Isla
“Ella,” I whisper. I’m in shock. My entire body hums with adrenaline as I try to step deeper into what remains of my living room. Everything is ash and embers. The ceiling is gone, revealing the glare of the midmorning sun.
And there she is, kneeling in the center of the room, covered in her mate’s blood.
Maddox lurches forward, but I grab him around the waist and haul him back. “Wait!”
Ella pants, her chest heaving with each ragged breath she takes. In the distance, I hear sirens. Smoke funnels toward the sky. It’s only a matter of minutes until people start descending on our property, and they can’t see this.
“Ella,” I repeat, louder this time. “Take off the mask, honey.”
She whimpers as she raises her bloody hands, her sea-green eyes full of tears. She’s wearing a dress that may have been white at some point. It’s thin, and hanging off her body, which is covered in bruises and deep scratches. I’m not sure where she’s hurt. I’m not sure what blood is hers and what blood is Ryatt’s.
“Honey,” I whisper, taking a few steps toward her. The mask she’s wearing… I can’t explain the way it seems to suck the air from the room around us. It’s pulsating with power I can’t begin to describe. I just know she needs to take it off. I don’t know how I know, but something in the power emanating off it isn’t right. My own power recoils away from it, as if it wants to curl into itself and hide.
“Isla, we need to do something,” Maddox growls somewhere behind me as the sirens get closer.
“Take it off,” I tell her. “Take it off and let us help you.”
Her fingers brush over the crimson stones before she pulls it off with what looks like great effort. Her mouth parts as she inhales sharply, and then her eyes roll back in her head, and she slumps forward over Ryatt’s chest.
“Goddess above,” I hiss as I race to her, falling on my knees and pulling her into my arms.
Maddox kneels near Ryatt’s head, his fingers on his pulse. He meets my eyes as I gather our unconscious daughter in my arms and slowly shakes his head.
I look down at my daughter’s mate. How did this happen?
“My tears,” I say to Maddox. “I have vials in the bathroom upstairs.”
“He’s dead, Isla.”
I can’t accept that. I don’t know this man. I can’t be a judge of his character or whether he lives or dies. He taunted Isaac for weeks before the war last summer. He was our enemy, at least we thought he was. Maybe he still is. But he’s Ella’s mate. There’s so much we don’t know. And her scream… Goddess, that scream told me everything I needed to know about the two of them.
She loves him, and if she wakes up to find that he’s dead, it’ll be a pain worse than whatever happened to her to put her in this state.
“Get them,” I beg, fresh tears welling along my lower lashes. I’ll need as many tears as I can get. “Please, hurry!”
Maddox rises without a word and pulls his phone from his pocket before rushing out of the living room. His footsteps thunder up the stairs to my left.
“It’s all right,” I whisper into Ella’s hair, rocking her side to side like an infant. “You’re all right now.”
She’s totally unconscious. Her body is a dead weight in my arms, her blood soaked hair sticking to my chest and arms. I look down at her body–at the red welts forming on her arms and legs. Burns, I realize. I choke down a sob, clutching her tight and thanking the Goddess she’s not awake to feel the pain of these injuries.
Ryatt makes a breathy sound–a gasp, then goes silent again.
“Maddox!” I shout, leaning forward and reaching for Ryatt. “HURRY!” There’s a sliver of life left in him. A single beat of his heart. That’s enough. I can bring him back. I know I can. “MADDOX!”
I lower Ella to the ground beside Ryatt and crawl to his side, taking his battered face between my hands. “Come on,” I plead, shaking him gently. “Don’t you dare die. Do not leave her like this!”
I shake him again, hard, ignoring the blood seeping through the gaping holes in the dark leather vest that covers his chest. “Ryatt, wake up. Open your eyes–”
Silver eyes open to slits, locking on mine. He jerks, teeth bared, but doesn’t have the strength to do much else. Pain shines behind his eyes as he blinks once, then twice, as if trying to clear his vision. “You’re safe,” I tell him quietly. “She’s safe–”
“Ella–”
“She’s okay,” I whisper, tears blurring my vision as I lean over him. A single tear rolls down my cheek and along my jaw before falling onto his lower lip.
Telling him Ella is all right might have been a mistake. He closes his eyes again, breathing rapidly while blood dribbles from the corners of his mouth. His mate is safe, and now he feels like he can succumb to death in peace. “Ryatt–Ryatt!”
“Isla!” Maddox lunches himself off the stairs and tosses me a vial of tears, the most precious medicine we have. I wrench the lid off with my teeth and pry open Ryatt’s mouth, dumping the entire vial onto his tongue. He jerks, but I hold him down, covering his mouth and nose with my hand. I turn desperate eyes to Maddox, who has Ella’s head in his lap while he begs for her to drink, to wake up, to open her eyes.
The sirens have abruptly stopped, but another noise rips through the air.
“Did you call a boat?” I ask, releasing my grip on Ryatt, who has fallen back in a state of unconsciousness and riding a fine line between life and death.
“I called Poppy,” Maddox says breathlessly. He picks Ella up, cradling her limp body in his arms. “We’re going to the castle directly. This was a gas leak.” He tilts his head toward the remains of our living room.
A gas leak. Sure. Not our magical daughter and her mate falling through our ceiling out of thin air.
“Okay,” I whisper over the roar of a boat engine ripping into the private cove that touches the edge of our backyard. It’s too shallow for one of the big boats that take us over the sea, so it must be a skiff of some kind, or Goddess forbid, jet skis. “Maddox?”
“I’ll come back for him,” he says, meeting my eyes. Grim determination makes his green eyes shine in the smoke still curling toward the opening in the roof.
