Elijah (37 page)

“Not from a stranger, perhaps, but I believe she knows this particular Mistral very well,”

Syreena explained.

“It does not sound like her,” Elijah said, turning to look down at his bride’s blistered face, his brow furrowing in sympathetic pain to see her beautiful skin marred so agonizingly.

“It was a specific Mistral. She asked for her by name. If only I could remember her name…”

“Windsong,” Damien said suddenly, his dark eyes lighting with understanding. “Was her name Windsong?”

“Yes!” Syreena exclaimed. “From a village in France called—”

“Brise Lumineuse,” Damien supplied.

“How do you know this?” Syreena demanded, looking fairly put out that the Vampire had bailed out her lacking memory.

“How do you think you survived the illness that made you what you are, Syreena?”

Syreena gasped when Siena’s hoarse voice ground roughly out of her damaged throat. Heedless of the men watching her, she raised the back of her hand to her mouth and hurried to fall to her knees beside her sister’s bed. She finally dropped her weaponry, reaching to take the Queen’s hand. Then she seemed to think better of it when she laid eyes on the damaged skin of the distorted fingers. Instead, it was her relieved tears that touched the skin.

“Siena,” she whispered, “do not talk. You must conserve your strength,” she said gently.

Siena gave a brief nod and then turned to look at her husband. Just seeing his face upset her like nothing else could. She felt relief, joy, and a dozen other overwhelming emotions that bludgeoned Elijah’s thoughts with crystal clarity of the heart. He reached for her, weaving his fingers into her crisp hair, the dull tendrils wrapping around his wrist immediately, grasping him weakly in the only way she could hold him.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice high pitched and rasping all the more.

“Shh,” he soothed her, reaching to rub her faded hair against his lips. “Don’t strain yourself.

Listen to Syreena, kitten.”

She shook her head.

Elijah…

Her voice was weak, but more like her own, filtering softly through Elijah’s thoughts as it grew in strength.

Relax, kitten. Do as your sister says.

No. Tell her to get Windsong. Then send them both away. I need to speak with you.

“She says to get Windsong for her. Syreena, can you do this?”

“Yes. France is but a few thermals away, love,” Syreena said eagerly to her sister. “Rest and I will return as soon as possible.”

All eyes turned to follow the Lycanthrope that leapt with dangerous heedlessness out of the window, transforming from human to falcon halfway over the sill.

“Amazing,” Damien marveled, turning to look at the Queen. “So the stories are true. It was Windsong who saved the life of your sister. I had always thought it was a myth until I started to hear reports that you were recently addressing an unusual Lycanthrope female as your sister.

Now that I have seen her…” Damien shook his head, looking back to the window with bemusement. “She is remarkable.”

“Damien, Noah is in the Great Hall. He would wish to see you.”

“I had intended on it, after making my suggestions to you.” The Vampire looked from one to the other with intense, dark eyes, his aristocratic features in an expression of puzzlement for a
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moment. “I had never thought to see such an Imprinting. This is a new era indeed. May it serve you both well. Be well, both of you.”

The Vampire then used the boring convention of the door and left the couple alone. Elijah immediately turned back to his wife. Seeing and feeling her pain, his heart literally began to hurt, and it had nothing to do with his wounds.

You must let me tell you how sorry I am, she rasped into his mind quickly.

There will be time for that. Later, he insisted.

I have wasted too much time already, Elijah.

She reached for him, wincing when her injured skin pulled, splitting in tender places that had lost their elasticity as the poisonous boils had spread. Elijah reached to stop her, his palm against hers. The contact felt so relieving, so precious and good, that he could not force himself to move away again. Clearly, she felt the same, her fingers lacing with his, heedless of how it hurt her.

I have hurt you so selfishly, she sobbed, tears falling from her eyes as her emotion trebled through him.

No, he insisted, his mental voice equally choked with feeling to see her hurting in any way. Do not worry about me, kitten. You have caused me no pain.

Do not lie to the one who knows your heart, however stubbornly she has refused to acknowledge it.

