“Kitten, there’s nothing you can do,” he rasped out.
“No,” Alex said with a firm shake of her head. She opened another bulb and lathered more laendra over his chest, certain that the extent of the damage just meant it was taking longer than normal to see any improvement. There was no Hyroa blood involved this time—nothing that should be keeping him from healing. “N-no, Niyx. You’re going to be fine. Just give it a moment.”
“I’m not, kitten. I’m dying.’
“You are not!” Alex was unable to keep the tears from welling in her eyes as she ripped off part of her undershirt, pressing it hard against his wound to stem the flow of blood. She winced when he winced, but she was still angry enough to reply, “I’ll Claim you again myself if I have to!”
“You know that won’t work,” he said quietly—and he was right. She couldn’t share her life force again with him, since they were technically already connected.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, ignoring the full-body trembles that began shaking her frame. “You won’t need it anyway. You’ll be better any second now.”
“Aeylia, sweetheart, look at me,” Niyx said in a soft, gentle voice at odds with the pain in his amethyst eyes. It was enough to make Alex curl in on herself, but she still did as he asked and met his gaze.
Unable to keep the fear from her tone, she whispered, “Why aren’t you healing?”
His apologetic, knowing look returned, much clearer this time.
“Aven’s sword—” He stopped to hack out a horrible, gurgling cough that had Alex clutching at his torso to keep him still. “Vae’varka—it’s made from traesos, pure darkness.” He wheezed in a rasping breath. “To a Meyarin, its effects are worse than Sarnaph blood, and much swifter. Even if he’d just scratched me, it still would have been enough to—enough to—”
He started coughing again, and Alex leaned over him, dribbling more laendra into his mouth once his hacking eased. She was determined that the flower would take effect soon. It had to.
“Shhhh,” she told him, tears streaming silently down her cheeks. “Just—Just stop talking and save your strength, okay? Let the laendra work.”
He didn’t listen to her. He rarely did.
“I always knew I would die for you, kitten.”
Agony. Like a blade piercing her heart, all Alex felt at his words was pure agony.
She inhaled on a sob and ripped off more of her undershirt, switching it with the first blood-drenched wad of material as she forced words past the lump in her throat, refusing to believe that he might be right. “Quiet, Niyx.”
Again, he didn’t listen.
“I once told you that I sacrificed everything for you,” he whispered, his cold hands reaching weakly to rest atop hers on his chest, silver blood swiftly covering them both. “But you have to know, kitten, I would do it all over again for a thousand lifetimes if it meant the privilege of knowing you.”
“P-please, Niyx, s-stop talking,” Alex told him, now crying openly. “Y-you’re going t-to be f-fine.”
He coughed again, his whole torso convulsing under her hands. But even then he didn’t stop speaking. “Tell Mayra—” Another hacking breath. “Tell my sister that I love her. And that I’m sorry.”
Alex could barely see him through her tears. “T-tell her y-yourself.”
Niyx moved one blood-soaked hand until it cupped her cheek, his beautiful eyes shining as he stared up at her and whispered, “I’m so proud of you, Alexandra Jennings. So incredibly proud.”
“N-Niyx—” She choked on a sob and held his hand close to her face. “D-don’t—You c-can’t—”
His eyes unfocused and his voice faded until it was almost inaudible. “I’ll always be with you, kitten. For as long as there are stars in the sky.”
And with that, his hand became limp, his eyes drifted closed, and his chest lay still beneath her.
“N-n-no!” Alex cried, clutching at him. “P-please, Niyx! You c-can’t leave me!”
But he didn’t move. He remained still under her hands.
Lifeless.
“N-no-no-no,” Alex whispered, her voice breaking as she wrapped her arms around him, heedless of how much more blood was soaking into her clothes. “No, p-please, no!”
But no matter how much she begged, no matter how many tears she cried, she couldn’t deny the truth.
Niyx was dead.
He’d given his life to save hers, protecting her until the very end.
Alex cried over Niyx’s body for hours.
Soraya nuzzled in at her side, howling her own lament as the two of them stayed in a grieving vigil beside him while the sun swept across the sky.
Eventually the physical and emotional backlash of everything Alex had been through that weekend caught up with her, from her fight against Trell, to her abduction and torture, to the battle at Graevale, to the devastation of losing not only William and Lady Mystique, but also Niyx, someone so precious to her that she didn’t know how she would survive without him. Overwhelmed, and also with the energy boost from the haesondel having left her system, exhaustion crashed over Alex as she cried herself into a restless sleep.
When she awoke later with her body snuggled into Soraya’s heat, it was with a much clearer head. She was able to move past the paralysing force of her grief and into a state of numbness that allowed her to recognise that it would soon be dark, and even with her Myrox-lined armour and Soraya’s thick coat protecting her, she couldn’t remain out in the cold. It was time to start moving, time to find out what had happened at Graevale after they’d left, time to make sure Caspar Lennox and Soraya had delivered her friends to safety, time to discover what horrible nightmare she would have to face next.
But before she was ready to do any of that, Alex first needed to see to Niyx.
Kneeling on the icy summit of Mount Paedris, Alex dug with her bare hands until her fingers blistered, and then kept digging as the packed snow eventually gave way to rocky ground. She was numb to the pain, physically and emotionally, focused only on the single task of laying her friend to rest in a place that was special to the both of them.
If she’d thought it would be safe, she would have returned him to their spot on the Golden Cliffs overlooking Meya, the place where she’d Claimed him. But he never would have forgiven her for risking her life like that, so Mount Paedris would have to do. He liked it here, she knew, with the view looking out over the academy, looking out over Medora. Unlike in life, in death he would be free, the entire world at his feet.
With another sob tearing from her throat, Alex continued digging, quashing the emotion and allowing the numbness to take hold again as Soraya joined her, adding her wolfy claws to help scrape away at the rocky dirt.
Alex’s nails became ragged edges. Frostbite started licking at her fingers and her skin cracked open with oozing, bloodied wounds. But she didn’t stop. She kept digging with a single-minded purpose.