Chapter 26 Eiri #3
Syrus didn’t appear to have been near the water, though, and over a day had passed since Eiri’s arrest. If he’d nearly drowned, he would either have come around or died by now.
Whatever it was, he could at least try to help. His magic had never felt so far away, but sheer desperation gave Eiri the strength to push through the wall of exhaustion and grasp his power.
“Eiri?”
“I’m going to try something and I don’t have time to explain. Just don’t panic.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Focusing a thin thread of his elemental magic, Eiri closed his eyes and followed the call of water. What he found sent another wave of fear down his spine.
Liquid filled Syrus’ lungs, cutting off his air. Even without touching water, he was still drowning.
As badly as Eiri wanted to pull hard with his magic, he forced himself to go slow, drawing the liquid out gently so Syrus’ body could adjust. A cold sweat broke out across his skin, and he gritted his teeth when his head spun.
He knew he was reaching too deep, drawing on the last reserves he had that his body needed to keep functioning, but he didn’t care. It was worth it if he could do this.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Syrus’ breathing eased.
A truly alarming puddle formed in the corner of the room as Eiri kept pulling, dumping everything he drew there rather than expend the additional energy to get it through the spelled glass windows.
How Syrus had survived this long with so little air was a testament to the man’s strength.
Finally, after what felt like forever, Eiri cleared Syrus’ lungs and watched through heavy eyes as the man’s chest rose and fell in his first unfettered breaths in who knew how long. He didn’t open his eyes, but a hint of color returned to his ashen face.
Eiri tried to shift, to lean back so he could observe Syrus better, but his body didn’t respond. When he tried to lift his hand, it felt as though heavy steel suffused his body rather than blood, making it impossible to move.
Fuck it.
With a quiet groan, he let himself fall forward, his head coming to rest on Syrus’ chest. He heard a cry beside him, but it sounded muffled and distant through the buzzing in his head.
The bed was low to the ground, more a cot than a true bed.
He wanted to crawl up onto it and lie beside him, but falling seemed to be all he was capable of.
His eyes closed without his permission, but he didn’t fight it.
It allowed him to focus on the heartbeat beneath his head, still too fast, but stronger than before.
Syrus still stood a chance of coming through this.
I’ll be better, Syrus. Come back to me, and I promise I’ll try to make this work for us. Please.
He drifted, his mind conjuring images of what it could be like.
They could have a genuine marriage and work together to fix things for his people back on the island.
Maybe they could even return and visit together.
Everyone on the island knew Syrus, of course, especially the raiders, but they wouldn’t hold on to their grudges as long as the Vaetrean people appeared to.
Canjir might appear stark to outsiders, who saw nothing more than a barren desert, but the island was beautiful in its own way, and Eiri wanted to show it all to Syrus.
The way the black sand beaches lit up at sunrise, the early light catching the sand and making it shimmer.
The dark beach made the sunrises and sunsets more dramatic than those he’d seen here on the mainland, and it was a sight he never tired of.
He’d take him to the far side of the island, where the burnt-out remains of Anatau created a caldera with water so clear he could see straight to the bottom.
They could hike deeper into the interior, where hot springs dotted the land.
The once-lush forests of Canjir were now gone, but the new trees showed every sign of reaching the massive size of their forebears, and one day, the island would be as it had once been.
Few took the time to appreciate Canjir for what it was now, but he believed Syrus would be able to see the beauty there.
A wave of nostalgia hit him hard, a desperate homesickness for the island he’d left behind.
Everything would be in full bloom now, fed by the spring rains and warmer weather.
Eiri could almost smell the deep, complex scent of the stali flowers that climbed trellises and clung to anything their vines could reach.
Canjir was the only place in the world those flowers grew and, as such, had become part of their culture.
Syrus wouldn’t have understood how significant it was that Eiri had chosen those flowers to embroider on his clothing, of course, but by doing so, he’d clearly signified to any Canjiri that Syrus was one of their own.
Looking back, it was no wonder Kien had been so furious.
Eiri needed to move and check on Syrus. He needed to explain to Ellis what had happened and calm the other man’s increasingly panicked questions.
He knew that, but moving was far beyond his capabilities at the moment.
He took a few slow breaths, frowning when the scent of the stali flower grew stronger, too strong to be just a memory.
Prying one eye open, Eiri looked up toward Syrus.
The man’s eyes moved behind his lids, hopefully a sign that he was waking.
His lips had parted and his breathing was steadier when he exhaled, but still weaker than Eiri would have liked.
The smell of flowers wafted across his face and in an instant, he knew why Syrus wasn’t recovering.
He had to get up. He had to get help now, even though in his heart, he knew it was too late.
Eiri couldn’t move, though. His body simply had nothing left to give.
Every scrap of his strength was gone, his reserves scraped clean in his desperation to save Syrus.
Even his magic was gone, leaving an echoing emptiness where it had been.
There was no way to replenish himself when he was this far from the water, and he’d never make it down those stairs again.
There was another reason the stali flower had become the symbol of Canjir.
The flower itself was a delicate thing, with petals ranging from deep crimson red to vibrant purples and pinks.
Its scent was strong without being overwhelming and instantly recognizable to anyone on the island, something that permeated their whole lives.