She drew hard for breath, and he slid even closer to her, leaning over her until they were looking deeply into each other’s damp eyes.

“Don’t do this,” he begged roughly. “Do not tell me this because you think you are going to die.

I will not let you leave me. You have tried every way to escape me and I will not let you go now that you have finally acquiesced.”

He drew in an unsteady breath, trying to empower a shattering voice. He brought his hair-tangled hand to her face, cradling it as his thumb brushed her dry lips. “You will survive this day and hunt the ones responsible for this with me, by my side where you belong, now and every moment in the future. You will survive this injury and will be in my arms once again, feeling my touch and my kiss on your precious skin, the softness of which will never cease to drive me mad.” Siena’s tears dropped into her hair, just as Elijah’s touched her parched lips. “You will survive this to tell me you love me the way that I have come to love you. In a strong voice, with light shining in your beautiful eyes and your body wrapped around me the way your soul is wrapped around my heart.”

Unable to do anything else, Siena simply nodded. Once again he reached to catch her tears on his gentle fingertips.

“Don’t cry, kitten. You know it kills me when you do.”

Then stop making me cry these tears, Elijah. I never have done such a thing, until you joined my life.

“Then I am certainly to blame, love. Just as you are to blame for mine.” He smiled against her fingers as he kissed them gently in their place woven between his. “You have reduced me to an emotional woman,” he sighed.

Siena laughed, coughing harshly immediately afterward, driving the humor out of his eyes.

“Shh,” he soothed insistently.

She nodded, searching his face for a long minute, as if committing it to memory. She extended her fingers, touching his mouth tenderly. Her eyes, her emotions, her thoughts were full and bursting with her feelings for him, and it made his heart pound to feel it. But as promised, she said nothing, and would say nothing, until the moment she could meet his criteria. For the moment, she exhaled, closed her eyes, and drifted into sleep, her last thoughts urgently praying to the Goddess for her sister’s swift return.

The sooner she could hold him again, the better.

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Gideon rose about twenty minutes after Damien had left Noah, who had returned to his sister’s bedside in order to maintain her status. The medic was as yet barely well enough to walk, but like Elijah, could not be kept from the mate who needed him as soon as possible.

Noah looked up with surprise when Gideon entered the room. The medic was powerful, but Noah had never suspected he could come back from the brink of death so quickly.

“It is no miracle,” Gideon said roughly as he staggered over to his wife’s side, sitting down beside her still body on the mattress. He swiftly took her face between his hands as he tried to look into her physiology. “Merely my usual ability to heal.”

Gideon raised a hand to silence the King’s further questions or remarks, his eyes closing as he tried to concentrate on undoing his own complex work. Noah watched carefully as Gideon broke into a sweat, feeling the Ancient’s energy fading quickly while Legna remained as motionless as ever.

As unobtrusively as he could, Noah reached mentally for his brother-in-law, slowly trickling energy into him. The flow expanded exponentially over the next few minutes until the grayish tone disappeared from Gideon’s complexion completely. Soon he was flush with his normal tanned skin tone, energy flaring through him in abundance.

Noah stopped pushing energy onto the Ancient when he began to get feedback in the connection he had formed between them. He exhaled as he drew back, tilting his head to stretch out the muscles that had bunched around the back of his neck. He then watched with amazement as wounds across Gideon’s hands, chest, and face began to heal with impressive speed even as Legna drew her first breath in hours.

Noah made a low sound of relief when he saw her skin pinking up. She stirred, yawned widely, as if all she had been doing was sleeping. Her silver eyes opened and looked up into those mirrored in her mate. She smiled at him and reached for his mouth with hers. She kissed him with tenderness and affection, just as she did every morning when she woke. It wasn’t until he broke from her mouth and dragged her into his arms almost desperately that she realized something was wrong. He was terrified, or just being released from terror, his thoughts and his heart pounding in a turmoil of fear and relief.

Slowly she realized she was in her childhood bedroom and that her brother was drawing in harsh breaths of equal relief, pushing out of his chair and moving to look out the window in an attempt at hiding the emotion coursing through him. But he could not hide it from her keen empathy, no matter where or how far he distanced himself from her.

