Page 8 of The Crown's Awakening
He looked at it for a long time. Then he opened the small drawer in the table beneath the mural and removed the veil. It was worn soft from handling, the fabric thinner at the folds than it had been. He had not noticed when that happened.
He pressed it briefly to his face and breathed.
"I will find you, Asharin," he murmured.
He folded it carefully and returned it to the drawer. Then he crossed to the bed, lay back against the pillows, and looked up at the ceiling where she looked back at him from the plasterwork above. He closed his eyes, letting his chest clench again as he thought back to that day.
He should have turned around. He knows it now. That mistake will not be repeated.
He was asleep before the last candle burned down.
CHAPTER 3
Ice
Consciousness returned slowly, dragged upward through heat until the cold broke through it.
I was in an ice bath.
It pressed in from every side, and I dragged in a breath as the shock hit all at once. A violent shudder ran through me as the water closed around my body, ice knocking softly against the sides of the narrow tub. My underclothes were already soaked through.
“What the fuck?—”
My voice came out hoarse, thinner than I intended as I forced myself upright. The rim pressed against my arms as I pushed up, the water shifting softly around me as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. The fabric clung to my skin, soaked through, heavier than it should have been. My hair dragged behind me in the water, damp against my neck in a way that made everything feel slightly off.
This was not where I was supposed to be.
I tried to piece it together and came up with nothing. Whatever had happened between one moment and the next was gone.
When I lifted my head, I found him there.
“What the fuck have you done to me?” I demanded, my voice gaining strength even as another tremor moved through me.
He didn’t flinch. “I’m trying to bring your fever down.”
“What the fuck?” I repeated, staring at him.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, already irritated. “I’m not a fucking healer.”
“Well then find me one.”
“I can’t find you one,” he snapped back. “Or I obviously would instead of trying to fix you myself.”
“Get me out of here.”
“No.” His tone didn’t shift. “You have a fever. You need to cool down.”
Something hit my shoulder, light but unexpected, and a rag slid down against my skin, already soaked by the time I caught it.
“Besides,” he added, “you could use a rinse.”
I looked up at him for a second, then glared. The cold had sunk deeper now, biting into the heat that had been burning through me before, my body caught between the two in a way that made it hard to tell which one I preferred. My teeth threatened to chatter again, but I held it back, forcing control where I could.
He held something out, a small bar of soap.
I took it without thinking, more out of irritation than agreement, and worked it between my hands before reaching up to my hair. My fingers dragged through it, slower than they should have been, the movement taking more effort than it ought to.
The dizziness came fast. My vision tipped just enough to warn me before it gave out completely, my body going with it before I could stop it.
