She regarded the single remaining mattress, still grander than what she usually slept atop. Exhaustion took her then, beckoning her onto the bed to close her eyes against the emotions ripping at her, promising the slumber she had gone without the night before.
Evina found a corner of the blue velvet blanket buried beneath the discarded mound and yanked it free. She carried it against her body as a child might do, bypassed the empty stairs jutting uselessly up the side of the bed, and fell upon the bed.
She sank into the blissful softness and the linen pressed cool upon the heat of her cheeks. She rolled over several times, testing out the surface she lay upon. No pokes or jabs or anything sharp.
She breathed out a long, grateful sigh and gave in to the caress of the bed. Sleep slipped over her body and welcomed her into a wonderful, numb darkness.
But it did not last long.
A searing heat tore down her back, an explosion of blinding pain unlike anything she’d ever felt before. This time it did not stop when her eyes flew open, it raked and it sliced and it stabbed. Then Evina did something she had not done since the day Duncan had found her - she screamed.
CHAPTER 6
THE SCREAM PIERCED Duncan’s soul and chilled him from the inside out. He dropped the chair he’d been pushing into place and ran. The cry did not come again, but he knew exactly where it’d come from, and who had done it.
Evina.
Gillespie’s shoes slapped on the hard ground behind Duncan, but he didn’t slow to wait for his servant. Evina needed him. Duncan had to get to her.
He stopped in front of her door and threw it open without bothering to knock. The coppery odor of blood hit him before anything else. Chills raced down his skin and left his hair standing on end. Mattresses lay in a heap beside the bed, shielding it from his view.
His pulse thundered. He had to peer around the pile, but God help him he did not want to. His heart clenched and he forced himself forward. A pool of red glistened on the floor and stained the edges of the nearby mattresses with crimson. Everything was still. Quiet.
Dead.
Duncan finally made his way around the graceless heap of linen and down, careful to avoid stepping in the welling puddles when he saw her.
Evina lay on the floor beside the bed in a riot of blood and feathers, one leg caught on the high wooden stairs in an obvious attempt to flee. Whatever had slashed her had been so violent, the mattress appeared to have exploded. Feathers settled throughout the room, floating in blood, covering her like soft snow and clinging to her dark hair.
Large, rending slashes covered her back and reduced the kirtle she wore into shreds that blended cloth with torn muscle and flesh.
“Evina?” Duncan said hoarsely. She didn’t answer.
“Gods, I was right,” Gillespie said, his words tinged with the awe of wonder.
Duncan barely heard him. He ran to her, slipping on blood and feathers.
But where to touch her that he might not hurt her?
Familiarity slammed into him. This was similar to how he’d felt when he found his mother and the witch. Too much blood. The threat of death, palpable and terrible.
“Evina.” Her name came out of him, pitched with desperation.
She didn’t answer. She didn’t move.
Gillespie began muttering in a monotonous droning tone. Duncan ignored him and stared down at Evina’s broken body. So strong, so brave. The only female warrior he’d ever met, one resilient enough to last on the battlefields while her comrades fell. And Duncan had killed her.
He carefully smoothed her hair away from her face. Several white feathers sifted free and floated to the floor, into a puddle. It shuddered against the feathers’ intrusion and made Duncan’s reflection tremble.
The blood continued to shift and a slow current began beneath Evina, drawing the sanguineous stream toward her. A hot wetness spread over his hands. He snapped his attention up to find her wounds had begun bleeding again.
“Gillespie.” He looked to his servant to find the other man with his palm spread over the carnage and his lips moving in an unending chant. The pale green of his eyes had gone completely white.
The gore spilled into Evina, draining back into her body. But it wasn’t merely the blood returning itself to her veins; the jagged flesh of her wounds curled together and knitted into seamless, unblemished skin once more, leaving only the ruined kirtle.
Evina gasped in a harsh, ragged breath, as if she’d been plunged into a frozen loch. Her body tensed and she scrambled away from the bed, kicking and flailing, her eyes wide. Fearful.
Duncan moved after her. “’Tis fine now,” he soothed. “’Tis fine now.”
He put his arms about her and cradled her against him. The tension in her body drained away and she stopped fighting. Her body fell limp against him and he tightened his hold on her.
This woman who had stood up to him and showed him such bravery now trembled in the face of her own death.
Death.
The word caused a chill to ripple over his spine. She had been dead. And was once again alive. In his arms.
He pulled in a long, slow breath and the sweetness of her feminine scent warmed his senses. She was soft against his hands, her hair like silk where it brushed his forearm, the curves of her body braced alongside his. If he did die in a fortnight, he hoped this was the final memory of his life before death claimed him.
And he would have lost her were it not for Gillespie. Duncan found the older man getting to his feet, his eyes once more the same familiar green they’d always been. His face was flushed and his stare was edged with a wildness Duncan had
