“See this Mark?” Jason pointed to David’s shredded back: the skin surrounding the otherwise untouched block of black text was gouged deeply, bone and sinew showing through like fat legs in fishnet stockings. “It’s not the Mark of the Goddess, Falcon. It’s witchcraft. Linked, I think—” He reached over and lifted Falcon’s shirt off my back, making me jump a little. “To Ara.”
Falcon leaned around and looked at my back, running his thumb down the small symbol that’d been left behind after my Mark of Betrayal faded. “They’re the same.” His voice questioned his eyes.
“What are?” I tried to look at my back, but my head wouldn't turn that far.
“This symbol and the one on David’s back. Look—” Falcon pointed to the top and bottom symbols on David’s Mark. “They match yours.”
“Whatever the spell Morgana placed on David, Ara,” Jason said. “It’s either linked to you or has been placed on you too.”
“What do we do?” I asked, panicked. “The Stone didn’t show me how to fix him.”
“Nothing.” Falcon stood. “It’s
her
spell.
She
needs to undo it.”
“Come on.” Jason stood up heavily, like a human, and offered me his hand. “I’ll take you to get cleaned up. Falcon can see to David.”
“No.” I smacked his hand away and laid on the ground, curling around the top of David’s head so we looked like two commas laying head-to-head. “I’m staying with him.
You
go get help.”
Jason looked at Falcon.
“Just go,” Falcon said. “I’ll stay here.”
Jason nodded and walked away stiffly, his fists gathered in tight balls by his sides.
“Give him blood, Ara.” Falcon took to one knee beside me.
“I can’t,” I cried, wiping David’s cheek and sweeping his hair away from his eyes. “He rejects it if he’s outside the forest.”
“What do you mean?”
“See all this blood?” I motioned to the splatter of red all around David. “It’s
mine
. He threw it up. The forest protected him from the magic that’s making him reject it.”
Falcon sat down heavily in the grass, his head in his hands, elbows on his knees.
“He’s been suffering like this for weeks now, Falcon.” I paused a moment, smoothing my thumb across David’s fluttering eyelid. “That’s why he’s so thin—why he’s been so damn moody with everyone.”
“Well, why don’t we just drag him a few feet into the forest and heal him up?”
I moved my head slowly. “No point. Morgana needs to
lift
the spell. She can’t do that in there—her magic won’t work. So he will, eventually, have to come out here. And then he’ll hate me and he won’t
want
help. While he’s unconscious he has no say.”
The hard breath from Falcon’s lips passed my bare legs and moved David’
s hair a little. “Then we’re gonna need Jason to keep him unconscious while we clean him up.”
I nodded slowly, weakly. “How could she, Falcon?” I held my breath for a second, hot tears blurring the horror until they slipped past my lashes. “Look what she’s done to him.”
He reached across and drew his shirt down over my bottom, leaving his hand there on my hip for a second. “We’ll make her pay, Ara. I promise.”
I nodded, curling a little more around David, cocooning him in every inch of me that wished he’d just be okay.
***
Somewhere in the weight of time passing I drifted to sleep, breathing the copper-scent of blood that passed through David’s lips. It warmed my heart to think that his body resorted by default to such human actions as breathing, especially since he refused to acknowledge any past or present connections to this lesser form. At the end of it all, despite his dark side and despite the fact that his body would live forever, he was ultimately and undeniably human.
My eyes opened slowly as I felt a familiar sense of comfort before I even smelled my dad approaching. His light footsteps carried him down the small hill from the manor while the warm air of reassurance draped my shoulders like a blanket. Arthur and Jason stood on either side of him, both stopping a few feet away while my dad continued on.
“This explains a lot,” he said, rubbing the bone above his eye.
“I had hoped this wouldn't happen again,” Arthur mumbled, snapping out of his trance long enough to move forward and kneel beside his nephew.
My head snapped up and I crawled up onto my knees. “What do you mean
again
?”
He touched David’s forehead with a firm hand. “This happened while you were staying at Vicki’s—after the funeral.”
“It did?”
“Yes, but his intolerance for human blood hadn’t completely taken hold yet, so I managed to heal him up and get him back to you before you woke.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me this was happening?” I looked Arthur right in the eye, meaning
you
. “How could you let him suffer like this? He—”
“Amara, he was Marked because he’s been forbidden to have you—by the goddess herself,” Arthur stated firmly. “There was nothing to report.”
“That’s what you believe?” I asked. “You’re wrong. He—”
“He was
punished
—this is his penance for overstepping the boundaries in either his actions or his thoughts.”
“What boundaries?” I yelled, closing Falcon’s shirt over my chest.
His shoulders dropped as if a heavy burden just lifted. “Amara, in truth, David has found it … difficult to leave you alone—to let you get on with your new life,” he started. “And, more often than not, he’s been unable to distract himself with other things. In those times, when his heart most yearns for you, he is made to suffer more than any one man could possibly bear. We’ve come to call these lapses in strength ‘boundaries.’”
I looked down at the gaping scrapes across David’s collarbones. “You should have told me, Arthur. Don’t you see? This isn’t the work of Nature. It’s
witchcraft
. He’s been suffering this entire time for
no
reason!”
“Witchcraft?” His eyes shot to my dad. “Could this be true?”
“From the looks of this mess, I’d say it is entirely true,” Dad said flatly, exhaling after. “A very clever and quite powerful little spell, too.”
“How could we not have known it was witchcraft?” I looked up at my dad as if, maybe, somewhere in that youthful face that didn't match his smell or his voice,
he
could make some sense of all of this. But he shook his head, so I turned on Arthur. “Arthur, how can
you
not have known?”
