Everything else faded away. The dungeon, the silver blade, the blood, even the fae behind the glass.
For a moment, it was just the two of them.
For a moment, it was good.
Then, somewhere in the bowels of the dungeon, someone screamed.
The moment shattered like a broken window.
Brynleigh inhaled sharply, and a tear rolled down her cheek before she closed her eyes.
She dared cry after she planned to murder him? How fucking hypocritical. He was the one she’d wanted to kill, yet he wasn’t crying.
Ryker was just… angry. With himself. With her. With the world.
Everything they’d shared was gone. Their moments were in the past. Now, they were just two broken people.
With that depressing thought in mind, he slowly approached the chair. Her eyes opened, and her lips parted, but she was silent. Maybe that was better.
Ryker’s heart leaped as he drew near, but he pointedly ignored that feeling. It had no place here.
He uncapped the blood, and her eyes followed him greedily.
It wasn’t a lot, and it certainly wouldn’t beenough to fix everything that had been done to her, but he didn’t want her to faint or worse before he got her out.
Ryker went to hand the blood to Brynleigh when he realized her hands were still bound. Wondering exactly how he’d ended up here, offering his tortured, murderous wife blood, he raised the drink to her mouth.
Her chapped lips closed around the top, and in under a minute, she’d sucked the bag dry. A slight touch of color returned to her cheeks.
Just enough to remind him she was still alive.
“I… thank you,” she breathed.
He grunted in response. He didn’t give her the blood to be kind. It was a precautionary measure. That was it.
Reaching over, he yanked the silver blade out of her leg. The situation was eerily similar to when he’d pulled the bullet out of her only weeks ago, and a shudder ran through him as he threw the knife away.
Brynleigh hitched a breath, but Ryker didn’t dare meet her gaze. Not again.
He wasn’t sure if he’d see a dream or a nightmare within the depth of her eyes, but either way, he wasn’t ready.
Ryker crouched and focused on unlocking the prohiberis manacles binding her to the chair. They fell away, exposing reddened, bleeding flesh.
“Can you stand?” he asked, surprised that his voice was smooth and lacked any hint of all the emotions he was ignoring.
Maybe he could do this.
She sucked in a breath and shook her head. “I… don’t know.”
Gods damn it all, but her words were like knives to his gut.
It was harder than ever to keep that mask in place.
He held out a hand and briskly said, “Try.”
The command echoed through the room, laced with the innate power of his position.
She didn’t fight him. Her bloody hand trembled as she lifted it off the armrest. Her fingers shook as they landed in his, and like the first time they’d touched, sparks ran through him.