“You’re here,” she croaked. It was all she could say, all she could manage after she thought she wouldn’t make it out alive.
“I never forget a date with a gorgeous woman.”
Emmery almost snorted at the ridiculousness. Like this was some romantic outing? Maybe the water had washed away her comprehension skills.
Destonne stroked her hair back from her face, still buried in his neck. “Please let go. I really don’t want to peel you off like a pair of leather trousers.”
Shewouldlet go if she could get her damn body to cooperate, but every nerve screamed to cling to him. Her chest and armsburned and needles stabbed her hand as she unwound her arms and legs.
Destonne caught her hips to ensure she didn’t crumple, and while he tried to shove her away, Emmery kept her arms around his neck as she slid down his body. Her shirt bunched around her middle and raw pain sliced her like razorblades. She made a small feeble sound between a cry and a whimper.
Her legs shook as her feet met the ground, unsteady, unsure.
Destonne stepped back and popped the buttons on his shirt like they strangled him. Heart thundering, Emmery’s eyes travelled up his soggy trousers which indecently clung to his frame, to the shredded shirt—
Shredded. Gods … thethorns.
The thorns were long, jagged things, the girth of a large thimble, and the same obsidian wood as the crown.
And they hadpunchedthrough his skin.
His shoulders, arms, chest, and down to his navel were wounded like he’d been stabbed repeatedly, which he had, but from theinside. Thick rivulets of blood painted his body, though his neck remained unharmed, only smeared in crimson. The crown tightened around his head like a vice and blood streamed down his temples, forehead, and dripped into his eyes though he angrily swiped it away, along with his soaked curls.
Emmery tried to draw breath, but pain sang through her. The hand that didn’t sting like a porcupine had mated with it, pressed to her chest and found her shirt ripped.Mangled, really.
And her hand came away red. Sticky.
She’d been too shocked to feel the deep lacerations down her chest and arms. When she slid down his body, it was as if she’d taken a cheese grater to her own flesh or perhaps zested it like a lemon peel.
As he looked her over, Destonne’s bottomless eyes overflowed with something akin to agony, regret, or self-hatred. He opened his mouth to speak but only a strangled sound came out.
Her stomach churned and she gagged, her trembling body now quaking. She stumbled as her world swayed. Destonne caught her, then held her at arm’s length, and managed to shuffle them over to the boulder they’d sat on to unlace their boots all these weeks. He set Emmery down like a misbehaving child in a busy market.
“Stay here,” he said, his voice like gravel.
Aera blazed into the clearing on her black icy wind. Had she fetched him? He must have been on his way then, otherwise he would’ve been too late.
Destonne paced back and forth, hauling breath through his nose and out his mouth until the thorns retracted beneath his flesh with a squelch of mangled skin. Emmery watched in both terror and fascination.
She’d seen him bleeding before. Seen blood dripping down his fingers and temples, but this—gods, she’d never predicted this. Never seen anything like it.
Whatever kind of twisted magic or curse this was.
Destonne stalked back to the boulder, his eyes wide, the whites of them a halo around the depthless black. Emmery couldn’t read his expression, couldn’t decipher his thoughts or feelings, and she didn’t know what to say. But she owed him an explanation.
“I didn’t … I was—” she babbled. Her body stretched distantly from her consciousness. “I thought I c-could—I thought I could do it.”
Her heart stuttered as he dropped to his knees in front of her. His brows creased as he took her hand that stung something fierce, and examined the dozen black quills the length of herlittle finger, tipped in orange arrowed barbs, embedded in her palm.
“I didn’t think you would drown yourself just because I was late.” A foreign quiver threaded his voice through the humour.
Emmery wheezed a laugh, though the world tilted and she could barely focus on Destonne’s face. The metallic tang of her blood made her stomach churn and saliva flooded her mouth. “You weren’t late. You stood me up.”
“Late. I waslate. I’d never stand you up. I remember every one of your threats to light me on fire and I wouldn’t dare test them.” Destonne tilted her hand and breathed something like a curse. “We need to remove these or your hand will swell to twice its size. Though it would be satisfying to slap me with, I don’t think you want that.”
Bile climbed her throat as Emmery pinched a quill with blood-slickened fingers and pulled. Pain streaked like lightning, stole all the breath from her lungs, and she sucked air through the spaces between her teeth. She gasped but it wasn’t enough as her chest convulsed like that day at Reize’s cottage.
Frustration heated her cheeks as she yanked again and a small whine squeaked out. “It won’t come out. I can’t do it.”