Free Belvedor and the Four Corners (Belvedor Saga Book 1) by Ashleigh Bello

struggled to breathe through the pain, and her head lolled over his arm. She spotted her blood in a long trail behind them, and everything turned black again.
    “Bring her here! Hold on, dear!” shouted another muffled voice.
    Cyn? She tried to form the name on her lips, but her voice never came out.
    The rain stopped, and a warm light filtered through her bruised eyelids. Faces blurred about and cold hands ran over her skin. Soft, muted voices buzzed around in her ears, bouncing around her jumbled skull.
    “Set her down here. Carefully now… gently, please,” said Cyn.
    “Can you hear me?” said a man.
    “Solomon?” Arianna reached blindly with her one uninjured arm.
    “I’m right here,” he said, sweeping her hair from her face. “Cyn, get over here! I’m losing her. Liam, get Noah out of here! We can handle this.”
    The voices whirled and blurred around in her clouded mind. She struggled in desperation to hold on to some clarity, but she couldn’t find the strength.
    “Solomon.” 
    “Yes? I’m right here, Ara.” She felt his hand grasp hers.
    “This feels like a dream. You were right…” Her voice trailed off, back into the blackness of her mind.
    Her eyelids closed, too burdened to shed even a single tear, and the voices disappeared as her hand dropped from his. Outside the storm grew wild and ferocious as the rain continued to pour. 
     

 
    CHAPTER SEVEN

THE BATTLE
     
    “Of course I’m telling the truth, Talis! Now you must come quickly. There isn’t much time,” pleaded Solomon. His dark skin blended into the night, and his eyes glowed intense with every word.
    “Master Bell, this is neither the time nor place for such talk,” said a man, scanning for onlookers from the entrance of his home. “Please… it’s best you go now,” he whispered and closed the door.
    Solomon pounded his fists on the wood, demanding to be let in, but the man behind the door would not oblige. He began to pace, back and forth, clutching at his face under the rain turned snow. With every passing moment, the anger of a great warrior began to build up inside of him.
    He paused in front of the door, contemplating his options for only an instant, and then a flicker of fire passed through his heart. In one swift movement he lifted his foot and, with all of his strength, slammed it onto the wood panel of the door. Without hesitation, the door crashed open in a cloud of splintered wood, tearing a gash where the lock used to latch.
    The man jumped up from his chair. “Have you lost your mind!?”
    Solomon burst into the house, now standing in a large common area. A few chairs were seated around a fire, and Solomon saw more doors at the far wall.
    “Talis Churry… what has become of you, my friend?” Solomon lost his fury in one glance at the man’s terrified face. He pushed the door closed and lowered himself into a plush chair across from him. The room felt comforting with only the fire for light, the walls a soft golden brown, and the subtle scent of jasmine lingering in the air.
    For a moment, Talis only stared, unmoving. Then, he seated himself near the fire pit where flames licked at the wood of soon-to-be ashes. Talis, a short man with wavy, silvery hair down to his shoulders, kept his eyes locked on the fire. It illuminated his sunken face and the shadows under his eyes.
    His pink skin wrinkled, but his eyes suggested a much younger age, the same cerulean blue as the lining of his white robes. The long velvet dragged on the floor, causing the fabric to turn brown at the bottom.
    “That was long ago, Solomon,” he said after a while. “That past is behind us now. What brings you here? How did you come to find me?” Talis stroked his thick, graying mustache.
    “Fate has led me to your doorstep tonight, old friend. I wasn’t searching for you, yet here I am. Your door happened to be the first healer I called upon. I’m in as much disbelief as you!”
    “Please, spare—”
    “I will not. How can