Chapter 23 Khiona
Ididn’t die.
I didn’t feel any heat.
I opened my eyes.
A mountain of flames filled my vision.
Why wasn’t I dead?
The flames disappeared, and I remembered the shimmery magic between Andar and me. He must have made a shield of some kind, and—
The dragons stomped into the forest.
They didn’t see me?
Andar must have tied an illusion to a shield and—
Andar!
Was he dead on top of me?
The dragons found my pack and hissed and growled as they shook out everything Maeva had given us.
That was it. I couldn’t wait any longer. I slid out from under Andar, and—
I couldn’t breathe.
Dragons’ flame had landed on him unevenly, biting and burning through the skin on his face and chest, but still smoldering on his pants. His boots hadn’t burned at all. I touched his leg and sent a chill through his whole body, stopping any burning that still ate away at him.
I needed to heal him, but healing wasn’t something I’d practiced with.
Still—I had to be better than nothing.
I eased magic into his body, trying to feel what was most essential to heal first, but I immediately felt light-headed and almost passed out.
Everyone gets tired eventually, but—
Not now!
“Andar,” I moaned. “What were you thinking?”
Against all odds, his charred hand found mine and gripped it. “You are supposed to hold still.”
How had he managed to whisper when his face and chest were so burnt? I couldn’t even answer his words because I was too worried about his body.
And then a gleeful cackle, made threatening by the deep rumbling voice it rose from, caught my attention. One of the dragons leaped back toward us with something gold and glistening in its hand. “Surrender the treasure,” it rumbled at me.
I leaned over Andar. He could not take another blast of fire. He might not even survive the burns he already had. But the dragon didn’t torch us again. It waved the golden object at us. “Relinquish your claim.”
When he stopped waving his hand, I realized what he wanted: the lamp that Andar had been tied to.
My throat tried to collapse in on itself. “You have it, don’t you? It’s yours already!”
“Give it to us,” the dragon hissed, shuffling himself around so he could shoot more fire. “The fae’s word.”
If I hadn’t been at risk from fainting already, I would have rolled my eyes. The most infamous of thieves, the ice dragons, wanted a fae’s binding word that they could keep the lamp. If I’d had any idea, I would have given it to them when they first appeared.
“Now!” the dragon added.
“Fine,” I spit out. “The lamp is yours. You saw it in your Kahunamons and, as the last owner, I formally surrender it to you. Go put it in your hoard.”
All six dragons—all thoroughly defrosted—lifted into the air and soared away. I turned my attention back to Andar.
His breathing was so shallow, I couldn’t see or hear it anymore… and I didn’t want to think about what that meant for his heart. “Why didn’t you protect yourself too?” I croaked.
His hand gave mine a weak squeeze. “Part of the illusion. Dragons… are satisfied with roasting an enemy. They would have… ignored you… if they saw me burn and you disappeared.” He sounded awful.
I tried reaching for his heart with my magic, sure that the key to healing him enough that he survived would be in his heart or lungs, but as soon as I extended the magic, black filled the edges of my vision.
I didn’t have the strength to use any magic.
But nobody else—
The musicians!
I whipped my head to the side, where I’d last seen them huddling inside their musical shield. They watched us—like they were interested, but they didn’t dare come too close.
“Aakil,” I panted, starting with the most reasonable of the three of them. “Can you heal him?” The Librarian—I really should ask him if he was a librarian before he took up music—shared a look with Amador, and then they both crept closer.
Aakil knelt down on the opposite side of Andar from me. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, we can’t touch magic right now. Amador and I already passed out for a few seconds, and Bummel’s come close. We never would have survived if the dragons didn’t all leave.”
Something burned behind my eyes. “None of you can help? Not even a little?”
Moisture filled Bummel’s eyes. “If we tried anything now, we’d just black out, and you’d get nothing useful out of us anyway.”
“Why did you do it?” I whispered the question into the air, not really expecting an answer.
But Andar managed one anyway. “It was… the only way… to keep you alive… to make sure you know… that I care.”
I blinked to keep the moisture out of my eyes. “What good does that do if you die?”
He seized my hand and tensed his entire body. “It is good that you know you are worthy of love. Do not be alone.” His breath turned raspy, and he struggled for air.
But his short words sank into my soul, lighting everything they touched on fire.
