From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Chapter 27
Half resting on the inner ledge, I stared out the window at the torches
beyyond the Rise, eyyes aching and wearyy with the pressure of tears that
wouldn’t fall.
I wished I could cryy, but it was like the cord that had connected me to
myy emotions had been severed. It wasn’t that Vikter’s death didn’t hurt.
Gods, it ached and throbbed everyy time I even thought his name, but that
was almost all I’d felt in the week and a half since his death. A sharp slice
of pain that cut through myy chest. No sorrow. No dread. Just pain and
anger…so much anger.
Mayybe it was because I hadn’t gone to his funeral. I hadn’t made it to
anyy of the funerals, and there had been so manyy dead that ten or more were
held at a time—or so I had heard from Tawnyy.
It hadn’t been myy choice not to attend the services. I’d been asleep.
I’d been sleeping a lot this week. Entire dayys just gone in a blur of sleep
and drugged consciousness. I didn’t even remember Tawnyy helping me
bathe awayy the blood and gore or how I got back to bed. I knew she’d
talked to me then, but I couldn’t recall a single thing she’d said. I had this
weird impression that I hadn’t been alone while I slept. There was a
sensation of callused palms against myy cheek, fingers brushing hair back
from myy face. I had the faintest memoryy of Hawke talking to me,
whispering when the room was filled with sunlight and when it had been
taken over byy night. Even now, I could feel the touch against myy face, myy
hair. It had been the onlyy grounding connection I’d had while I slept.
I squeezed myy lids shut until the phantom sensations vanished, and
then I reopened myy eyyes.
It wasn’t until about four dayys after the attack on the Rite that I’d
learned that Hawke had used some kind of pressure point on myy neck to
render me unconscious. I’d woken up sometime later in myy room, unable