Florence tilted her head back and rested it on the rock, panting softly, unsure how much of the darkness at the corners of her vision was due to blood loss and how much was just lack of light.
“It’s like then,” Helen whispered.
“We’d pushed the cart too fast, we’d made too much noise.” Will’s eyes glossed over, looking at the past they were all reliving.
“Drew them right to us.” Helen turned her head, staring at Cvareh. “I thought with a Dragon, we were nearly invincible.”
The expression that briefly overtook his eyes was heartbreaking. He felt guilty for their situation, despite having no real obligation to. They had thought him near invincible, a god among them, as if by virtue of his blood alone he could be their savior.
And that was the thought that sparked an explosion of possibility in Florence’s mind
“Helen, how long to Ter.4.3?”
The other woman sighed heavily, looking up at the nothingness that coated the rocks above them. She muttered under her breath, and every second she took doing so oozed another bit of life from Florence’s veins. “We’ll have to loop back toward Holx, maybe not. Depends on how fast we can find another vehicle. Accounting for us going all the way back to the higher levels right beneath Holx…maybe four or five more days?”
Longer than she wanted, shorter than she’d thought. Helen and Will were beaten up, but their wounds looked superficial enough. Food would be an issue, but if they had to go that close to Holx anyway, they may find someone they could trade with or one of them could brave sneaking up. Then again, there were always the glovis… Ralph made it through three of them the last time they were all in the Underground before he died.
So there were options for all of them; they could make it to Ter.4.3 safely underground and keep Cvareh’s magic hidden from the Riders. Florence knew Arianna would head there eventually.
That left the matter of Florence.
She would not make it, and they had no supplies to mend the amount of blood she was losing, even if they somehow managed to set the break. Florence pressed her eyes closed, turning to Cvareh. By the time she opened them, she had made up her mind.
“Cvareh, have you ever made a Chimera before?”
28. Cvareh
If he never went underground again, it would be too soon. The journey underneath Ter.4 had been one harrowing moment after the next that he was sure did nothing for the luster of his skin or wrinkles around his brow. They surfaced from the quagmire bloody, beaten, thinning, and blinking against the faint twilight of sunset in Ter.4.3. But emerge they did, in one miraculous piece, and thanks in no small part to the dark-haired girl at his side.
Cvareh had a whole new appreciation for the girl—no, woman. She was sixteen, barely more than a toddler by the lifespans on Nova. But, for a Fenthri, it made her almost middle aged. This was a woman who was coming into her prime and knew what she wanted.
At least, that’s what he had to believe. Because he’d been feeding her his blood for five days now. The magic had a strange affect on the not-yet-Chimera Fenthri. Without a proper transfusion of blood she couldn’t be made into a full Chimera, so his magic didn’t take hold like a proper imbibing would. It also began to work away at her stomach and mouth, creating bloody sores that would be aggravated with every feeding, heal as a result of the magic, and then be made worse again as the magic faded.
Imbibing like this would eventually kill her. But she maintained both their spirits by reminding him that they were already headed to the home of the Chimera—the Alchemists’ Guild. Once she had been given the blood properly, gold mingled with red to make black, she would rebound stronger than before. Such was the way of Chimeras; Florence should need no more living proof than the woman she had made her teacher.
That particular woman was elusive for two days after they emerged from the Underground. They holed up in squalor, but it was far safer than the depths they had endured and even scraps were better sustenance than what they’d had available previously. Cvareh began to fear that perhaps Arianna had not escaped. That she had gone back and was met with an ill fate of pincers and the Wretches they had left behind.
If she died, would he know? Was there something about the magic of the boon contract that would alert him to its dissolution? He had no idea. She’d been an enigma from the start and the woman was content to remain such even when she wasn’t around to give him a hard time.