“What happened?” she asked.
“You blasted the kajmelas to hell. The fire got a little out of control, but Logan patched you up good as new.”
There was an odd quality to his voice that set off warning bells in her head. She pushed herself up so she could lean back against the headboard and put enough distance between them so she could get a good look at Drake.
He looked tired, strained, but that’s not what had bothered her. It was something else. Something she remembered seeing in him when they first met—a kind of unnatural tension that radiated through his body. Pain.
“Did you get hurt?” she asked.
He was wearing a long-sleeved mock turtleneck and jeans that completely hid his body. Maybe he’d been injured and didn’t want her to know. She couldn’t think of any other reason he’d be so heavily clothed in the middle of summer.
“I got a few burns. Logan fixed me up, too. Don’t worry.” He gave her a warm smile and kissed her forehead.
Helen reached out, trying to poke around in his head to figure out what was wrong, but she hit a wall. She couldn’t feel a thing.
Her hand strayed to her neck, which was bare. “It came off.”
“Yeah. We found the sword, remember?”
She did, in the pain-hazed recesses of her memory. He’d picked up the hot metal using his shirt. He’d been beautifully bare chested and the leaves were falling from his lifemark like snow.
Helen’s eyes went back to his chest, now covered with gray cotton. That’s what he was hiding. “Take off your shirt,” she ordered.
He grinned and winked, but she could see the subtle lines of strain around his mouth. “You’re too tired for that right now. Just lie down and rest.”
She was tired, but not so much that she wouldn’t fight him over this. “Take off the damn shirt and let me see.”
She reached for the hem of his shirt, but his hands collected hers and held them against his hard abdomen. His face was solemn, his eyes shadowed with pain. “I look like I did before I met you.”
Probably felt like he did before, too. “You’re hurting.”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but at least he hadn’t lied.
She freed one hand before he could stop her and fished under his collar in search of the luceria. It was there, around his neck, slippery and warm from his body heat. Drake’s hand tugged hers out and she let him, feeling a heavy sense of loss.
Helen glanced at his ring. It had returned to its original iridescent, silvery mix of too many colors to count. It didn’t remember her at all, which, for some reason, hurt her feelings.
But not as much as the fact that Drake didn’t want her to wear the luceria again. She’d tricked him, forced him to sleep and gone after Kevin’s sword by herself, but she’d done it for his own good. Surely he had to know that. He wasn’t stupid.
There was a light rap on the doorway leading into the bedroom. Sibyl was standing there, dressed in pale pink today, clutching her black-eyed doll to her chest.
“Sibyl,” said Drake, in a shocked tone. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“No one ever does,” said the little girl. She looked right at Helen. “We have to talk.”
“I’ll be right outside.” Drake started to get up, but Sibyl held up a dainty hand.
“Stay, Theronai.”
Helen felt Drake tense, but he settled back beside her, keeping a tight hold on her hand. “What is it?”
“Helen has some questions for me and I wanted to make sure I had time to answer them before I left.”
“Left?” asked Drake. “Where are you going?”
“It’s not important. Helen? Your questions?”
The creepy girl was right. Helen did have some questions, she just hadn’t been awake long enough to think about them, until now. “You said that if I didn’t like the vision of my death, I should choose another. You also said my vision couldn’t be avoided.”
“And it wasn’t.”
“But it wasn’t a vision of my death.”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“You didn’t ask. You only asked if it was real, which it obviously was. You also asked how you could avoid it, which you couldn’t.”
“But why didn’t you just tell me that I wasn’t going to die then?”
“Because if I’d told you that, you would have died. It was your acceptance—your willingness to sacrifice your own life for someone else—that gave you the strength to do what you had to do. I had to know you were strong enough.”
“Strong enough? For what?” asked Drake.
Sibyl’s arm tightened around her doll and for a moment, she looked like a frightened little girl. “Things are changing and the Gray Lady isn’t able to fight off what’s coming without help. The only thing strong enough to defeat the Synestryn is love and I had to know that Helen had that kind of power inside her.”
“Love?” asked Drake, looking at Helen with a hopeful expression.
“You should tell him,” said Sibyl. “He’s insecure and needs to hear the words.”
“I am not insecure,” objected Drake, sounding insulted.