Spreading her body out on the bed, I removed my cloak and her tunic. I did my best not to look at the curve of her breasts beneath her underclothes. She was dead to the world and hurting, and I had never been that kind of male. Not like Oberon.
With her shirt gone, I got a good look at the wound on her back and started. The beast had sliced clean through her shoulder blade, right by that damned dragon tattoo Oberon had given her, but its claw had not gone deep. I wiped away the blood and pressed a cloth tightly against her skin. It would be painful for a while, but she would heal.
It was the other scars that made my soul shake.
Someone had cut two deep lines into her back, down the length of her lower spine. The scars looked raw. Where he’d cut her, the skin was red and angry, as if he’d done something to keep the wounds from fully closing up. Anger churned within me. Whoever did this had made sure she felt pain.
Niamh had told me about the scars, but I had never imagined how truly horrible they were. Never could have comprehended it. Oberon was cruel. I’d always known that. It had driven me to do my own terrible deeds. But this was beyond cruel. It was madness. It was evil itself.
The power of the gods was twisting his mind. In his quest to become one of them, he was succeeding in that regard.
Tessa stirred, and a jolt of relief shook through me. Even though I knew she’d recover, I’d been fearful of never seeing those soft brown eyes open again. Carefully, I lowered her onto her back and tried to make her comfortable, though her wince told me it would be a good while before that.
She blinked up at me, her face as pale as death. “What happened? Where are we?”
“Who did that to your back?” I growled, unable to stop myself. It wasn’t the first thing I’d meant to say to her, but the thought of him digging his blade through her like that…if only I could cross that fucking bridge and stab the Mortal Blade into his heart myself. Instead, I would have to be satisfied with Tessa doing the deed.
She swallowed hard, and pain flickered through her eyes, as if the memory itself was too much for her to think about.
“Never mind,” I said quickly. “You don’t need to tell me. We’re—”
“You know who it was,” she said in a scratchy voice. “Oberon did this.”
My heart hardened at her words.
“It happened six years ago.” She winced and shifted slightly on the mattress in a struggle to get comfortable. “My father defied him. Oberon took his head, but that wasn’t enough for him. He punished me, too. And now, he’s forced me to become his bride. He killed my maidservant and my sister, and then he spent an entire month breaking me apart so that I would not have the will to fight him anymore. He destroyed me, Kal. If you and Morgan had not gotten me out of there…if you hadn’t done what you did, I would be wed to that monster, so broken that I never would have recovered.”
My chest expanded as emotions churned within me. I hated seeing her like this—her voice trembling, her eyes full of pain.
“What happened out there after I passed out?” she asked again. So, I told her. Her face paled as I recounted the events, and when I mentioned the new wound, she stiffened. It would be another scar to add to the others.
“It felt like poison,” she said when I was finished explaining. “Like the pooka’s venom had gotten into my blood.”
I nodded. “They have venom in their teeth and claws that can stun you. It’s how they’re able to attack so successfully.”
Her body shook as she loosed a breath. “So the venom can’t kill me?”
“No,” I said quietly. “You’re going to be fine, Tessa. No thanks to me.”
“You couldn’t have known that one would sneak up behind us.”
“No, but I could have guessed it. I should have put you someplace safe.” My hands fisted at the thought of what might have happened if things had gone differently. She could be dead right now.
She reached out a hand and brushed my knee. Everything within me stiffened at her touch. I flicked my gaze down at where her fingers curled against the side of my leg, and for a moment, the only thing in the world that existed was this. It shouldn’t have unnerved me so. It was just a hand—only the slightest touch. But it caused something to stir deep within me.
She swallowed hard and then snatched her hand back as if she’d shocked herself. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was the bloody Mist King. Why would anyone want to touch a monster like me?
Her cheeks brightened as she twisted her face away. “I’m safest by your side, Kalen. If you’d put me somewhere else—like this house—they would have killed me. And you would have been too far away to do anything about it.”
“Regardless of all that, we can’t stay here much longer. I know you’re in pain, but we need to move on before other pookas smell the blood of their brethren on the winds.”
She winced. “I want to keep going, but I have to admit, I don’t feel wonderful.”
“If I could share my healing powers with you, I would not hesitate for even a second to save you from this pain, Tessa.”
Her eyes shone as she gazed up at me, a slight smile tugging at her lips. It was so different from how she’d looked at me only a week before that it made my gut twist. She said she understood why I’d loosed the full strength of my power on Albyria, but I couldn’t even forgive my damn self. I’d ruined this entire kingdom, and I would do it all over again. How could she, having been trapped behind the chasm with Oberon all this time, look past that?
And now I was sending her right back in there to finish something I should’ve been taking care of myself.