Pull it out? Pull what out?”
“Barrett, keep your eyes on me,” Thalia said, her voice a plea.
I blinked slowly, looking up at her, and my lips parted.
“I didn’t...thin—” My voice cracked, and I inhaled, but the air wouldn’t fill my lungs, they couldn’t expand, and pain shot through me.
“Shhhh,” she whispered. “Don’t talk, just stay still.”
“See you...again,” I muttered, my voice barely loud enough for me to hear.
“I’m here,” she assured me. “I’m right here.”
“Make sure he doesn’t move,” Lucia said, and I frowned.
What was?—
Pain sliced through my abdomen, and I cursed, my head falling back as I cried out.
“I’m so sorry!” Thalia muttered, her gaze darting to my stomach. “Hold still. Lucia’s healing you.”
Warmth crept across my stomach, chasing the pain away, and I tried to breathe through it.
“Lucia,” Damien said in an almost warning.
“I’m just closing the wound so he doesn’t bleed out,” she said, and I looked at her, at the sweat painting her brow. She was pale, a strange weariness touching her features.
She let out a shuddering breath, the warmth vanishing, leaving in its wake a deep ache that made it difficult to move. I drew a deep breath, relieved to be able to do so again, and I blinked.
Lucia sagged against Damien, and he caught her.
“What...” I muttered.
“I thought we’d lost you,” Lucia said with a weak smile, her words as ragged as her breathing.
I frowned.
“You were impaled on another’s dagger,” Thalia explained. “It must have happened in the blast.”
The blast? My heart faltered as it all came back to me.
“Where is she?” I asked, shooting up and immediately regretting it as Thalia braced me.
“Stop. You can’t move,” Thalia said as she forced me back onto the ground. “You’ll reopen your wound.”
“But the darkling queen...” I groaned.
“She’s gone.”
My gaze snapped to Lucia as she spoke, but she wasn’t looking at me. “Gone?”
Her gaze lingered on the barren expanse where the healers had been, and my heart plummeted at what remained. The only sign that anything had ever stood there was bits of splintered wood and shreds of white fabric. Where tents had once resided, where healers had practiced their craft and magic to heal warriors...was a gaping crater, the grass dead at the edges, the soil tainted with corrupted shadow magic.
There was nothing. Every healer, every injured warrior... They were gone.
I turned back to her. Something haunted lingered in her expression, something I’d never seen before.
“She’s gone,” she said once more, still unable to look at me. “It’s done.”