The flower had survived the volcano and come back stronger for it, with a resilience his people tried to emulate.
It was also lethal.
When crushed, the petals of the stali released a deadly poison capable of felling a small animal in mere minutes.
For humans, it could take a full day or more.
The moment an islander learned to crawl, they learned to identify the flower and knew to avoid it.
There were only a few people on the island capable of distilling it down into a liquid poison without also killing themselves and whispered rumors said that Viyeri, the former king of Canjir, had used that poison to ascend to the throne for the short time he’d held it.
The cure for the poison had been found by pure luck hundreds of years ago and kept secret among his people. Eiri had learned it from his old friend Laire. The leaves of the flower could be boiled down into a tea that, when administered, could counteract the poison.
The only trace the toxin left behind was the scent of flowers on the victim’s breath.
As a mage who controlled water, Eiri knew he could draw out the poison.
He’d never tried, but he’d been curious enough as a teenager to learn the theory after Laire developed a talent for toxins.
The consistency of the poison differed from the thicker flow of blood through a person’s body, and he’d learned to tell the difference.
Steeling himself, Eiri dug as deeply as he could, but the pool of his magic remained dry. He simply had nothing left.
Fighting against the weights dragging him down, Eiri pried his hand off the bed and stroked Syrus’ cheek just once before coming to rest there.
“Come back to me, Syrus. Please. Please don’t leave me.”
His throat burned with the effort of speaking, and it felt like he’d swallowed shattered shards of glass, but he had to try.
It was too late for them. He’d failed in the one thing he’d so desperately wanted to do, and all he had left was the hope that he could at least see Syrus open his eyes before the poison took him.
He was weak and exhausted, but Eiri wasn’t a fool.
The use of a distinctly Canjiri poison told him exactly what the plan was.
They would execute him for this, and he couldn’t run anymore.
These would be the last moments the two of them ever had together.
Seconds passed, then a full minute, and Eiri’s hope dwindled when Syrus remained unconscious. His head still rested on Syrus’ chest, and he could hear his breathing become labored as the poison attacked his body again.
“Eiri, please.” Ellis choked out the words on a sob. In his despair, Eiri had nearly forgotten about the other person here with him.
“He’s been poisoned.” Eiri forced himself to sit up despite the exhaustion dragging at him. This was Syrus’ only chance.
“What? How? How do we fix it? What did you just do with that water? What’s going on, Eiri?”
Think. He needed to focus. There were precious few people who could get access to the poison created by the stali flowers, and only two people he knew of on the mainland. One of those people was Eiri himself, and it hadn’t been him, which just left…
“Kien. Kien poisoned him.” It made too much sense. The council hadn’t sent Kien to protect him, after all. They’d sent him to keep Eiri in line and protect the alliance. When he started to deviate, to form a real attachment to Syrus, he’d put whatever plan was happening in danger.
“Kien? I’ll go get Xan and Marsen. They can find him and force him to fix this!” Ellis was already on his feet, but Eiri grabbed his hand to stop him before he could step away.
“We don’t need him, just his things. He’d be a fool to travel with stali if he didn’t have the antidote readily available. Go get the others and search his room. It should be there.” It had to be, or Syrus was as good as dead.
“What if someone comes and finds you here with him? They’ll kill you.”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take if we can save him. Go.”
Ellis hesitated, desperately scanning his brother’s face for any sign of life and seeing nothing. He nodded once, then ran back down the stairs, leaving Eiri and Syrus alone.
Without Ellis to keep up a strong front for, Eiri let himself fall forward onto the bed again. He lay with his head resting on his husband’s chest, listening to the wet rattle of fluid slowly filling his lungs again. Overhead, the clouds finally broke open, dumping a torrent of rain over the city.
Exhaustion crept into his bones, dragging his eyelids down. He was so fucking tired.
Just as he started to give in to the darkness pulling him down, a faint groan vibrated Syrus’ chest, and Eiri fought back to consciousness in time to see the other man grimace in pain, his dark eyes slitting open.
Eiri’s hand still gripped Syrus’ and he saw the moment Syrus felt it. He blinked, waking a little more and looking down at Eiri lying on his chest.
“Eiri? What happened?”
The words were nearly incomprehensible. Syrus sounded even worse than Eiri, his throat likely dry from well over a day without water and rough from the side effects of the poison.
Speaking was nigh on impossible when his own body fought him, trying to fall into the dubious respite of unconsciousness, but Eiri’s stubbornness was legendary for a reason. He fought it, keeping his eyes locked on Syrus to remind himself just why he had to stay alert just a few moments longer.
“Poison,” he rasped out. “Someone poisoned you. Stali.”
Syrus was quiet as he processed that, and it looked like he was fighting to stay conscious just as hard as Eiri was.
“You too?” he finally asked. Eiri felt a broad hand come to rest on his back, Syrus’ thumb brushing his neck.
He shook his head once. “Tried to fix it. I need the water.” His words slurred together, and Syrus’ face went blurry in front of him, his eyes closing without his consent.
“Eiri?” Syrus shook him, but Eiri just couldn’t hang on anymore. He’d given everything, everything that he had, and it still hadn’t been enough in the end.
“Sorry,” he breathed out, and Syrus frantically whispering his name again was the last thing he heard before surrendering to the dark.