate one last time.

And as she felt the darkness begin to overtake her, Azriel's world-shattering scream sliced its way through everything.

But still the darkness claimed her.

✿ ↬ - - - ↫ ✿

Someone said something faintly, the sound of it completely muffled as it made its way to her.

And then she was awake, blinking at the warm lights around her.

She was alive. Truly alive.

She tried to stroke the bond but it was blocked by a large shield of metallic faebane within her mind.

Velaria scanned the room until she found Tamlin sitting in a metal chair beside her bed, slouching slightly with his head resting on his arm, which in turn was propped on the arm of the chair.

Tamlin had bags under his eyes, his usually-bright skin pale. His emerald eyes held a weariness to them. Even his breathing was slow and labored. "Velaria," he said hoarsely. "You're awake."

Velaria looked around, seeing the infirmary bed she was in. "I am," she replied. "How–"

"–did you live?" Tamlin finished, moving his arm to sit up straighter. That's when Velaria noticed the slight shadow around his chin. "I healed you."

"What happened?" she asked after a moment of contemplating over asking him why he had healed her. Then she had realized if she died, he would, too, and decided to ask what had happened instead.

Tamlin tilted his chin up, tapping his pointer finger on his temple. "Feyre and Azriel tried to break in," he said. "Rhysand stabbed you, thinking you were Azriel. I came in after Rhysand had stabbed you and healed you."