These Hollow Vows (These Hollow Vows 1)

“A Barghest got her in the forest—” he says. “Call the healer.”

I open my eyes as a set of double doors opens before us and Sebastian carries me to a large four-poster bed. The layers of soft white bedding look like something from a dream. I curl onto my side. I don’t care about anything but sleep right now.

When I close my eyes, I see Jasalyn’s smiling face, and grief rips through me.

“Tell Jas I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“Don’t—” He grips my shoulder in his warm, callused hand. “Don’t talk like that.”

But doesn’t he know it’s true? I can feel death in the poison snaking its way through my veins. I open my mouth. I need to speak but can’t find the energy.

Promise me you’ll find her.

My mouth won’t form the words.

Sebastian grips my shoulder harder. “Hold on, Brie.”

I don’t know how long I lie there, fading in and out of consciousness. I hear Sebastian talking to someone. Maybe many someones. Commanding them to action, shouting when they move too slowly.

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” an unfamiliar voice says. “And the toxin is spreading. She might not be able to drink.”

“Abriella . . .” Sebastian says. That hand on my shoulder again. So warm. So strong. My one safe place to land. Even now.

“Abriella, I need you to drink this.”

Glass against my lips. Warm liquid spills onto my tongue, down my chin.

“Swallow, dammit! You have to swallow.”

I choke, gag, and finally manage to swallow before my energy flags again and I go limp in his arms.

“Good,” Sebastian murmurs. “Good girl.”

“I need to heal this leg before she loses any more blood,” the unfamiliar voice says.

“Do it,” Sebastian snaps.

The scorching heat of healing hands pulls me back in time. Then and now blur together. Mom’s voice. Sebastian’s. Wind chimes at midnight. A stranger’s promises.

My bedroom is ensconced in fire—my body wrapped around Jasalyn, protecting her from flames that feel like they are eating me alive.

I’m barely aware of Mother’s voice. Please save her.

There’s a cost.

I’ll pay it. I want to open my eyes and tell her it will be okay, but I can’t. Her desperate silence is broken by a gasp that makes my heart ache. There has to be another way.

I do this for you.

My mother’s sobs fill my ears, and then the numbness fades away with the heat of healing hands on my burns.

Pain. Lashing, blinding, terrible pain.

A spool of cool relief. And . . . life—pumping through my veins and rushing through my limbs.

I spy my mother looking both relieved and wretched. As if she’d sold a part of herself.

* * *

When I open my eyes, I almost expect to see my mother as she was the day I woke up nine years ago, healed from my burns. But she’s not the one who sits in the chair by this unfamiliar bed. It’s Sebastian, with his pointed ears and delicate fae grace. He’s covered in blood, and his eyes are closed.

“Bash?” My throat is ravaged, and his name comes out broken.

Sebastian jerks awake and releases a long breath as he studies me. “It’s okay,” he says softly, resting a hand on top of mine. “You’re going to be okay. I’m here.”

He’s here. And curse me but it feels good to know so completely that it’s true. For this moment at least, for this set of struggles, I’m not alone. “Thank you.” My voice sounds scratchy. “How long was I out?”

“Only a few hours. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.” My stomach churns at the sight of the blood on him. Not on me, though. I’m in a clean, light blue sleeping gown of the softest cotton.

Sebastian catches me studying the gown. “We tried to save your dress, but it was covered in blood and shredded in places.”

“You dressed me?” A silly question, really, given everything else. But the thought of him dressing me in sleep clothes and cleaning the blood off me . . .

He shakes his head, and then his eyes go wide as he realizes what I’m asking. “One of the handmaids changed you. I didn’t—it wasn’t—I wouldn’t . . .”

If I weren’t so exhausted, I might laugh at the red creeping up his neck. “I wasn’t worried about that,” I say softly. He’s taken such good care of me. “Were you hurt?”

“No.” He waves a hand to indicate the bloodstains on his tunic. “This was all yours, courtesy of the Barghest. Luckily, my healer was available when we arrived.”

The room spins. I squeeze my eyes shut to still it, but the smell of blood fills my nose. Seeing it puts me back in that forest again. That wolflike creature lunging toward me. “Barghest? That’s what that thing was?”

“Some call it the death dog.”

“Is it from the Unseelie Court?”

“There are death dogs in all courts, but some of the more powerful Unseelie have them as familiars—animals that have been magically tied to them and can do their unholy bidding.”