The Summer King Bundle 3 Stories - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,127

passing moment. Suddenly, I wasn’t struggling. I wasn’t….

People moved around me, and the woman was talking again, but I wasn’t following. My head lolled to the side, and my gaze connected with eyes the color of liquid amber.

Caden stood off to the side, his normally golden skin paler than I’d ever seen. All others gave him a wide berth, and he did not move, but I thought his lips did.

I thought he mouthed, I’m here.

* * * *

There were two things I became aware of.

The steady sound of beeping was the first thing I heard when I, well, stopped floating around out there in the fuzzy ether. The second thing was that I didn’t hurt all that much, and that was the most important part. I felt…a little sore and achy, but that was such a marked improvement that I wanted to cry.

I didn’t.

Instead, I tried to open my eyes. This time, it didn’t take an act of Congress to do so. Still took a while because my lids felt crusty and swollen, but I did it, and the smooth, white ceiling I stared at wasn’t the dark interior of a car or the stone ceiling of the chamber.

Another massive improvement.

I was alive, and I wasn’t in the tomb, chained to a stone slab, waiting to die.

God.

I swallowed, wincing at what felt like razor blades in my throat. I’m alive. I kept repeating that in my head because it didn’t seem real or even possible, but I was lying on a comfortable mattress, and the room was filled with soft, filtered sunlight. Memories of how I had gotten here were like sifting through a photo album of faded, distorted pictures. But I remembered Caden and Ivy and Ren, and the pain as my skin had warmed up…. Yeah, I wasn’t going to forget that pain anytime soon.

I also remembered the fae healer. Before I started floating away on a cloud of nothing matters, I had heard her talking to others—to him. Concern about infection and scarring, the latter almost making me laugh because I was already scarred. What was a handful—or a couple of hundred—more in the grand scheme of things? Blood had been taken. Words like dehydration and malnutrition were thrown around, as was concern about other things—things I didn’t really want to think about.

Looking back, I thought that it was quite inappropriate that they had allowed him in the room. Then again, he was their King, and they probably allowed him to do just about anything.

My arms felt heavy, glossy with some kind of ointment, and there was a bandage covering the bite mark on my left arm. Oddly, I felt clean as if someone had bathed me, but based on the itchiness of my scalp, I knew my hair hadn’t been washed.

God, I would kill for a shower, one where my skin wasn’t being scrubbed raw, and someone—

Closing my eyes, I cut off that train of thought as I sucked in a sharp breath. No good could come from thinking about that right now, not when there were so many things that would surely haunt me.

The shuffling sound of someone shifting in a chair drew me from my thoughts. I turned my head to the left, my breath catching as the left side of my cheek throbbed.

Ouch.

All right, pain meds only worked to a point. Good to know.

Opening my eyes, a shock rippled through me. Caden was stretched out in a chair next to the bed, his bare feet resting on the footboard, crossed at the ankles. His eyes were closed, his cheek pressed against his fist, his hair hiding half of his face. He was dressed as I recalled. Black shirt and dark denim jeans. He appeared to be sleeping.

How long had he been in here?

How long had I been out?

Better yet, why was he even here at all?

I didn’t know the answers to those questions, and I didn’t want to wake him. Instead, I lay there and I… I stared at him, soaking in the sight.

Caden was…he was as beautiful as I remembered, a visage of otherworldly perfection that bordered on being unreal. I wished for the hundredth time that he wasn’t so nice to look at. Good thing his royal jerkiness attitude dampened some of that attraction.

Yeah, right. Who was I kidding?

I still loved him. I was still in love with him, and even though he was promised to someone else—could already be with someone else—and had failed to mention that on top of