*Maddy*
Cassian is in pieces. That’s the only way I can describe him. His chest is flayed open, the bandages holding him together are soaked through with blood.
Isla’s magic isn’t working fast enough. She’s leaning over him, her face stained with fresh tears as she pours a fourth vial of that precious liquid onto his dry and cracked lips.
I watch in awe as the slices covering his legs slowly, miraculously, knit themselves together.
“Get her out of here,” Trinity says somewhere behind me, where a frantic Hannah is having a panic attack. I feel someone–likely Rosie–come up behind me, her shoulder brushing against my back as she forces Hannah from the room.
My heart is lodged in my throat as I count every breath Cassian struggles to take. My eyes slide to the place where his right arm should be, and I force them closed.
He’s going to die. I can feel it. But I know he’s in better shape than some of the warriors who have returned, their tarnished bodies having filled the hospital in a matter of minutes. Maybe he has a chance. I pray that he does, even if just for Hannah’s sake.
“Just one more, sweetheart,” Isla whispers with motherly grace. Her hand is placed lovingly on his forehead as she tips a 5th vial into his open mouth. This time he gags, and chokes, and I watch as the wounds to his chest start to close, second by second.
Ella comes up beside me and knits her fingers in mine, the two of us standing in utter silence as the cries and wailes of the injured warriors–those belonging to the house, whether trained warriors or simply servants who volunteered themselves to the cause–echo in my ears. Every room is full.
Cassian takes a shuddering breath and slowly opens his eyes. His right arm, missing from the elbow down, twitches, which causes him to wince in pain. I find it hard to take a breath as pain radiates from his face, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Damnit,” he croaks. “I’m right handed.”
Isla exhales deeply, flushed with relief. What a very Cassian thing to say at a moment like this.
But the light hearted moment is quickly squashed by Cassian’s grimace of pain and the look of horror in his eyes as he comes rushing back to reality. “Oh, Goddess. They’re all dead. All of them.”
“Cassian, you have to slow down–”
“Maddox got them out–the–the army. Some of them. Right? Some of them might have made it to Moorn before–before—” He sucks in a breath, his wounds still slowly closing. “Oh, Goddess. What happened? What were they? Where are they now?”
I step forward, ignoring the amount of blood staining the sheets a deep crimson and dripping onto the floor, onto the tops of my shoes. “Tell us what happened, please.”
His eyes, cloudy with fever, turn to mine. “We saw nothing. There was no sight of them for days. Then Isaac left with the scouts, and then they… these… things came rushing out of the woods, tearing through our camps.” He fights to swallow. “Two days ago we tried to keep them in the woods, to push them back. But it was like fighting with shadows. One moment, they were there, in the flesh, and the next they turned to mist and appeared somewhere else. There was one we caught alive, shortly before Isaac returned and all–and all hell broke loose. It was a wolf, and he wore something around his neck, like a collar, and it–and it allowed him to just–just turn to dust. We started going for their necks and had an advantage for a few hours, but there were so many of them, so many. I can’t–I can’t even begin–to know for–for sure–” He grimaces as the last wound closes, his teeth bared and bloody as his arm twitches again.
Everyone in the room knows Isla’s magic can heal, but none of think her powers are strong enough to help someon regrow an arm.. I bite down on my lip at the thought.
“Isaac battled at my side for hours. Maybe days, I don’t know. We couldn’t hold them back. We were dying, all of us. We’d get ahead and then more would come and mow down the young warriors, picking off the weakest. Isaac called for a retreat, but they were too fast. He–he made Maddox go. He pulled a sword on Maddox to get him to leave, to go back to Moorn.”
Isla grips the bloodied sheets, fresh tears streaming down her face.
“I stayed. I wouldn’t let him get rid of me,” he continues with a playful but pained smirk. “I stayed and fought, and then lost my fucking arm.”
Ella licks her lips, biting back a smile at Cassian's tone.
“I knew I was gonna die, but I was gonna die next to Isaac. We promised long ago we’d die together if it came to it. But he broke that fucking promise and–I don’t know what happened next. One second I was there, with him, and then I opened my eyes and was in the back of a truck with twenty other injured warriors being driven like mad back to the castle. And now I’m here, and you won't let me die.”
I try to keep my heartbeat steady.
“Isaac is still out there, isn’t he?” Cassian asks the room.
Isla nods gravely, still gripping the sheets.
“Fuck–”
“Cassian,” I cut in, my voice trembling despite my best efforts. “Did he tell you what he meant to do? Why he stayed?”
“The king. He was waiting for him. He wasn’t going to back down until he faced the king. The king wasn’t there, though. It was just his fucking puppets made of mist.” Cassian coughs painfully, his back arching off the bed. “He told me I needed to go home and defend the castle. And then I woke up, and I was a long way from Moorn already.” His voice breaks suddenly. “Isla, is my mom here?”
“She’s at the hospital helping with the wounded–”
“Dad,” he croaks, his eyes spilling over with tears. “He loved her. He wanted me to tell her. I should tell her soon.”
