Chapter 27 Elza
ELZA
We run until our lungs burn and the sounds of pursuit are a phantom echo in our minds.
The Vrakken scout is gone, but the terror it left behind is a cold, clinging thing.
Eoin finds us shelter in a shallow, wind-hollowed cave, little more than a scar in the mountainside, but it is cover. It is enough.
The adrenaline fades, leaving a bone-deep weariness in its place. Lyren, who was so brave and quiet during our escape, collapses against me, his small body trembling. I wrap him in my cloak, murmuring soothing words I do not feel, my own heart still a frantic drum against my ribs.
It is hours later that I realize the trembling has not stopped. I press my hand to his forehead. He is burning up.
“No,” I whisper, the word a denial, a plea. His cheeks are flushed with an unnatural, feverish heat, and when I try to get him to drink some water, he is listless, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
Panic, cold and sharp, seizes my chest. This is not a wound. This is not an enemy I can face with a blade or a strategy. This is a sickness, an insidious fire burning through my son from the inside out.
My hands begin to shake. I place them on Lyren’s forehead, desperately calling on the Purna magic that has become my shield.
I feel the warmth gather in my palms, the familiar golden light, but when I try to push it into him, to draw the sickness out, it sputters and fails.
The light is weak, my own energy depleted from the battle and the flight.
My magic is for mending torn flesh and broken bones, not for fighting this invisible enemy. It is useless. I am useless.
“He is burning up,” I say to the empty cave, my voice cracking with a terror I have not allowed myself to feel since I was a helpless slave. “My magic… Gods, it is not working.”
A large shadow falls over me. Eoin has been watching from the cave, a silent, still sentinel. Now he moves, his steps silent on the stone floor. “Let me see him.”
“Stay away from him!” The words are a guttural, protective snarl, an instinct so deep it bypasses all reason.
He stops, his hands raised in a gesture of peace that looks utterly alien on him. “Elza.” His voice is a low, calm anchor in my storm of panic. “Fear will not help him. I have seen this before. Please. Let me help.”
His use of my name, the quiet plea in his voice, cuts through my terror. I look from his face, which is a mask of grim, focused concern, to my son, who whimpers in his fevered sleep. I am out of options. I am a queen with no army, a healer with no cure.
I give a single, sharp nod, and the hatred I feel for myself in that moment is a bitter acid. I am letting the monster touch my child.
He kneels beside us, and the sheer size of him seems to shrink the cave.
I expect his touch to be clinical, detached.
But when he places his large, scarred hand on Lyren’s forehead, the gesture is one of surprising, almost reverent gentleness.
His brow furrows as he gently pries open one of Lyren’s eyes, then feels the pulse at his throat.
“It is river fever,” he says in a quiet rumble of certainty. “Common in these mountains after the spring thaw. The local children are often afflicted. It is dangerous if left untreated, but I know the remedy.”
I stare at him, my mind reeling. “How… how could you possibly know that?”
He looks at me, and in his starless eyes, I see the vast, lonely expanse of his existence.
“I have been alive for a very long time, Elza. I have seen many things.” He rises to his feet.
“There are roots that grow by the cold springs in these mountains, and a particular moss that thrives on the northern faces of the rocks. I must gather them. I will return.”
“You are leaving?” The question is a raw burst of my deepest fear—abandonment.
“I will return,” he repeats, and his gaze is so steady, so absolute, it is a vow.
And then he is gone, a whisper of movement, and I am alone with my sick son and my warring heart.
Is this a trick? A way to escape, to leave us to our fate?
Or is it a genuine act of… care? I do not know which thought is more terrifying.
He is true to his word. He returns as the sun begins to set, his hands full of dark, gnarled roots and clumps of a pale, silvery moss.
I watch, my arms wrapped tightly around myself, as he builds up the fire and begins to prepare the remedy.
He moves with a methodical, practiced ease, crushing the roots with a stone, mixing them with the moss and a bit of water to form a thick, dark paste. The scent is pungent, earthy and sharp.
“This will be cold,” he says, his voice soft as he approaches Lyren. “But it will draw out the worst of the heat.”
He gently pulls back the cloak and begins to apply the poultice to Lyren’s forehead, his chest, the soles of his feet. His hands, the same hands that have killed hundreds, that have torn my world apart, are impossibly gentle on our son’s skin.
And he begins the vigil. He does not sleep.
He sits beside Lyren, a silent, tireless sentinel in the flickering firelight.
He dips a strip of cloth in the cool water and periodically wipes Lyren’s brow.
He is a mountain of stillness and unwavering focus, his entire being dedicated to this one small, fragile life.
Hours pass. I do not sleep either. I watch this monster, this warrior, this… father, tenderly caring for our son. The word hangs in my mind, a foreign, impossible thing. Father.
In the darkest hour of the night, when the fire has burned down to glowing embers, Lyren’s fever breaks.
A great, shuddering sigh leaves his small body, and the unnatural flush begins to recede from his cheeks.
He murmurs something in his sleep, and Eoin leans in, his deep voice a low, comforting rumble that is not a language I know, but Lyren quiets instantly, settling back into a peaceful sleep.
I watch this scene—the massive, winged warrior and the small, silver-haired boy—and the last, hard kernel of hate I have held onto for five long years, the armor that has protected me, the fire that has kept me alive…
it does not just crack. It dissolves. It washes away in a silent, cleansing wave, leaving me feeling terrifyingly vulnerable, utterly exposed, and irrevocably changed.