As the structure lowered, the squares began to contract. Smaller and smaller they grew, tightening with a relentless force until they encased the silver entirely.
I scrunched my fingers together and the spirits shrieked. With a blinding blue glow pulsing in time to the squealing chorus, the dagger was wrenched violently from his flesh, soaring through the air to clatter against the far wall.
Using my left hand, I summoned a new surge of shadow, dragging the wisps toward the leaking hole in his side. They settled atop the glowing sheet and melted through the fabric.
The blob of shadow sank further down, until it slipped into the open space of his stomach and wiggled around the wound.
The smell of burning flesh filled the air, the shadowed mass sizzling against Talon’s skin with a heat that made my own palms sting. The wound fused shut with a zap of blue bright enough to light up the courtyard, the flesh knitting together until the bleeding ceased.
Where the silver had once been, a new, glowing mark remained—a tattoo of shadow and light that pulsed with the rhythm of his recovering heart.
I slumped forward, my forehead resting against his chest, listening for the first steady breath to break the silence.
“You are alive,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “Come back to me.”
A hand gently tapped twice between my shoulder blades and I lifted my head to meet Leona’s gaze.
“You did great, Kaelia,” she assured me. “He may need a while to come around. Let us organize to have a few Veythar bring him to the infirmary.”
I opened my lips to protest, but a loud hacking sound had me freezing. I whipped my head around to find the wounded man beneath me struggling for air, his chest heaving as the first signs of life returned to his frame.
“Talon,” I breathed.
His bruised eyelids fluttered and then slowly lifted, revealing my favorite pair of eyes. A deep, ringed crimson lined his irises, and the veins beneath the surface were stained a darker, inkier shade than usual.
He looked like he had crawled back from the very edge of the abyss.
“Hi,” I blubbered, my lips wobbling. I reached out, my hand cupping his cool cheek, my thumb tracing the line of his jaw.
His cracked lips tipped up at the corners, the thin skin stretching taut against his teeth in a ghost of a smile.
“Hello, little flame,” he croaked.
His left hand moved with a sluggish effort, settling over mine to pin my palm against his face. His touch was weak, but the heat was beginning to return to his skin.
An unladylike sob tore from my chest. I did not care who was watching or how much of his blood stained my clothes. I threw my arms around his neck, burying my face in the crook of his shoulder as I cried silently into his chest, my body shaking.
Talon groaned and his muscles bunched beneath my touch as he attempted to shove himself upward. The effort sent a fresh wave of tremors through his frame, and his head lolled back against the obsidian with a sickening thud.
“The Thrynn Chambers,” he swallowed. “I need to… the prisoner.”
“No,” I snapped, my hands moving from his neck to his shoulders to pin him firmly against the ground. “You are going nowhere. You can barely keep your eyes open, Talon.”
He ignored me, his jaw setting in that unrelenting line I had grown to know. He tried to plant his boots against the floor, his breath hitching as the movement pulled at the fresh, smoking scar on his ribs.
He looked like a fallen god trying to claw his way back to the heavens, and the sight of his weakness made my chest ache with a renewed fear.
“It cannot wait,” he growled, though the sound was thinned by exhaustion.
“Yes, Master, it can,” Leona piped in, her voice surprisingly stern as she began gathering the blood-soaked herbs into her basket. I had not even realized she had used them. “You have lost more essence than I can quantify. If you attempt to walk to thechambers now, you will be back on the floor before you reach the archway. You must keep off your feet for a while.”
Talon’s gaze flickered to her, a spark of fire catching in the deep blue depths, but the crimson rings around his irises remained. He looked back at me, his eyes searching my face.
“Rest,” I whispered, my voice softening as I leaned closer, my forehead brushing his. “Please. The prisoner is not going anywhere in those shadow-binds.”
He let out a long, shuddering breath, the tension finally bleeding out of his shoulders. His head slumped forward, resting heavily against my collarbone, and I wrapped my arms tighter around him, holding the weight of the man who held the weight of the city.
* * *