I don’t want to leave Ryatt, so I don’t. I know Ella will be okay. I feel it in my very soul that she will live. When it comes to her, I’m more worried about what she’ll be like when she wakes up. They went through something awful–awful enough that she ripped the sky in two to bring her mate, a man considered an enemy to our people, back home to me.
She brought him here so I can heal him.
But he’s still bleeding badly despite my tears. His pulse is weak, and his chest trembles with each unsteady breath he takes. Warriors hurry in, calling out my name, but my focus is locked on Ryatt.
Maddox's voice telling me to let Ryatt go breaks me out of what feels like a trance.
“Do not die,” I demand before rising to my feet.
***
“They sedated him,” Poppy says as we hurry down a long, open air hallway with archways that look out over the endless beach. Hot afternoon sunlight beats down on Maatua, but inside the castle, the air feels cold and suffocating. “He’s going into surgery as we speak.”
Poppy pants as she tries to catch back up to me.
“Isla, wait.” She grabs my arm and pulls me to a stop.
“I need to check on Ella.”
“She’s still asleep. I swear. I have two healers tending to her. Her wounds–the burns–” Poppy’s face pales as she shakes her head. “I need you to tell me what happened to them.”
“I don’t know what happened,” I say sharply, massaging my jaw. I’ve been darting between the state-of-the-art infirmary where healers have been trying desperately to save Ryatt’s life and the bedroom Ella is in. The entire castle is crawling with warriors and healers.
My tears healed some of Ella’s wounds.
My tears did nothing for Ryatt. He’s in worse shape than when he first arrived.
What I really want to do is bring them both to the falls, but Ryatt might not survive the trip at this point. We’ve run out of time.
“It’s like he wants to die,” I growl, closing my eyes and lowering into a crouch. My muscles ache from sprinting all over this Goddess damned castle for hours. My hands are raw from repeated washing. My eyes are puffy, but dry, having cried so many tears my power simply snapped and withered away.
Poppy licks her lips and kneels, her hands squeezing my shoulders in a way that makes me hum with relief. “Ella is going to be okay. Your tears healed her body. But… that wound on her thigh is… resisting all efforts. It’ll need to be stitched.”
“That’s fine.” In reality, the fact that I couldn’t heal my own daughter is weighing heavily on me.
“Isaac and Maddy are on the way,” she says, forcing a smile. “That’s good, right?”
“I feel awful for calling them,” I admit. “Maddy’s in no state to travel.”
“We’re more than ready to deliver twins here, Isla. I think we have every healer in Maatua at the castle right now, actually.”
“I think we need to get Ella and Ryatt off Maatua.”
“Why?”
“Ryatt–” I suck in a breath and stand. Poppy follows, her eyes glimmering with concern as I rub my temples. “Ryatt is very powerful. That’s all we really know about him.”
“You’re worried about his powers?”
“We don’t know what we’re dealing with when it comes to him, Poppy. He’s weak now, but when he heals… if he’s not who I think he is–”
“Who do you think he is?”
“Someone who loves my daughter.”
Poppy holds my gaze, understanding blooming over her lovely features. “What can he do, exactly?”
“We have no idea.” We know Ella can cause an insane amount of structural damage, if what's left of my house is any indicator of her powers.
“Well,” she claps her hands, rubbing them together. “I just had the east wing of the castle renovated, so I’m in agreement that we need to move them both elsewhere… for our safety, of course.”
“Of course,” I repeat, but both of us know this has everything to do with the fact this matter needs to be kept secret for as long as possible. We may be in peace times now, but if the Alphas under the rule of Isaac, and even Antony, catch wind of this, rumors will spread. The people of our kingdoms need to stay under the impression they’re safe.
Even if I’m not sure they are.
We won’t know anything until Ella and Ryatt can explain what happened.
“On the matter of the mask,” Poppy says as we start walking again. We turn a sharp corner, coming face to face with a narrow set of stairs leading down into the depths of the castle. “It’s in a vault deep underground. A vault only I have a key to.”
“Good, it needs to stay that way.”
“Are we in danger, Isla?”
I halt on the second to the last step. “I don’t know.”
She nods, pursing her lips in thought. “The Teal Isles, then. The royal house there has been empty for some time. There’s plenty of room for your entire family to stay, to spread out. It does have an infirmary, but I’ve been assured that once Ryatt is out of surgery he’ll be all right, at least physically.”
“Have a boat ready, please.”
“I will.” She reaches out and grabs my wrist. “They’re going to be fine. Ella is going to be okay.” Tears finally start to spring to life again. She notices, giving me a smile as she reaches up to dab one off my cheek. “I’m so happy your girl is home again, even if the situation is less than ideal.”
“She’s awake!”
We look to our right where a healer just ran into view, her cheeks pink with exertion.
“Princess Ella is awake and–”
A frustrated screech echoes through the corridor, followed by the clattering sound of something hitting the floor.
“Go,” Poppy urges, giving me a little shove.
I don’t need it. My feet barely touch the floor as I race after the healer, Poppy’s beautiful seaside home passing by in a blur.
I push through the door into the large, airy bedroom. It’s all white and pale blues–a calming place with large windows overlooking the turquoise water.
Ella stands in the center of the room, panting, her eyes wide and round as she whips around to face me. Three healers cower against the wall as her eyes blaze with silver white fire.
My beautiful, powerful daughter.
“Come here,” I whisper, opening my arms to her. “Ella, it’s al lright–”
The force of her running into my arms is nearly enough to knock me off my feet, but I dig deep for the strength I need to carry whatever is weighing her down.
“Tell me everything,” I whisper into her hair.