CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EILISH
The Veil
My hands are covered in blood, but the glow never fades. Pyre grips my wrist and I stare into the sightless depth of his eyes.
“Take with one and give with the other,” he instructs calmly, gentling his hold. I look down at my hands and focus on matching my breathing with Kolvar’s until we synchronize.
“Very good,” Pyre praises. My heartbeat begins to match the rhythm of the satyr’s, and for a moment it feels as if we’re linked by more than the glow I cast on his flesh. Pyre instructs the others to remove their energies.
“Eilish,” he addresses me directly. “Take with one and give with the other.”
Then I feel it, a shift in myself, and I reach for it. The glow on my left hand changes, morphing into a red shadow, more than a light. “Pyre…”
“You know how to feed, Eilish. Take his pain into your body the same way you would feed off the life force of another. And with your other hand, pool your healing energy into his body.” He moves to stand behind me, but he’s careful not to touch me.
“I don’t know,” I start.
Pyre leans in and whispers, “You can do this. I’ve seen both sides exist in you at once. It doesn’t have to be either or. You can be both.”
Take with one and give with the other .
I repeat those words in my head like a mantra, willing myself to obey the command. The red smoke leeches into Kolvar’s chest and I close my eyes. “What am I looking for?” I ask. “What does pain look like?”
“Stop looking. Feel , Eilish. You know what pain feels like—you’ve experienced a world of suffering. Find it in Kolvar and take it.” Pyre pauses. “Do it now or he dies.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I feel a sensation that’s not entirely cold but is more like the damp chill that lingers after coming in from the rain. It’s sadness and worry. Beneath it is something that…
My eyes blink open as I sense too much and the pain is overwhelming. I force myself to concentrate on the rhythm of Kolvar’s heart again, using it to anchor me as the pain burns my soul. That red smoke chases after it, devouring it, and I pull it back into my hand and into my body as if the pain’s my own.
My legs buckle but I don’t fall.
“Good, Eilish. Now, envision yourself standing between two doors that are very close together, closing in on you. Put one hand against the door on your left to keep it from opening and use your right hand to turn the knob on the other door. You’ll feel some resistance, but fight it.”
I try to do as he says, but I’m afraid to reach for the handle. My entire body begins to tremble as if we’re back in the mountains. I fight the fear.
Do it now or else he dies .
Kolvar risked his life to buy us time. I owe it to the satyr to save his. In my vision, I see my fingers around the handle of the doorknob and I push. The door on the left, the one with the pain, begins to open. I battle between my own fear of tapping into that energy and keeping the other at bay. The pain only lessens when I accept that both must be done.
Kolvar takes a deep breath as the purifying white light fills him. I watch the wounds on his body stitch themselves back together as the others look on with identical expressions of surprise. When the transition is complete, I feel beyond exhausted.
I’m panting and dizzy. I start to fall against Pyre and he lifts me into his arms, before carrying me outside. He sets me on the ground and instructs me to close my eyes and envision both the doors again. Once I see them, he instructs me to open both.
“Push all of that energy into the soil, Eilish. Expel it from your body.”
I let go, allowing the control to snap as I channel it into the earth. The scent of moss and dirt fills my lungs and I allow it to soothe me. Pyre removes his hands from my body and I let myself doze off, but only for a second. When I wake, there’s a new sense of peace in my heart. The pain is gone.
“It’s done,” I say.
Pyre nods and helps me to my feet. I can stand but I’m still tired. With Pyre, I return to the cottage.
***
CAMBION
The Veil
In the kitchen, I find Baron leaning over a boiling pot of something that smells rancid. The vampire stiffens, sensing my presence before I even step into his line of sight.
“Quit creeping around, elf,” he snarls. I stand beside him and grimace at what appears to be a crude poultice of some sort.
“Didn’t you just heal from an injury?” I ask.
“Didn’t you?”
“Eilish helped with that, surprisingly.”
“Why surprisingly?” The vampire limps over to the apothecary and searches through the various containers of herbs, liquids, and other substances that I couldn’t possibly identify on my own. Though I’m skilled in all aspects of magic, there are some things that even a being of my caliber neglects over the years.
“Because her kind are not supposed to have healing abilities,” I respond.
“Were you paying attention to anything in that room?” The vampire demands. “Eilish all but single-handedly healed Kolvar’s injuries. She repaired months of damage done by torture in less than three minutes. I’d like to see you do the same.”
“I don’t wish to argue with you. That isn’t why I came.”
“Then get to the point or fuck off. I have shit to do.”
I roll my eyes. “What did you see in Oronrel? Did you see Theren?”
“No, I didn’t see your asshole of a brother. And I’m glad I didn’t, or else I would have tried to put his head on a pike for sentencing Aima to execution.”
“Enough, please. Just tell me what you saw.”
The vampire huffs and slathers the strange goop on his abdomen. “Theren is reckless. He has very few guards stationed in his palace. We fought maybe a dozen soldiers.”
“There are objects of immense power in that palace. Why would he—”
“He’s crazy,” Baron says, cutting me off. “It appears there are only women with positions in the Unseelie Court now. The men are almost exclusively soldiers or busy serving some other purpose.”
He walks out of the kitchen, leaving me to contemplate his words.
Theren is reckless. I could have guessed that, but the extent to which he endangers the Unseelie race is barbaric. He’s leaving Oronrel open for attack, and that doesn’t sit right with me.
I visit Dragan next. The gargoyle is nearly as surly as the vampire and I’m running out of patience. Admittedly, it’s not as though I’ve been a ray of starlight recently, but at least I have the decency not to look like I want to carve the flesh off the people around me.
“Let me guess, you want to know about Oronrel?” Dragan drawls.
“Yes.”
“Aima is convinced Theren didn’t order her execution.”
“And what do you think?”
He shrugs. “There might be something to it. Or you’re both just blind to his cruelty, each for different reasons.”
“You’re the last one to talk about…” My words trail off as Dragan lifts his hand.
“Let me stop you there,” he says. “All of that is in the past now. Time to come to terms with the fact that you’re just as ignorant to Theren as I was to Lamia.”
“Don’t compare a king to a succubae whore.”
“That succubae whore was a queen in her own right, so in my eyes they’re one and the same. Theren and Variant’s manipulations make them no different than any other creature in the realms. Everyone is out for themselves, but we don’t have to be that way.”
“You’re pretty eager to band together, all of a sudden.”
Dragan snorts. “No, just eager to survive—and each of us should be catching on to the fact that we can’t do it alone. You were the one who said we needed allies in the first place. Just because Raflamir was a traitor doesn’t mean the rest will be. This journey has barely even started, Cambion.”
“What changed? In you, I mean.”
“Thoradin,” he answers simply and shrugs as if mentioning his dead Centurion is a perfectly reasonable response. “I need to let go of whatever’s weighing me down if I’m going to keep moving on. You should, too.”
“What if my sins are best kept where they are now… hidden?”
“I don’t have the answer to that, Cambion. I’m still trying to figure all this bullshit out for myself. But at least I’m making an effort to change.”
I nod as I watch him walk away and I wonder if my sins can ever be forgiven.
The End