The Prison Healer (The Prison Healer #1)(101)

And the darkness—it was growing, her vision blackening as her body buckled, buckled, buckled.

Torture, it was torture.

And then it was over.

The fight left her.

Oblivion took her.





Chapter Twenty-Eight


“BREATHE, DAMN IT!”

Kiva bolted upright, water erupting from her mouth as she coughed, choking on air, gasping it down while simultaneously dispelling liquid from her lungs.

“That’s it, get it all out. I’ve got you.”

Kiva couldn’t think beyond the pain and the cold. She was shaking all over, her limbs numb, her chest and head aching, her lungs and throat burning, her ribs throbbing.

“I’ve got you,” said the voice again, and Kiva finally recognized it, and the arms that were holding her, the body she was pressed against.

“J-J-Jaren?” she tried to ask, but her lips could barely sound the word.

“I’m here,” he said, holding her tighter. “You’re alive. You’re alive.”

He said it like a prayer, as if he couldn’t believe it.

From the throbbing in her rib cage, Kiva wondered just how close she’d come to dying, wondered if she owed him her life.

But then she wondered why she was in his arms. Where was Rooke? Naari? The other guards?

Slowly, Kiva opened her eyes, the effort nearly impossible from the frozen, aching exhaustion that had overtaken her body. But when she saw where she was, where they were, renewed adrenaline surged through her, and she jerked in Jaren’s arms.

“What—”

Kiva couldn’t finish her sentence, struggling to comprehend what she was seeing.

They were still in the quarry.

Beneath the water.

The boulder was still tied to Kiva’s ankle.

But . . . they were breathing. They were talking. They weren’t drowning.

A pocket surrounded them, a human-size bubble just large enough to encompass them, a small air funnel leading from it into the water above their heads, presumably to the surface, supplying them with fresh oxygen.

“What the—”

“I can explain,” Jaren interrupted quickly. “But first, we need to get you warm. Your body’s going into shock.”

It wasn’t going into shock. It was already in shock.

And that shock grew exponentially when Jaren pulled her even closer, right before a circle of flames burst into being around where they sat on the quarry floor.

Heat, delicious heat began to seep into Kiva’s bones, thawing her from the outside in.

She moaned and clutched at Jaren, who continued to hold her tightly against him, his body warmth combined with the smokeless fire returning feeling to her limbs, chasing away the ice-cold nothingness.

But while her physical distress was easing, her mind was descending into a nightmare.

“I d-don’t understand,” she whispered, still shivering, but nowhere near as badly as before. She unclenched Jaren’s water-soaked tunic and pulled away just enough to look at his face.

She couldn’t read his expression. Guilt, fear, resignation. A combination of all three, and more.

“I don’t understand,” Kiva said again, looking from him to the flames to the air pocket, to the dark water beyond.

“Yes, you do,” he said quietly.

Kiva shook her head. Then shook it again, her wet hair dripping down her face.

“No,” she said, holding on to her denial. “It’s not possible.”

She wasn’t shaking from the cold anymore.

She was shaking from something else entirely.

“I couldn’t let you die, Kiva,” Jaren whispered, his arms still holding her, feeling her tremble. “You were down here too long. You—” His throat bobbed. “When I got here, you weren’t breathing. I had to resuscitate you.”

Kiva felt the truth of his words, not just in the haunted way he was looking at her, but in the throbbing of her chest, her lungs, her heart.

He’d brought her back to life.

But that wasn’t the part she didn’t understand.

They were surrounded by fire. And air. In the middle of a body of water.

Kiva licked her lips and asked, “Did—Did the princess give you an amulet, too?”

Slowly, Jaren shook his head.

“Did the prince?” Kiva whispered, her voice hoarse.

Jaren closed his eyes and shook his head again. In an equally hoarse voice, he said, “No.”

One word, and Kiva knew.

Jaren didn’t have an amulet.

Jaren didn’t need an amulet.

Because Jaren had elemental magic.

A memory from weeks ago flooded across her mind, Jaren’s own words about magic users: I’ve heard there are anomalies, too. Born outside the royal bloodline, just like in ancient days.

An anomaly.

Jaren was an anomaly.

Kiva couldn’t believe it.

“How—?”

Jaren cut her off with a curse, his head jerking upward into the water above them. “We’re out of time,” he said, standing to his feet and pulling her up with him, the air bubble expanding around them. “I wish I could explain, and I will, I swear. But right now, I need you to promise that you won’t tell anyone what happened down here. They all saw me dive off the cliff, but the water’s too deep for them to have seen anything else. They can’t find out about my magic. No one but Naari knows.”