You are worthy of love.
Do not be alone.
As his words settled against my heart, they hit the crystal magic that had protected it, vibrating it until the layer that had once been an ironclad barrier was nothing but a brittle lattice. I did not want to be alone. And I did not want to lose Andar.
I did not want to lose Andar. More than any other fae I’d known, I did not want him to die.
And that was the admission that broke me. Because he was certainly dying.
I stopped holding back the tears that I’d been fighting, letting them crash down my cheeks.
The emotion behind them flooded me, and I had to gasp for air.
“Andar,” I choked through sobs. “Don’t… Don’t die.
I would give anything to keep you alive.
My kingdom. My magic. My emotions. My vengeance. My name!”
I grabbed that thought. Maybe if he knew my name it would be enough for him to fight to stay alive. “My name is Khiona. Andar, stay alive. Call me Khiona!”
“Ah,” he sighed, his voice too soft to call a whisper. “Trouble has a name. Khiona.”
He didn’t strengthen.
But between admitting a feeling and releasing an emotion, I shattered the last fragments of magic barriers that kept me safe from decades of emotions.
The power that had been woven into a crystalline lattice trembled in my chest and erupted, unleashing a torrent that poured out of me in tears that glowed with crystal magic that dissipated as they fell from my face onto Andar.
Pent up emotions swelled inside me, making my arms tremble and my chest heave.
More tears flowed, as if the only expression for decades of suppressed feelings was an unrestrained deluge.
If tears could heal, I would have saved him.
But it wasn’t healing magic that poured out of me. It was restraining magic. By separating myself from my emotions, I’d tied off my power, buried it and confined it to places it couldn’t hurt me.
And when it was buried, it couldn’t help me either.
But as I shed the walls that had kept my emotions bound, more strength and power rose from the depths of my soul than I had ever realized were buried there. Suddenly, I was no longer on the brink of collapse.
I had wells of strength. In walling off my emotions, I’d walled off power. Now it flowed through me, bursting out of my heart and rushing through my soul. My hands trembled again, but it wasn’t from anger or fear or overwhelm. It was with an abundance of hope.
I focused on Andar, pouring power into him. I filled his heart with energy and nudged his body to repair his lungs and torn tissues. I was still exhausted, but the strength I found tied to my emotions fueled me with the energy to heal the one person I cared for.
His body trembled and, while we watched, new skin grew over layers of other tissues that had just rebuilt themselves. Andar took a great, gasping breath—as if he’d been drowning—and opened his eyes.
Those bright blue eyes filled with a fire I had never seen before. Or maybe I had, and I just couldn’t recognize it because I’d chained my own emotions. It was the energy of someone who cared.
He squeezed my hand—the one he’d been holding this whole time—and then let go and pushed himself up so he was sitting like me. “Khiona.” His voice wasn’t a whisper, but it was soft, almost reverent.
“I—” How did I explain what had happened? I brushed tears off one of my cheeks, but then froze as Andar lifted his hand and slowly wiped the rest of the moisture off my face. Maybe he already knew?
He wrapped his hand around my cheek so his fingers threaded into my hair and his thumb stroked my jaw. “I’m sorry for tying you up and leaving you. It was the worst decision I’ve ever made. I would have died ten times over to try to fix it.”
I smiled, leaning into his hand. “That’s at least the third time you’ve admitted to being wrong about something.”
He brushed his thumb under my lower lip. “And that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you relax into a smile.”
I let my smile grow even bigger and tipped my head just enough to drop a quick kiss on that thumb of his. “You’re alive. I don’t think I’ll ever stop smiling.”
He leaned forward and kissed my temple—the one he didn’t have his hand wrapped around. A warmth spread from his lips through my whole body, warming my heart and heating all those feelings and emotions that I’d kept isolated and hidden for so long.
He kept his face touching mine and whispered next to my cheek. “Did you mean what you said—would you have given up your revenge for me?”
Tears rushed to my eyes again, and I reached out for his free hand, gripping it with both of mine while nodding the truth. “I would have—to save you. I would right now if it meant—” I cut off. Could I embrace my feelings enough to say them out loud?
“If it meant what?” he whispered against my cheek.
Any resistance I had crumbled. “If it meant I could keep you,” I breathed back.