Starkeeper of the Fractured Crown

I clenched my hands into fists so tight, my knuckles threatened to tear through my skin. I needed more time with Norella. I had lost control, and I couldn’t get it back.

“Did she tell you how long she has before Evanora starts hunting him?” I asked, trying to force my mind to calm, to focus.

Cole was quiet a moment. “No. I can ask her if—”

“Did you know that she’s not biologically Norella’s?”

Another pause, this one filled with confusion. “Howdo you suspect that?”

I could still feel Norella’s blood dripping down my arms. She was still alive. Soiled and covered in blood, missing several things from her structure, but still alive. Death would be a mercy and at this point in my life, when it came to my little addiction, I had none to give. “The burns on her hands, have you asked her about those?”

“Burns?” Cole appeared at my side. “No. Didn’t you say Forbidden Magic was involved?”

“It wouldn’t have caused those.”

“Well, what did Norella use to hurt her?”

My magic, although exhausted and in need of a rest, cracked my spine at the thought. It may have wanted me to stay away, but it couldn’t fight against my most primal instinct. Protecting her. “A pan. There was no fire involved.” A pan that was now lodged into Norella’s thigh. If she moved, the weight of the pan itself would shift the handle around. Currently, it was using her femur as an anchor.

Cole was quiet for a long time, and I took that time to study her. While Mark was on his knees, sticking his hands into the steaming spring, Kyra was looking down at herself. Her hands, her stomach. There was pain clear on her face.

She glanced back towards the woods, searching for several seconds before she turned back to the house.

Her eyes locked with mine as if she had known all along that I had been watching her.

“What?”she asked, her pain disappearing for irritation.

I smiled softly.“You should beresting.”

Kyra rolled her eyes and forced herself to straighten.“I’m fine.”

I rose a brow expecting her to glare back, but instead, her expression twisted to worry.

She looked down to where her once broken hand gripped her once broken ribs.“I can’t thieve,”she confessed, even her inner voice was filled with shame.“Not for at least a week.”

My brows pulled together.“You have plenty of healing remedies here. It won’t take a week.”

Mark jumped up, throwing his hands up, spinning in a circle before he ran up to her and grabbed her right hand. “Show me more! What’s up there?”

She hid the pain far too well as her eyes lifted to the roof, and she smiled. “Let me show you.”

I frowned.“You shouldn’t be climbing.”

She shot me a glare.

A deep growl sounded against my chest, but I couldn’t do anything. Not with that boy out there. She had found herself a nice new suit of armor and I highly doubted she would release it anytime soon.

“What else would cause those burns, Trick?”

I inhaled deeply, irritated at the line of questioning, at the way Kyra was ignoring her own health. “Why won’t she use the things she has here to help herself heal faster?”

Kyra followed Mark around the side of the house. “Shouldn’t you know that?”

I rolled my eyes and looked over. “Just answer the question.”

Cole frowned. “She doesn’t like using anything onherself. She needs it for him.”

Devoted through and through. It made me want her that much more. “I need to go.”