Ella grips my fingers hard as the realization of what he means strikes us both. Commander Leo, who’d been with the family since before Isaac was born, is dead.
“I tried to save him. I couldn’t. I tried. I promise.” His eyes fill so many tears he can’t see past them.
I turn away, my chest convulsing with sobs I’m trying to force down.
“Did Hannah see me like this?” he says after several long moments of heavy silence.
“She was here, yes,” Isla answers softly, her hand resting on his bandaged thigh.
“I didn’t want her to see me like this. I barely had a chance with her to begin with, now I only have one arm.”
“Cassian,” Ella giggles through tears.
He smiles with a dazed, fevered look in his eyes. “I can only get her one box of chocolate at a time now because that’s all I can carry with one fucking hand.”
Isla turns to Ella, a brief hint of amusement in her eyes at Cassian’s joking nature even in the face of turmoil. “Go get her.”
Ella releases her grip on my hand and leaves.
“Help me up, Isla.”
“You have to stay laying down.”
“Look at me, I’m fine.”
Now I’m the one giggling. Cassian looks like he went through a meat grinder, both physically and emotionally.
Hannah rushes in, brushing past me. A warm glow touches Cassian’s cheeks as he reaches out the only hand he has left to brush his knuckles over her cheek as she kneels at his bedside, not caring about the blood. “My girl.”
My heart shatters at the love in his voice, and I turn, wanting to give them space.
But I turn right into Ella, who grabs me and pulls me into the hallway just as Isla hustles past us to move on to her next patient.
“Come,” Ella says sternly, meeting my eyes. “We don’t have much time.”
No one notices us as she leads me through the house, stopping in my room. She tells me to dress, pulling out a long-sleeved top and dark leggings, and boots from my closet. I don’t protest, thinking we’re going to trek down to the tent city to help the wounded, but when she leads me up to her studio, my mind starts to wander, my thoughts blurring together.
“Why are we here?” I ask as she shuts and locks the door tight.
Ella looks like a completely different person all of the sudden. Her face drops that somewhat aloof, playful, yet icy, expression and turns to something calculated and made of steel.
She walks to the far end of the circular room where crates are stacked high, and begins moving them with great speed.
“My mother has the gift of healing and light,” she says, grunting with effort as she clears the crates and other clutter out of her way. “She has visions that come to fruition.” She pulls one last crate away, revealing what I think are canvases covered by a tarp. She turns to look at me with a feral look in her eyes as she continues, “Isaac can manipulate anything he touches, can spirit himself through space and time, and become a beast of moonlight.”
“You knew?”
“And I,” she cuts in, yanking the tarp away, “can do this.”
Dust mites hang in the gray light pouring through the angular windows, disturbed from their eternal rest. I step into the light, my lips parted in shock and awe as dozens of impeccably made landscapes come into view. Canvases of all shapes and sizes are spread along the wall, stacked against each other, some of them covered in dust and cobwebs.
She can paint. I already knew that. Paint with a hand not even a master who spent decades refining their skill could accomplish.
“Ella, what–”
Canvases start slamming to the ground as she tears through them, looking for one in particular.
She steps back and looks up at a large canvas with a sweeping view of a wide, grassy riverbed. Grayish yellow grass bends slightly in a breeze I can almost feel the place just by looking at it. Isaac’s locket around my neck warms against my skin, like the painting is beckoning me to him, reminding me that he’s there, he’s still out there, and I’m hundreds of miles away.
“This is roughly twenty miles outside of Moorn,” she says briskly, stepping back to examine it.
“Why are you showing me this? And why am I dressed like this?”
She turns to me, smiling. “Because we’re going there, right now.”
“But Isla–”
“My mom is busy,” she says slowly, tilting her head toward the door. “And will be for ages. She won’t even notice we’re gone.”
“Ella, I am the Luna–”
“And your Alpha King is out there right now. We’re going to go get him.” She extends a hand to me, motioning me toward her.
“What are we going to do?” I ask, choking on a laugh. “Walk through the painting?”
Her answering feline grin sets my heart racing.
“Ella… what exactly is your power?”
“Trust me, Maddy. Please. There’s so much I need to know, and I can’t do this without you.”
She grips my hand and pulls me toward her before I can protest. I yelp with surprise as she shoves me toward the painting, the colors beginning to tremble and whirl.
And then we go through it, stepping right through the canvas like it was just another archway.
The warm, stale air in her studio bursts with a sudden chill, the dreary gray day replaced by full, starless night.
Not even the moon is here to witness us.
I fall to my knees, finding it hard to breathe.
“Not so bad,” Ella muses, brushing off her pants.
“You have so much to explain!” I hiss, my skin rippling with gooseflesh.
Ella shrugs, inspecting her boots, then meets my eyes. “And you need to shift, Maddy. Otherwise, by the time we reach those mountains over there, it’ll be far too late.”
“Too late for what?” I ask–but I’m not sure I want to know the answer.