I should probably speak to?—
The servant’s door bursts open, slamming against the wall. I stumble to my feet, still clinging to the ink pen as I peer out into the dim hallway. Has Allette changed her mind and come to me after all? My heart soars at the thought. But then a masked man steps into the room cradling a woman in his arms.
The ink pen tumbles to the floor.
Not just any woman.
Allette.
Not only is some strange man carrying my girl, she is all but naked, wrapped in nothing but a towel. Where the fuck are her clothes? Is thatbloodon his uniform?
My pulse roars and vision swims as I sprint across the room. “Allette? Allette, can you hear me?” I caress her pale cheek. “Why isn’t she responding?” I demand.
“Who is Allette?” the man asks.
I recognize his voice. Jeston is the one holding my girl. “What happened?”
“She passed out.”
Shit. The blood isn’t his. It’s Allette’s. No… My love. Please, no… I urge him toward the bed. “Put her down.”
“But the sheets?—”
“I don’t give a shit about the sheets. Put her down and tell me why the fuck she is bleeding.”
He lays her gently onto my bed before lifting his mask. Sweat drips down his face, the paleness of his skin making his dark eyes look more haunted. “She was whipped.”
Did he say someone whipped my girl? What sort of sick, twisted person would order a woman to be whipped?
Not that it fucking matters. Whoever did this is dead.
Allette whimpers when I sink down next to her on the mattress. She’ll need to be healed, and fast. I brush a dark lock back from her impossibly pale face only to discover a mottled blue and purple bruise painting her delicate cheekbone. Did someone strike her as well? Rage fills my chest, a fiery inferno. When I go to peel back the stained towel, I realize Jeston is still watching. “Turn around.”
He doesn’t budge. “Most of the wounds are on her back. You’ll need to turn her over.”
“I can see where her wounds are, now turn the fuck around.”
He does so with a huff. Only then do I find the courage to roll Allette onto her front.Gods…
Angry welts drip dark blood onto my pristine sheets from where my girl’s back has been torn to shreds.
Someone is going to pay dearly for this.
I call on my magic, pressing my hands to a small patch of unmarked skin near the base of her back, sending healing power toward my mate’s wounds. I’ll have to spend a good deal of time in the sun to make up for draining myself, but it doesn’t matter. I’d drain myself dry if it meant healing her. I don’t stop until those marks are nothing more than faint silver lines.
The scars marking what happened in the human realm don’t fade at all. Although I saw them in the solarium, tonight they’re yet another terrible reminder of the pain she must’ve endured, all because I made the foolish mistake of leaving her in that cottage. All because I failed to protect her. And now I’ve failed her again.
“Tell me exactly what happened. Spare no details.” I need to know the name of the person who did this.
Jeston starts telling me about a dead guard and stolen books and lashes—lashes. My love and her friend were beaten over borrowingbooks? I listen to every word, my anger simmering until it boils over.
I want to scream. To cry. To take the head of the man who took a cane to my love’s back.
Jeston wipes his hands down his white trousers, his head tilting as he looks at me. “She was crying for you. I wasn’t going to bring her, figured you’d be”—his gaze drops to my clenched fist—“otherwise occupied. But Braith insisted. Said Wynn asked her to get you the moment she realized she needed help.”
Even after I’ve let her down so many times, Allette still looks to me for help.
And yet, I couldn’t save her. Not from what happened in the human realm, and not from this.