King of Battle and Blood (Adrian X Isolde #1)(50)

Adrian’s severe gaze shifted from Daroc to me. “She looked like a girl,” I said, and my mouth began to quiver. “A little girl.”

I had watched her die.

“She is injured,” Daroc said. “Her hand.”

Adrian’s eyes fell to my arm, which I was now cradling with my other hand. He frowned as he studied the wound.

“The creature did this to you?”

“With only a touch,” I confirmed, staring at the wound almost blindly. My skin looked much like that of the dead—red and raw.

Adrian reached for me, and I let him take my hand as he examined it. I expected him to try and heal it. Instead, he said, “I cannot heal this. It is magic.”

He looked at Daroc, worry etched across his severe face.

“We will be at the Red Palace soon,” Daroc said. “Ana Maria can look at it.”

I did not know who Ana Maria was, but I wondered what she could do that Adrian couldn’t. Still, his jaw tightened, but I was not so much worried about my injury as I was about what had happened here.

“I don’t understand. Was that girl responsible for…all this?”

“Not her, but whatever possessed her,” Adrian said. He looked at Daroc again, offering a wordless command before the vampire bowed and departed, returning in the direction we’d come to retrieve the corpse of the girl, if I had to guess.

Alone with Adrian, he tilted my face toward his, and I got the impression he was trying to ensure that whatever had consumed the girl had not consumed me, but as I stared into his eyes, I could not help seeing hers, wide with the shock of death. I closed my own against the image and asked, “Who would do this?”

When Adrian did not answer, I opened my eyes again to find him staring off into the distance, his jaw set tight.

“Adrian?”

At the sound of his name, he looked at me.

“It’s hard to say,” he replied.

“But you have an idea, don’t you?”

Suddenly, all Adrian’s talk of good witches and gentle magic seemed like a trick. If a witch’s magic could create something like this, how could it ever have been good?

“Anything can be evil in the wrong hands, Sparrow.”

As the vampires gathered bodies to burn, another vampire tended to my arm. I had seen him around camp but never asked his name. I stared at him now, a handsome man with sharp cheekbones and dark skin and eyes. His hair was thick and braided, his hands gentle as he bound my burned arm.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Euric,” he said.

“Are you a healer?”

“No,” he said. “At least not in the same capacity as they once were.”

“What do you mean?”

“A true healer can mend by touch,” he said. “Your people called them witches and had them burned.”

“They healed by touch. That is magic.”

“It is a miracle, not magic,” he said. “Think of all the ways you cannot fight us. Now think if you had healers, at least you could fight our plagues.”

I stared at him, considering his words, and thought of what Adrian had said yesterday—that history was all a matter of perspective.

Euric rose to his feet and bowed.

“My queen,” he said before departing.

I watched him go and did not move until I saw Sorin, Daroc, and Isac light torches to burn the corpses. I rose to my feet and headed for Snow. As I reached for her reins, Adrian stopped me.

“I won’t allow you to ride alone,” he said. “Your pain will worsen, and it will make for a difficult ride. I will not have you injuring yourself further.”

“Okay.”

I did not argue, because I was already in pain, and I did not really wish to make it worse. The tension in his brows eased at my agreement, and we mounted Shadow while the others followed suit.

I did not think I was imagining the way Adrian enveloped me. His thighs pressed into mine, and one of his arms wrapped around my waist. During the ride, his lips trailed my neck, dusting kisses across my skin. I found myself holding my breath as each one lingered longer than the last.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice breathless, betraying what his actions were doing to my body.

“Distracting you,” he said.

It was working. I was warm, my stomach was knotted, but the longer we rode, the less Adrian’s distraction worked, and the pain in my arm was beginning to give me a headache. Coupled with the ride, I felt sick.

“We’ll be home soon,” he said against my ear.

Those words helped me relax, and I leaned against his shoulder, my head too heavy to hold up.

It wasn’t until I saw a town that I sat up straighter. We passed through an open wooden gate, and before us, a winding road made a slow incline up the side of a hill, through a large market town, to a castle that loomed, both terrifying and beautiful. The wall of the castle seemed to span for miles, a series of grand arches. Behind it rose the stronghold itself, a cluster of tall and pointed towers, each carved with fine, floral details. At times, the castle itself appeared to be black, but when the light shone just right upon its glassy surface, I could see a deep red gleamed from within.

“Welcome to the Red Palace,” Adrian said.

He continued through the town, and as he made his way along the path, villagers emerged to watch our procession. Some waved from windows while others threw flowers, wheat, or coins into the road at our horse’s feet. It was a far better welcome than the send-off I’d had at home, and the thought hurt my heart.