This is a scene from the end of Ignite.
Damian
The pounding on my door would have
woken me—if I’d been asleep. It opened just as I whirled from my vigil by the
window to see a young sentinel panting and gesturing for me to follow him, the
two guards on duty outside my door that night right behind him.
“Your Majesty, quick! At the gate!”
I didn’t need to hear any more.
Alexa.
Alexa.
I hurtled past the sentinel, and my
guards, my blood roaring in my ears as I sprinted through the palace. Even
running as fast as I could it felt like a lifetime had passed before I reached
a door to let me outside. She’d kept her promise, she was back—she was alive.
The black expanse of night turned
the palace grounds into a writhing morass of shadows as I searched for her. I
spotted a group of people by the gate, and I rushed forward, straining to hear
Alexa’s voice.
Instead, it was Lisbet’s voice that
echoed through the courtyard.
“Jax!”
I only paused for a half-second and
then continued on, a sharp relief beating in time with my lingering fear. I
never should have doubted her. She’d returned and she’d brought Jax.
But as I drew closer to the gate and
the indistinct bodies began to take form and shape, my relief crashed back down
into terror. There was Lisbet, kneeling on the ground, holding a small boy in
her arms—Jax. My half-brother was struggling against her hold, though, fighting
to get free. Two guards hovered nearby . . . and no one else.
Alexa hadn’t come back after all.
And neither had Rylan.
I stumbled to a halt, a rising
terror turning my body to ice once more. How had Jax returned by himself—where
was Alexa?
I hadn’t even realized I’d spoken
out loud until Lisbet turned to me, her eyes filled with confused tears and the
same fear that threatened to choke me, drowning all hope.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him.
It’s like he doesn’t even recognize me.”
A guard spoke up. “He stumbled out
of the forest like he was in some sort of trance, Sire. There was a Dansiian
trailing behind him, but he’s already been taken for questioning.”
I nodded at the guard just as Jax
noticed me standing there and his struggling turned almost violent, twisting
and fighting to get away from his mother.
And his eyes—the eyes we shared—were
blank.
“Let him go. He’s being compelled.”
It was frightening to see him acting that way and it was the only thing I could
think to do.
The minute Lisbet dropped her arms
Jax rushed over to me and gruffly announced, “Rafe has what he wanted.”
As soon as he finished his message
the blankness left his eyes and tears filled them instead. “Damian?” His voice
was suddenly so small, he was trembling and sweat beaded his brow.
I knelt down and gathered him into
my arms. He was so hot—it had to be a fever. “He’s sick,” I said to Lisbet over
his head and she nodded.
“Mama?” Jax twisted in my arms and
when he saw—really saw—his mother this time, he broke into sobs and
rushed into her arms.
I watched them with a strange kind
of detachment, with relief but also a cold numbness. He’d been compelled to
come back, to tell me that Rafe had what he wanted. He must mean Alexa.
“Don’t give up hope,” Lisbet said as
she motioned for a guard to come forward, reading my thoughts so easily I
wondered if my sudden despair was that plainly visible. “Take him to my rooms,
I must get to work on him right away,” she instructed the guard. Jax whimpered,
but Lisbet quietly reassured him that she was coming, too, and he nodded,
falling silent as the guard lifted him into his arms.
As the guard walked away, Lisbet
lingered, still looking at me. “She’s skilled and strong, Damian.”
I didn’t respond and after a moment,
she sighed and turned to follow after her son.
I stood there in the darkness,
feeling somehow hollowed out and yet full of rage all at once. I wanted to tear
the earth apart, I wanted to fall to my knees and cry, I wanted to go back to
my room and fall asleep this time and wake up and find out that Alexa had never
left me—that I had never agreed to let her and Rylan go out into that jungle.
No. If she were dead, I would know. I would feel it somehow.
No. If she were dead, I would know. I would feel it somehow.
I refused to give up hope, not after
everything we’d been through—after how far we’d come.
“Your Majesty, might I be of service
in any way?”
The guard’s question startled me and
I realized I’d been staring at the wall, lost in thought. I made a quick
decision. “Yes, actually.”
My muscles were cramped from
standing still for so long, watching and waiting. The black sky swirled with
gray clouds. From where I stood, high up on the watchtower on the wall
surrounding my palace, I could see far across my kingdom . . . but not far
enough. My eyesight, no matter how keen, couldn’t penetrate the future.
I’d convinced the guard to let me
take this position, in hopes to be the first to spot Alexa if—when—she
returned. The jungle came alive at night, under the cover of darkness, when the
air cooled slightly, and more than once I’d heard the death keen of an animal
as I’d kept my vigil. It was a struggle not to let the fear consume me, to not
let my imagination picture Alexa dying somewhere out there as well. As
the hours passed, I paced across the small space, hoping beyond hope that it
wasn’t futile—that she really could keep her promise.
Part of me wanted to gather my army
and charge through the trees and vines until I tore everything down that
separated us, until I had cut Rafe through and rid our world of the other half
of the horrifying duo from Dansii. But I didn’t dare. If he did have her
captive, he would hear us coming and kill her before I could reach them—he’d
made that clear with Jax, and I was sure he wouldn’t hesitate to do away with
Alexa and Rylan.
So instead, I kept my vigil and I
prayed. I begged for her safe return. I pleaded for a miracle.
