Things That Should Stay Buried - Casey L. Bond Page 0,99
dark stained around his cuticles. “Then why did I spend the last hour scrubbing an enormous puddle of blood from the courtyard?”
My heart thundered. Am I dead?
“Were you there? In your dream, were you in the courtyard?” Aries asked carefully, his words seeming to plead for me to tell him I wasn’t.
I opened my mouth. It couldn’t have been my blood. If it was, I’d be dead. I watched so much pour out. My heart pumped so fast, I thought I was going to pass out. Sounds and voices were muted by the roaring in my ears. I felt like I did in the dream. I was dying.
Falling…
“Larken?” a gritted cry came.
“Tell me she’s okay.” Kes.
His voice was there. I was dying and Kes was there, watching with Kestrel’s eyes. He saw me fall. He would see my chest go still and stay that way, even as they dragged him away.
I came to in a dark room, lying in a bed with black silken sheets that felt cold against my clammy skin. Aries sat beside me wiping a cold rag across my forehead, and I realized I was in his room.
I tried to sit up but he pushed me back down. “You need to rest. And when you feel better, you need to eat.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, and I wish we had more time for you to recover, but we don’t. I need you to trust me and tell me exactly what happened in your dream; where you were, what you wore, any smells you remember, what was said and what happened.”
I didn’t want to relive it, but maybe he could tell me more.
So I told him every detail I could think of. Down to the grit between my bare toes and the feeling of not being able to breathe or scream because the pain had stolen my breath, because Taurus’s spear pierced not only my heart but my lung.
I told him that I died and described the sinking feeling that came with the ebbing of my consciousness. The way I stood for a moment after the impact, only to waver and crumple, and how Taurus pressed his head against mine. Then how everything faded away.
In the end, it was quick. It felt slow, but I’d died quickly.
It hurt, but it wasn’t a drawn-out, agonizing pain. The blow Taurus dealt was quick and precise.
Aries listened to every word. He didn’t blink. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.
He was motionless for so long, it scared me. The only way I knew he was alive was that I could feel the pulse in his wrist. He’d held my hand at my request and placed his index finger over the pulse-point in my wrist, so I was holding his hand the same way. Blood whooshed through his veins. I clung to the feel, knowing he was absorbing what I told him.
“I could give you the memory,” I rasped uncertainly.
He finally blinked and looked at our hands. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Because I feel the ache in my chest as it is. If I experienced it through your memory, there’s no telling what I’d do.”
“There’s nothing to be done. It was just a dream.”
“It was a threat – a wish – from Taurus himself,” he rasped. “He wanted you to know he’s coming, and that he intends to target you. He’ll plan to separate us, so we must stay together. We can’t let that happen.” He stood, jerking his hand from mine, and paced across the floor, tearing at his hair.
I sat up and scooted so my back was against the headboard, ignoring the swimming lightheadedness I still felt. “Aries?” When he turned his face to mine, the anguish I saw made me throw the covers back.
“Stay in bed,” he ordered, stopping his steps.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” he echoed. “I want to tear the stars from the heavens! I want to shred the sky! I want to end them all…even those I respect.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because even as they draw breath, they are a threat to you. I can’t tell friend from foe right now, so I have no other choice than to believe they’re all against us.”
“Aquarius saved me,” I reminded him. He gave me a sliver of advice I hadn’t forgotten, and I’d finally started to believe him.
Aquarius seemed like a friend.
Virgo, however, had done nothing but spit venom in my direction.
When I really thought about it… Aquarius might be the only Zodia on Aries’s side.