Isolde found him by the smell of blood.
She’d come to his quarters near midnight only because sleep wouldn’t take her, restless with everything that had happened at the ceremony, and the door was unlocked when it should have been bolted from the inside. She pushed it open calling his name and found him crumpled on the stone floor, blood pooled dark beneath his face, his chest rising in shallow, uneven pulls that didn’t sound like breathing so much as fighting.
“Julian.” She dropped beside him, hands hovering, unsure where to touch him that wouldn’t make it worse. “Julian, can you hear me?”
His eyes cracked open, glassy and unfocused, and for one terrible second they didn’t seem to find her at all.
“Kaelen,” he rasped.
“It’s me. It’s Isolde.” Her voice cracked despite every effort to k