And then . . . when dawn had just
begun to break, blurring the darkness into an indistinct gray that slowly
lifted the jungle from shadow . . . I saw someone stumble out of the forest. I
recognized her the instant before our eyes met.
“Alexa!” The wind tore her name
from my mouth, but it didn’t matter. I had already turned and rushed down the
stairs, so quickly I nearly stumbled and fell. She was here.
She was alive.
She was alive.
“Open the gate!” I shouted as I
barreled toward the guards standing nearby. They jerked into action, unlocking
it.
The massive door began to grind open
just as I reached it. And then Alexa was there—bloody, crying, and real.
I crushed her to me. She nearly collapsed in my arms, but I held on, holding
her up. She clung to me, her fingers clenched in my tunic, as her body shook.
“You came back,” I choked out,
stroking her tangled hair with one hand. “You came back to me.”
She stiffened slightly but
whispered, “I promised I would.”
I pulled away, only enough to lift
my hands to cup her face, trying to convince myself this wasn’t a dream. Her
hazel eyes glistened with tears in the growing light of a new day; there was
relief on her face, but she also looked haunted, almost as if she’d been hollowed
out. “But at what price?”
She shook her head, remaining
silent, and the flicker of unease I felt increased. What was she keeping from
me—what had happened in that jungle?
When she finally spoke, it was just
one, tight word:
“Jax?”
“He’s with Lisbet, she’s already
begun to heal him,” I reassured her. “The man who brought him is in the
dungeons.”
Alexa sagged forward into my arms
again, as if the relief of knowing he’d made it had sapped the remainder of
whatever strength her return to the palace must have taken from her. Her outfit
was stained with blood and dirt, blood streaked her face and was dried on her
hands and arms. Something terrible had happened out there, but I didn’t want to
push her. Though she was the strongest woman I’d ever known, in that moment she
seemed as fragile as glass, likely to shatter at any moment. I wrapped an arm
around her, holding her to me.
“He’s going to be all right, then?”
“Yes, he’ll be just fine.” I pressed
a kiss to her temple and drew back just enough to look into her face again. “You
did it. You saved him and you came back.” I smiled down at her, but she
stared up at me without speaking, almost looking sick. And then it suddenly hit
me.
“Where is Rylan?”
She met my questioning gaze and the
devastation on her face nearly gutted me.
“Alexa—where is he? What happened?”
Concern and shock warred within me—and a cold terror when she didn’t answer
right away, her eyes filling with tears again.
“I . . . I . . .”
“Is he—”
“No,” she cut me off, the trembling
in her body increasing. “He’s alive. But he’s hurt. I . . . I had to fight him
to escape. He’s . . . Rafe . . .”
“Oh, Alexa,” I tightened my arms
around her, wishing I could take away her pain, wishing I’d been a better
prince—a better king—and somehow kept all this from happening. Always, the
people around me seemed doomed to suffer. “I’m so sorry.”
“I—I didn’t have a choice . . .”
“We’ll go after him of course—we won’t
let Rafe hurt him anymore,” I promised her, determined to make this right, to
erase the guilt and pain on her face. “Now that I have you and Jax back, there’s
nothing stopping us from sending the army after him. And I’ll let you have the
pleasure of disposing of him however you please, my warrior-bride-to-be.” I
reached up to softly touch her cheek, despite the blood that coated her skin.
She remained silent, her jaw
clenched.
“Come on, let’s go into the palace,”
I finally said. “I’ll ring for a hot bath and some clean clothes for you.” I
turned Alexa toward the gate, guiding her away from the jungle. “I’ll send our
best men out to find Rylan. We’ll get him back, I promise.”
“No, you can’t.” She jerked to a
stop. “Don’t send any more men. They’ll die. Everyone is going to die. Rafe has
control over Rylan!” As she spoke, she began to shake almost uncontrollably,
her voice on the verge of hysteria. “If more men come after him, I don’t know .
. . I don’t know what he’ll . . .”
“Okay, okay,” I murmured, trying to
soothe her, to keep my concern at Alexa’s vehement response from bleeding
through. “I won’t send any men right now. It’s all right. Shh . . .” I stroked
her hair, whispering to her until she slowly calmed down. “For now let’s just
get you to your bed so you can rest and heal. Then we’ll make a plan to save
Rylan. All right?”
“Fine.” The word was barely above a
whisper, but the violent shaking had stopped. A stray strand of hair blew
across her face and I reached up to gently tuck it behind her ear. I couldn’t
resist letting my thumb trail her jaw to the groove where it met her neck, and
she shivered.
“Were you watching for me?” She
asked, staring into my eyes as if she were drowning and I was her only hope of
surfacing again.
I nodded. “When you didn’t come back
with Jax, and he said that Rafe told him to say that he’d gotten what he wanted
. . . I was afraid that . . . that you . . .” I couldn’t continue, the
remembered anxiety and terror stealing my words. I cleared my throat and tried
again. “I’ve been standing there for hours, unwilling to give up hope.”
With her standing in my arms, her
eyes so full of emotion, I couldn’t hold back any longer. “I love you, Alexa.
And I never want you to leave my side again.”
And then I kissed her, all my fear
and love pouring through me, into her. I pulled her body to mine, crushing her
to me. I wanted to hold on to her and never let go. She pressed in to me, her
hands running up and down my back, threatening to drive me to madness. It was a
stolen moment—an oasis in a desert of death and carnage, pain and terror—and I
wanted it to last forever, even though I knew it had to end all too soon.
