Please, Princess. I’ll tell you everything, but please . . .
Because your track record is so great. The community disappeared behind a ridge of dark rock, and the ravine and its inhabitants disappeared from view as we approached the gold dome. Through the Phaetyn energy, there were trees, but vision wasn’t the only heightened sense I now possessed.
I inhaled, grimacing at the taint of smoke. So many scents, but one smell overpowered the rest. The scent of searing meat tickled my nostrils, and I gagged. Holy-freakin’-Drae. My stomach roiled as understanding punched me. They were eating her.
My mind blanked, my concentration evaporated, and my energy snapped as coherent thought fled my mind.
Tyrrik, I called through our connection as spots filled my vision. Something was happening. I couldn’t feel my energy. My wings weren’t working.
I tumbled from the sky, roaring in panic.
The wind battered my limp limbs, and my roar became a bellow of pain. My heart stopped, skipping as I looked at my hands. My Phaetyn hands.
“Tyrrik,” I screamed, my voice disappearing into the rushing air.
A splitting roar filled the air. I plummeted toward the rocks below, sensing Tyrrik’s energy blasting toward me as he dove alongside and then catapulted below me.
I shrieked as my body slammed into solid stone. My vision spotted black again, and the pulse of agony made my head spin. The breath whooshed from my lungs, and I retched. A fraction of a second later, I blinked in the darkness. Another fraction later, I understood. I was in Tyrrik’s claws. I hadn’t hit stone . . . he’d caught me. I sagged into the flesh of his palm just as he crashed into the ground. He’d been too close to the ground to stop his trajectory. Holy pancakes.
He screeched beneath me, fire shooting from his Drae mouth into the sky, wings caught between his body and the rocks. One second, I was in his black scaly palm, and the next, I was lying on top of Lord Tyrrik. He gasped, and I scurried off, my mind blank with shock.
“I’m s-sorry,” I said, teeth chattering as I backed away from Tyrrik’s prostrate form. “I’m so, so . . .”
No. No, no, no. I blinked, trying to clear my tunneled vision. I stared at Tyrrik; my chest hollowed out, and a buzzing filled my ears, numbing my lips and rooting me to the spot. I sucked in a breath, but the air disappeared, and I couldn’t catch my breath.
We’d landed a few hundred meters from a lush forest, with golden filaments of energy shrouding the woods, except between us and the trees sat a thick barrier of jutting, stone spikes. Tyrrik lay impaled on a spike on the very edge of the barrier.
I rushed to his side and dropped to my knees as I stared at the jagged piece of rock protruding from above his right breast. I swallowed the sob working its way up my throat and hovered, my hands trembling above the injury. “What have I done?”
Tyrrik gasped again, the wet sucking sound enough to shake me from my stupor.
“Bloody, bloody . . . Tyrrik, what do I do? What . . . ?” My mind refused to catch up. How had this happened? Rocks shouldn’t be . . . they shouldn’t go through a Drae’s chest like that. We were invincible. “Do I pull it out? Do I pull you off?”
His eyes were glassy and unfocused as he continued to gasp with ragged soggy breaths. Stars above. He was drowning in his own blood. The thought of him dying like this, dying at all, threatened to tip me over the edge.
“I’m so sorry, Tyrrik.” I ran my hand over his face, brushing his lips with my fingertips. I circled so I stood at his head and scooped my hands under the back of his shoulders.
The shard of stone was not even two feet tall. I could do this. I can’t believe I’m about to do this.
I took a deep breath, and with another whispered apology, I heaved with all my strength. The sickening sound of blood and tearing flesh was all I could hear, and I whimpered.
The blood in his mouth gargled as he wailed. The muscles in his neck tightened, his eyes flooded black, and a moment later, his body went limp. His eyes rolled back in his head, showing only white.
My heart clenched, and I dug my fingers into him as my palms grew slick with sweat. Tears streamed unchecked from my eyes, dripping onto Tyrrik’s pale face.
I shuffled to the side and lowered him to the ground. Scooting to his side, I chanted, “Please don’t die; please don’t die.”
Blood, the color of onyx, gushed from his wound, staining the rocky ground.
11
I rested my hands on his scarred chest, and focusing on my fingertips, I called forth the warmth of my Phaetyn power. I closed my eyes, startled when I recognized the green glow near the blue energy of my Drae. I’d seen this vibrant color when I’d gone through the Drae transformation. I gathered the familiar force and directed the power through my hands and into Tyrrik’s body, wishing desperately for the blood to congeal and clot. I hiccupped and let my tears fall into his wound, willing his bronze skin to knit together and be whole once more and for the gaping hole in his chest to be gone. I poured my strength into the wound, willing it to heal.
I opened my eyes.
The wound had barely changed.
Tyrrik’s head lolled to the side as his wet breathing became shallow, and my small understanding of anatomy told me that his lung had to have been punctured.
How could I heal that? What did his lungs look like on the inside? I had no idea.
“Don’t you dare die, Tyrrik. I’m the only one who gets to kill you.” The jumble of my emotions for the Drae was irrelevant. I had to save him.
The jagged gash continued to ooze, my Phaetyn-wishing doing nothing.
The memory of our conversation in his room came back to me, followed by our moment in the prison when I’d kissed him. I leaned over him. His eyes were closed, the pallor of his skin a frightening shade of gray. His shallow breath only faint gasps as he clung to life. As I drew closer, the rest of the world fell away.
I brushed his dark hair from his cool brow, streaking his blood across his forehead. My tears dripped on his whiskered cheeks, his pale lips. His dying breath still smelled like the nectar he gave me. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead to his, the temperature of his skin warming beneath me. I let his breath, his skin, his presence fill me. And then, I pressed my lips to his.
His lips held the chill of morning air, and despite being soft, they were unmoving beneath mine.
I thought of the times he’d come to me as Tyr to give me food. To dress my wounds. To cover me in blankets. I breathed in through my nose and exhaled into his mouth, pushing my need for him into his lungs. I thought of the lapis-blue color dancing in his scales, the color that matched my own Drae. I thought of the secret gratified emotion as a wisp of power and breathed it into him.
I broke the kiss to let him exhale, but then covered his lips again.