“Don't blame Arthur,” Dad said. “The Markings Morgana has used are very similar to the ones we see in Nature’s Scripture. No one could have made the connection.”
“
Someone
should have.”
“Well, they didn’t. Not even I.” Dad stepped away, rubbing his face like the action might refresh the situation; clear his head. “Look, Arthur and I will talk to Morgana. You two get the king cleaned up.” He snapped his fingers at the mess, then at Falcon and Jason. “Meet us back in the royal chambers in an hour.”
“Yes, My Lord.” Falcon bowed.
Dad and Arthur turned and walked side-by-side back up the hill.
***
Darkness spilled into the corridor from my room, mingling with the sun coming through the west-facing windows. I stood up and went to walk in, but Falcon stopped me, blocking my path as he closed my bedroom door behind him.
“How is he?”
“He’s stable,” he said. “But he’s in pretty bad condition. We need to get Morgana to undo that spell quickly so we can give him blood.”
“Dad’s still interrogating her.” I pointed down the hall. “They’ve taken her to Arthur’s clinic but, from what Blade said, she’s denying everything.”
Falcon’s jaw tightened. “Give me five minutes with her. She’ll talk.”
I managed a little smile then, and Fal smiled too, his eyes moving down my body after to my light denim jeans and the soft pink top that gathered just under my breasts, falling softly over my little potbelly.
“You certainly look better.”
I gathered my damp hair and piled it on top of my head, letting it all fall down a second later into a mass of curls. “I showered in Em’s room.”
“I thought you were going to Arthur’s room.”
“I…” I buried my lip between my teeth, trying to think of a good explanation as to why I couldn't bear to shower in a place where the man who … where
Arthur
had also been naked. The thought made my skin hot with shame and the bile rise in my throat, taking me back to the Training Hall and flooding me with the sickening sensation of his finger slipping up inside me. “I just needed someone to talk to. Em’s always good for that.”
“Fair enough. So, where’s Ryder?” He looked down the corridor. “I thought he was meeting us up here.”
“He’s waiting outside the infirmary in case Blade and Dad need any help.”
“
Lord Eden
, Ara,” he reminded me in a stern but loving tone.
I cringed at my own carelessness. “Sorry. I keep forgetting.”
“Today, my little queen—” he laid his hands firmly on my shoulders, “—that is perfectly acceptable.”
“Thanks.” I cupped his hand. “Now, let me in to see my husband, or I’ll rip this hand off.”
Falcon laughed, his easy smile revealing a set of straight white teeth. “I guess you better come in then.”
For the first time since I moved here, my curtains were drawn completely closed, from one end of my room to the other, leaving the room in a comforting dark. David lay in a deep unconscious stillness in the bed under a pile of blankets while Jason sat concentrating in a chair beside him. The fire in the sitting room roared across from the settee, like the two were holding a rich conversation, casting dancing shadows to the feet of the coffee table and the armchair where Quaid lounged, reading a magazine. It was altogether much quieter in here now than it had been earlier as we yelled instructions at each other, trying to make some sense of the brutalised body of flesh sprawled out naked on the bed.
“Is he having trouble?” I asked Falcon, nodding toward Jason.
One of Jason’s eyes popped open. “It’s taking an awful lot of concentration to keep him under. But I can handle it.”
“He’s a hell of a lot stronger now,” Falcon added. “He’s surfaced a few times.”
I covered my mouth, knowing instantly how bad that would've been and feeling thankful I wasn’t here for that. My attention flicked momentarily to the strewn pile of clothes and books that’d fallen from the stack of David’s boxes just by the closet door earlier, but the mess was gone now. “Who cleaned up?”
Without saying a word, Quaid put his hand in the air, keeping his eyes on his read.
“Thanks,” I said, taking a seat on the box at the end of the bed.
“Don’t mention it,” he said.
The clock on the wall above the fireplace ticked to count the seconds, but it seemed to move much slower than it should. I only managed fifteen minutes of silence before I spun around to look at Falcon, who was sitting on the stool by Arietta’s dresser, and asked, “Any word yet?”
Falcon scoffed in the back of his throat. “If I’d had a call, Ara, you’d have heard it.”
“I know.” My hands fell loosely into my lap. “I just thought maybe Blade might’ve texted you with an update.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
With a heavy sigh I looked down the pile of blankets at David. His chest heaved and caved with each breath, taking me too easily back to the weeks he spent recovering after he barbecued himself to make Drake think he was dead.
“I’m tired of this,” I said, waiting for someone to ask what. Falcon obliged. “Of seeing people hurt—people I love.”
As Falcon drew a breath to speak, the bedroom door swung slowly open and we all stood.
“How’s the patient?”
“Dad!” I ran forward, stopping a few feet away when he put his hand up.
“Lord Eden, Ara.”
“Sorry.”
He groaned under his breath and turned to usher Blade into the room.
“And I mean it,” he said quietly to the scowling Morgana, who by force of Blade’s hand on her arm, stumbled into the room.
“I said okay!” she screeched.
“Good. Now get it done.” Blade shoved her forward.
“Argh!” She shook her arm at him, readjusting her top where it fell off her shoulder, then turned to me, her face all screwed up like a pug. She wiped it away after a second and lowered herself into a dramatic bow. “Your
Majesty
.”
And that was it: I couldn't help it. I couldn't hold it in any longer. I marched across the five-pace gap and brushed the air with a quick flip, connecting with her face hard enough that she stumbled sideways, regaining her footing as she hit the dresser and knocked my bottle of perfume over.
“You bitch!” She righted herself and turned to my father. “Aren't you going to do something?”