13. Beautiful, Shining Bright Spots amid the Steaming, Stinky Pile of Shit
13. BEAUTIFUL, SHINING brIGHT SPOTS AMID THE STEAMING, STINKY PILE OF SHIT
ELOWYN
With a barely suppressed groan, I settled gingerly onto an uneven stump at the edge of the clearing, where the sleeping fae lay in neat rows. Between Einar’s bulk and the surrounding trees, we were cast in shadow. Aches flared angrily along my body while I slid Saffron to sit on my lap. Tail wagging, he craned to lick my neck.
I bobbed my head out of the way. “Not now, boy. I’m tired.” And was I ever. Dragon Xeno had heaved the massive tree off the cabin. Afterward, despite Rush’s insistence that I rest instead, I’d helped shift the caved roof and walls until we were certain no one else was trapped beneath them. Now that the most immediate of our urgencies was resolved, my body felt like it was melting into a useless puddle. It wasn’t time to relax yet, however. My mind understood that; my body didn’t.
Even if the queen wasn’t able to follow our trail out of her dungeon, she must know where all her power- draining stations were. Through nothing more sophisticated than the process of elimination, she could probably find us. Einar had ostensibly joined Xeno in acting as sentinel, though I hadn’t confirmed that the black dragon considered our survival his concern.
I ran my fingers along my hairline, and they returned smeared with dirt and sweat and who-knew-what-else. At least it’s not umbrac gunk . I shuddered at the memory of the chittering, gelatinous monsters with far too many eyes and tentacles … which led to thoughts of Finnian and how Xeno and the others had been forced to abandon him to the Wilds. What a gruesome way to go…
Saffron licked me again. With a resigned exhale, I submitted to his affections even if I wasn’t in the mood for them. Kicking my legs out in front of me, my gaze trailed over those we’d rescued. Besides Ramana and the four we’d brought with us, we’d saved another fifteen fae. Every person was in a similar condition: thin, frail, and emaciated, unconscious and unmoving beyond the steady beat of their hearts, the thready rise and fall of their chests, and an unnatural pallor made eerie by the darkened veins too prominent beneath their skin.
“Any luck?” I asked Edsel, who crouched over one such fae, lifting their eyelids to examine their eyes.
He pressed his ear to their chest. “With gettin’ ‘em to wake or gettin’ ‘em to live?”
“Uh … both?”
After several moments of quiet while Edsel listened to his patient’s chest, he sat roughly on the ground, ruffled his short hair, then rubbed both knees above the point where his prosthetics met flesh.
Dodging Saffron’s tongue as it stretched for my face, I asked softly, “Do they hurt?”
He glanced up sharply, his hands dropping abruptly to the grass at his sides. He glowered at me for a breath before blowing it out and relaxing all over.
“Aye. They hurt. No more than usual though, girly.” He shrugged, an abrupt raising and lowering of his burly shoulders. “Ain’t nothin’ I ain’t used to. Ain’t stopped hurting since the day she…” He frowned. “Well, since that day.”
He thrust his wompa legs straight out in front of him. To offer him a little privacy, I studied those we’d rescued some more.
“How are they?” I asked, just as gently. “Will they be alright?”
He scoffed. “Who knows?” As if unaware he was doing it, he leaned forward to rub his knees some more. “It all depends on what the queen’s really been doin’ to them. Far as I can tell, she’s been stealing most of their essence, leaving them only enough for them to survive. Nothing more. Not even an extra drop.”
I cringed at the blatant signs of her evil and scratched the soft patch of scales atop Saffron’s head. He closed his eyes and purred around a smile that revealed spindly teeth. I couldn’t resist a responding smile even as I muttered, “Good sunshine… So if your assessment is right?— ”
“I think it probably is, ‘specially when taking into account what ye told me ye already know about what she’s been doing.”
I nodded and continued to pet Saffron. His purrs were a balm to my ragged edges. “So then once we find a way to disconnect them from her, in theory, when she’s no longer draining them, they should be able to recover their strength.”
“Aye. In theory. Assuming they survive till then. Assumin’ they still got more essence to draw on. Don’t know how that all works. Does it replenish? Or do we only get so much, and when it’s gone, ‘tis gone?”
My unwilling stare traveled to the closest male. His face was so sallow he already looked dead.
Edsel sighed heavily; his barrel chest visibly inflated before emptying. “Not sure some of ‘em will make it much longer.”
My eyes jerked to his. “‘Cause they got crushed?”
“‘Cause they were already fragile as a fly’s wings when we got here. The tree ain’t helped none. But it would’ve only been a matter of time. They’re worse off than Ramana and the other four. And I already thought they were as bad off as ye could get and still be in the Mirror World ‘stead o’ the Etherlands.”
Feeling a deep melancholy settle inside me, I asked, “How many are on the verge of dying?”
He peered behind him at his patients. Strewn side by side as the lanky, wan fae were, they resembled a mass burial site. When he looked back at me, the lines of his face deepened into mournful crags .
“Don’t right know, girly. Five. Maybe more.”
“Five … or more?” I repeated, struggling to absorb the number. How many more would die before we put an end to the queen?
“I’m doin’ all I can to help ’em, but there ain’t much I can do. Not till we sever the queen’s connection. Till then, they won’t get better.”
“Like the— shit !” I straightened abruptly, startling Saffron, who stared up at me with wide, guileless eyes as if trying to figure out if he should be frightened or not. I kissed him on the snout even as dread surged through me, leaving my skin tingling.
Beckoning Pru over, Edsel sat straight as a battle sword too. “What is it, girly? What’s wrong now?”
I swiveled this way and that, searching beyond the trees.
