“Ye did,” Boojohni argued.
I couldn’t remember. I remembered my mother and Zoltev’s sword. I remembered her telling me to be silent.
“Do ye remember Tiras at all? He was just a boy. A boy on a big, black horse.”
I closed my eyes, making myself go back to that day.
“Ye have to remember,” Boojohni pled, his voice hoarse. “He talked to you.”
He’d talked to me.
And he’d been . . . kind.
He’d smiled.
And he’d told me his horse’s name.
I remembered.
It was the biggest, blackest, horse I’d ever seen—but I wasn’t afraid. I was never afraid of the animals. Their words were so simple and easy to understand. This horse wanted to run. He didn’t want to stand in the courtyard and hold still, but he did. He knew his duty. The prince wanted to run too. He was bored, and he wanted to be free of the guard around him and the fear of the people that bowed and kneeled whenever he was introduced. His father enjoyed seeing people bow. He didn’t. He wanted to run. To fly.
The prince’s eyes caught on something overhead, and his yearning was instantaneous and bright.
He wished he could trade places with the bird.
Then he looked down at me and smiled, releasing the yearning that made me hurt for him. He slid down from his mount and held out his hand to me. I took it without hesitation. He ran his other hand down the horse’s long nose.
“His name is Mikiya.” His voice was already husky and low, like a man’s voice, though he wasn’t yet a man.
I repeated the name on a whisper. Mikiya. It was a funny name, but I liked the way the word felt in my mouth.
“It means eagle,” he added. “Because he wants to fly.”
I still held his hand in mine, and my mother stepped forward to draw me back, away from the prince and his horse.
I kissed his hand, and I gave the prince a word so that he could fly away if he wanted to . . .
Mikiya.
“Mikiya,” I said, the word sloppy and awkward in my mouth. My tongue was unaccustomed to speech. I looked up at Boojohni, desperate to say it correctly.
“Mikiya,” I repeated. “Eagle.”
“Take it away, Bird,” Boojohni urged. I pressed my lips to Tiras’s breast once more and withdrew the word I’d inadvertently cursed him with.
“Ayikim,” I breathed. “Ayikim.”
“Lark . . . look!” Boojohni crowed softly. “Look!”
The roots of Tiras’s hair became inky and rich, the color spilling from his scalp and rippling down the white locks that brushed his shoulders, until his hair was completely black once more. The broken wings that jutted out of his back began to shiver and curl into themselves like parchment engulfed in flame, disintegrating into nothing more substantial than ash. We watched, awestruck, as the ash held the shape of wings for a single heartbeat, then whirled up and away, erased from existence.
Tiras’s right hand lay against his chest, the talons chipped and encrusted with blood. Suddenly the talons were gone, swallowed back into the pads of his fingers, leaving them perfectly rounded and whole once more.
“Tiras,” I croaked, begging him to open his eyes, wanting to see if the restoration was complete. But he didn’t move. He didn’t even stir.
I had taken away the word, but he was not healed.
I smoothed his chest with shaking hands, streaking it with the blood that wept from my side. I breathed a spell of healing—ill-formed words from my unpracticed tongue—calling on my mother who had loved me, on a God of Words who had given me my gift, and on Tiras himself who had flown beyond my reach.
“Close the gates of heaven and hell,
Turn him back and make him well.
Do not fly away, my king.
Jeru weeps beside your queen.”
“Bird . . .” Boojohni said, his face contorting in helplessness. “Maybe it’s too late.”
“Do not fly away, my king. Do not fly away from me,” I chanted, refusing to listen, pushing life through my hands and into the heart that no longer beat inside Tiras’s chest. Then Boojohni left me, running for help or running for cover, I didn’t know. My eyes were closed, my hands numb, and I continued to plead.
Seconds later I was swept up, embraced like a long-lost child, rescued temporarily from despair, but when I raised my eyes to the man who held me, I saw Kjell, his weary face lined with grief, his blue eyes nothing like the once-black gaze of the man I longed for. I turned my face and saw that Tiras still lay on the ground. The king had not been released from the sky.
“Let me go,” I said, the words almost unintelligible. “I took the word away, but I can’t call Tiras back.”
“She’s lost so much blood, Captain. She won’t leave him. I’m afraid we’re going to lose her too.” Boojohni was crying.
Kjell crouched beside the king, releasing me as he touched his brother’s face.
“He’s gone, Lark.” Kjell’s voice was grief-stricken, and truth rose around him.
“No,” I whispered. “He’s not. I can still feel him.”
Kjell shook his head, his throat working, his eyes bleak.
“Help me, Kjell. I am not a Healer. But you are. You are.”
“No,” Kjell whispered. “I’m not . . . I can’t.”
“Help him, and I will help you,” I said, repeating the words Kjell had said to me a lifetime ago when he believed I could save his brother. My vision was starting to swim, and I didn’t have the strength to move my lips, but he knelt beside me and put his hands where mine had been.
Listen to him.
“I can’t . . .” Kjell protested, even as he grimaced, listening. Prayer and pleading oozed from his pores.
I put a hand over his and strained to hear the song of Tiras’s soul, the frequency that would call him back and heal his broken body.
Listen, I begged.
I knew the moment he heard the tone—a tone so faint it was almost a vibration—because it began to pulse like a heartbeat, low and thready, swelling then fading as Kjell locked onto it and began to hum. His voice was gravely, untrained, and hesitant, but it was perfectly pitched.
I wrapped my mind and what was left of my strength around the timber of Kjell’s voice. I pulled the note into my head and my throat, into my chest and my limbs, swimming in the sound. I pled for health and hope and second chances, my hands pressed over Kjell’s.
When Tiras opened his eyes, eyes as deep and black as the night sky above us, I closed mine.
I awoke alone to light, warm and bright, streaming in from the open balcony doors to my chamber. The room was neat and quiet, the day beyond the palace walls serene. I listened for chaos, for the daily cacophony of life in the castle, and though I heard movement and industry, it was subdued, the thoughts and words wafting in with the sunlight reflective and soft.
My gown was gone. I stretched naked limbs and touched my side, feeling smooth skin and little else. I trailed my hands to my abdomen, to the small swell between my hip bones, and rested them there. I felt a quivering sensation—life and movement—and held my breath, wanting to hear as badly as I wanted to feel. The sensation came again—a brush, a caress, the whisper of water against the shore.
Safe.
The word fluttered in my chest. I was safe. My child was safe, and I was healed.
Safe.
But not whole.
I sat up gingerly and rose from the bed, pulling a dressing gown around my body. My hair fell in rumpled waves down my back and over my eyes, and I focused on the distraction of taming it. I swept it back carefully, tucking it behind my ears, my movements slow and precise, my eyes focused inward, my mind blank, and my heart . . . racing.