Under His Wings(55)

“When Evander ambushed me, I was on my way to find you.”

Nicolai frowned. “I wondered why you were so far from home, but nobody seemed to know.” Bastien lived in Greece where most of their people still resided. But when Nicolai, Lukas, Adon and Dorian discovered the place they’d believed Evander had murdered him, they’d been off the western coast of Ireland.

“I needed a…” Bastien hesitated, “a break. I thought I’d crash at your place for a while. Get my head together along with some rest.”

“What happened?” Nicolai demanded. Fear sharpened his tone, made the words clipped. Bastien was the most dedicated, tireless male he knew. Even when his warriors had gone limp with exhaustion, he’d witnessed the healer continue on without lagging. For him to “need a break”, something must’ve been terribly wrong.

But Bastien shook his head and waved off the question with a dismissive flick of his wrist. “Not important.” When Nicolai growled, the other man pointed a back-the-fuck-off scowl at him. “Like I was saying, Evander took me down with humiliating ease.” His mouth twisted in a self-deprecating grimace. “Not personal, he claimed. But with my guts hanging outside my stomach and my face ripped open, it felt damn personal to me.”

Rage tainted his friend’s voice and Nicolai arched a brow. The healer possessed the most easygoing nature. Nicolai could count on one hand—his hippogryph hand—the number of times he’d witnessed Bastien angered. Nicolai studied his friend’s face. The injury must have been severe to leave such a scar. Bastien stroked the marred skin and shifted his gaze to some distant point across the room, but not before Nicolai caught the flash of bitterness in his green eyes. The hard glint was there and gone so fast if Nicolai hadn’t been paying attention, he would have missed it.

Maybe not so easygoing anymore. Remorse flickered inside Nicolai’s chest. The wound wasn’t the only difference in his friend. Whatever Bastien had suffered it had changed the man in some way. Only time would tell if it were for the good or bad.

“Later I found out Evander left for me dead on an outcropping of rocks in the Atlantic.”

“Found out?” Nicolai asked, leaning forward with a frown. “From who?”

“The one who saved me. A cruxim.”

Well damn. Nicolai’s eyebrow jacked higher. He wondered if it touched his hairline. “A cruxim? That far out?” The lovely, ethereal and deadly creatures usually settled in more densely populated cities where their enemy—the vampire—tended to inhabit. They were infamous for killing not healing.

Bastien nodded, his fingers drumming a soundless rhythm on his stomach. His lashes lowered, hiding his thoughts from Nicolai. “Yes. She cared for me the three months required for my injuries to heal.”

“Damn,” Nicolai whispered. “Three months.” For a hippogryph that was almost unheard of. If the mark on his friend’s face was anything to go by, Nicolai couldn’t imagine what scars mapped Bastien’s chest and abdomen.

“Yeah, they were bad. For a while there I didn’t think I would make it.” Bastien inhaled and straightened in his chair. His shoulder lifted in a shrug. “And since I couldn’t treat myself…”

Healers could mend others, but due some weird, fucked-up quirk of the Fates, they couldn’t do the same for themselves. Their bodies followed the same healing pattern as any hippogryph—fast but without the miraculous recovery a healer’s own hand would have brought.

“Where is she? The cruxim that took care of you?”

A silence heavy with pain and more of that fury filled the room like a blast of arctic air. That same ice froze Bastien’s features into a hard, unreadable mask—except for his emerald eyes that blazed with such rage Nicolai fought not to recoil from it. He was familiar with that kind of pain and anger. Had bunked down with it the last few months.

“I don’t know.” Bastien’s cold reply didn’t invite any further questions and Nicolai didn’t offer any.

Rising to his feet, he thrust a hand through his hair and turned to survey the hotel room. The décor was the usual eye-wincing blend of flowers and plaids. Nothing about it pointed to their location.

“Where are we?”

“A hotel outside a town called Grace Crossings.” Bastien paused. “Do I want to know why Evander is in this dot in the middle of nowhere?”

Nicolai glanced down at his friend. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

The old Bastien reappeared as he smiled and rubbed his palms together in mock glee. “Ooh. Do tell.”