Between the two of them, Legna was overwhelmed.

“What happened?” she asked, her throat tight with their unshed feelings.

“All is well, Nelissuna,” Gideon hushed her gently, burying his face in her silken hair. “You are well, the baby is well, and we are all safe now.”

Noah clearly could not bear to listen a moment longer. Without a word, he turned and left the room. Magdelegna felt his pain twist in her chest like a knife, and because she felt it, Gideon did.

She pulled away to inspect her husband more carefully, momentarily discarding her worry over her brother, seeing the splotchy patterns of newly healed skin all over Gideon’s face, arms, and chest.

“Gideon! What happened!” she demanded with a gasp, her eyes misting over as everything she was feeling finally came to a head. “Why is Noah so frightened? Why are you injured?”

Gideon took in one long breath, and then began to tell her.

The peregrine falcon fluttered into the room, landing on the back of a chair as it shook out its wings and feathers. Shortly after, a single mourning dove, its coloring a beautiful combination of tans and soft grays, flew in after it. The dove settled on the seat of the chair fearlessly, as if the falcon above it was not normally a predator to it. It mimicked the rustling of feathers the falcon made.

Moments later, Syreena was standing behind the chair and the dove had blossomed into a fragile
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young woman with soft, brown and gray streaked hair and large blue eyes that looked as innocent as a child’s and just as wide. She wore a soft dress of white cotton, unlike the Princess, who had to retrieve the dress from where it had fallen over the windowsill when she had changed earlier.

Siena was surrounded by people by this time. Blessed darkness had been upon them for many hours by then, and with it came new strength for the Demons and the Lycanthropes. Syreena had wasted no time in guiding the Mistral back, knowing that if they did not hurry, they might have been forced to delay their travel to avoid the daylight. The female Mistral had her own adverse reactions to the Nightwalker-unfriendly sun. Luckily, the mourning dove could almost equal the fiercely fast flight of the falcon, only slowing down the return voyage by a few miles per hour or so.

The Mistral Siren rose to her bare feet, the soft elegance of the movement riveting to all who watched. Her fairylike beauty and fragility were quite breathtaking to male and female alike, her motions and the flawless flow of her graceful body a symphony of delicacy. It was said the Mistrals could cast spells with their beauty as well as their song, and looking at this frail creature made the other Nightwalkers believe it.

Siena was apparently the one with the most exposure to this reclusive race, so everyone watched with interest and fascination as the female neared them, her soft hair floating in a cloud around her shoulders as she moved.

“Windsong,” Siena greeted her with a croak. She was looking only slightly better as the darkness comforted her.

Elijah still sat beside her, his fingers remaining laced within hers. Only now, he was healed almost to perfection himself, his battle wounds that had been ignored all of this time healed because Gideon had visited him directly after he had tendered healing and a retelling of his tale to his mate.

The Siren paused a moment when she took note of all the people around the Queen’s sickbed.

She blinked, pushing back her fears of strangers with a surprising will that drew Legna’s sensitive attention. Legna had felt the keen anxiety, but above it she felt whatever debt of gratitude and sincere emotion it was that Windsong felt for Siena. The Mistral felt clear and nearly debilitating pain when she first saw the Queen’s endangered health. To Legna’s experienced senses, it was as if the creature was an empath, but a physical one rather than perhaps a mental one. She seemed to be feeling those injuries much in the way Legna would feel sadness or joy from another being.

Windsong moved closer to the grouping as she placed a silencing finger on her lips while looking meaningfully at the injured Queen. The Mistral looked from Siena to Syreena, then turned back with a silent brow cocked.

Elijah sat up slightly.

“She says, ‘Yes, this is the Princess you saved one hundred years ago,’” he interpreted for his mate as she spoke into his mind.

The Mistral’s expression turned to surprise and speculation as she looked from the Demon warrior to the Queen, her full mouth quirking into a serene smile.

“Yes,” Elijah said again, becoming Siena’s only voice. “We are mated.” Then he clearly spoke for himself. “Can you help her? She is in tremendous pain.”