In seconds, Pru was crouching at Edsel’s side, eyeing me. “Does Granddoody need something? Some water?”
He held up his hand. “Elowyn, what is it?” he insisted.
“I…” I sighed out a lament so heavy that he stood to draw closer, Pru right beside him. “I only just realized all the dragons from the cells in the dungeon didn’t make the trip with us. I have no idea how I could’ve missed it before. I even noticed the green dragon. But not them.” How could I have? How could I have betrayed them like that? Not only had I let them down, I’d remembered them dead last. As if they meant nothing. As if their suffering were unimportant.
Tears stinging my eyes, I blinked at Pru as she rested her hand on my shoulder. Saffron nipped at her playfully, and she tsked at him, shaking her head. With me seated on a low stump and her standing, our faces lined up.
“Elowyn,” she started, finally seeing me not as her mistress but her friend, and my tears welled. She squeezed my shoulder. “Elowyn has too much to remember. Pru doesn’t, only Mistress and little Saffron and Granddoody, and Pru didn’t notice either. Elowyn can’t do everything all alone. We … we need each other.”
Despite the dragons I’d doomed to a horrible fate, I offered her a wobbly smile. “I definitely need you, Pru.”
Edsel gasped. From the gruff goblin, it sounded a bit like a belch. How viciously he’d once insisted his gran’gobbler and I couldn’t be friends.
I unwound a hand from the dragonling to pat Pru’s. “My life has gotten better since I met you.”
She sniffled.
“Okay,” I amended. “I should probably be a little more accurate. My life’s been total and absolute shit since I met you. But of course that part’s got nothing to do with you. There’ve been beautiful, shining bright spots amid the steaming, stinky pile of shit, and you’re one of them.”
She snuffled and nodded like her head was on a swivel, her dark, pupil-less eyes glistening. “Elowyn is good,” she said in a croak. “Good, good. Good to goblins. ”
I smiled and patted her hand some more. “That’s because you are good, Pru.”
This time, when I heard a sniffle, I was surprised to find it came from Edsel. When I looked at him, he quickly glanced away.
“Now.” I pushed myself to standing. My spine was stiff, the backs of my legs tight. Just as soon as I recovered fully, and, you know, the murdery queen wasn’t on our tails, I was going to dedicate myself to my training again. My body missed the regular movement. “I need to go talk with Einar.” At Edsel’s raised brows, I clarified. “The black dragon.”
“Ah.”
“Then Azariah. And then, well, pretty much everyone else.”
“I’ll keep at it with all o’ them.” He flicked a finger toward the twenty dormant fae alongside us, West still curled protectively around Ramana, with Larissa at his side, intermittently staring down at her sister with open relief and adoration.
“I’ll also tend to Xeno’s wings n’ Ivar’s horse, so ye know,” he said. At the question scrawled across my face, he added, “Rush asked me to.”
“Thanks for that,” I told him. “Pru, will you please take Saffron for a bit?”
“Of course, Mis—Elowyn. Come on, you silly, goofy boy.” She opened her knobby arms to him. “Come on,” she insisted when he burrowed against my chest. “Come to Pru.” He circled on my lap, which was far too small for him to do that, then plopped down with resolve. Even tucked against his back, his wings flared a couple of feet off to either side of my legs. He was growing more slowly than he should, but he was still growing. “Pru will give Saffron a treat…”
His cute ears perked. On the run as we’d been for so long, and out in the middle of the woods fighting for our survival, I had no idea where she’d procure said treat—perhaps from her wonderfully enchanted kit. But it did the trick. When she opened her arms wider and beckoned to him, he unfurled himself from my lap, scratched the shit out of my hands, and leapt toward her.
She almost collapsed under his weight, then settled into it with a grunt. With his arms wrapped around her shoulders and his legs around her waist, he dwarfed her. Her face, cheeks already flushed from effort, peeked out to one side of his back. A beam of sunlight filtered in through the tree canopies overhead to glitter along his scales, making them appear golden.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay with him?” I asked.
“Pru is stronger than she looks.”
“I never doubt that.”
“Saffron forgets he’s not a baby anymore. Pru will help him see himself for the strong boy he is.”
The sentiment took my breath away. The sting of tears was back. “That will be so wonderful if you can manage it.” Saffron deserved so much better than he’d received since the queen ordered him snatched from his home.
The goblin craned her head around his fidgeting to meet my eyes. “He will heal, Mistress—Elowyn. Her Majesty has tried, but she hasn’t extinguished the light in our world. There is enough of it here to fix the goofy boy.”
My throat thick, I rasped, “Thank you.”
She hmm ed. “Elowyn has a queen to end and a destiny to fulfill. On with it.”
My eyes widened, my lips parted slightly. How did she know about my destiny ? I didn’t remember telling her what the sapphire-blue dragon said. Then again, Pru herself had once told me how much goblins observed from the shadows to which the queen had relegated them. “My, Pru’s gotten very bossy.”
“Primrose has always been bossy,” Edsel grumbled from where he bent over another fae. “Drink yer water, Granddoody. Oil yer stubs. Eat yer food. Get yer rest.”
Pru only chuckled, sounding so unlike the anxious, terrified goblin I’d first met in the royal palace. “Pru isn’t bossy. Pru’s right .”
With her arms wrapped around Saffron as far as they would reach, she pivoted and headed toward her granddoody, calling to me over her shoulder, “Einar. Then Azariah. Then everything else.”
I half expected her to snap her fingers to get me moving when I skirted the long edge of the clearing, wholly cramped by the enormous black dragon, and peered up at his face. He blinked down at me with huge eyes as if he had been waiting.