Chapter 41
Pain.
A different kind, this time. Muted. Aching.
“Quinn?”
There it is again. The voice. His voice. The last one I heard before the world disappeared. My lips tug upward of their own accord at the warmth, the comfort I feel just from the sound of him.
“She’s smiling,” says a different voice. A higher one. Familiar, and just as comforting—but in a different way. It’s a voice I haven’t heard in some time. “I think she’s smiling. That’s a good sign, right?”
My lips crack open. My voice, when it comes out, is like cracking egg shells. “Mom?”
“Oh, my God.” A small, warm hand closes around my fingers. “Quinn?”
“Impossible,” says a different male voice. “We all saw the sword go into her chest. And we all saw what happened af—”
“Saechon,” says the first male voice, the one that turns my insides to melted chocolate. “If you don’t shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of this room, I will remove you myself. One limb at a time.”
Another frail, wobbling word escapes my lips. “Daerios?”
“I’m here, baby.”
I’m here.
My eyes peel apart. The room is a blur. My eyes feel sore. Swollen. As if they were the ones stabbed by a sword, not my heart.
Wait.
I stabbed myself in the heart.
“I’m supposed to be dead,” I croak.
A relieved sob escapes my mom’s mouth. I can’t see her—just the smudge of a familiar brown bob—but I know it came from her.
“Yes, you are.” I feel Daerios’s cool, calloused fingers slide around my other hand, the one not in a death grip from my mother. “And if that sword had gone into you even an inch to the left, you would be.”
“But I’m not?” I blink. The room comes slightly more into focus. I make out three figures, plus white walls and a mess of machinery.
“No, sweetheart.” My mom reaches up and brushes back a lock of my hair. “You’re not.”
I blink again. Again. Again.
“Your eyes might take a while to return to normal,” comes Saechon’s voice. I look over at his blurry figure, hunched in the corner. “If you opened them during the Release, your corneas were likely damaged.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Daerios snaps from my left. “You’re no longer needed here.”
“Very well.” The tall smudge that is Saechon straightens up. He starts to head for the door, then pauses, turning back to face me. “Thank you for your sacrifice, Lightbearer.”
They make me go back to sleep. At first, I try to refuse, but exhaustion quickly pulls me back into the dark.
When I wake, my vision has cleared. The room appears empty, but when I look to the left, I find Daerios. He sits quietly in his chair, hands folded in his lap, looking oddly restrained.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hello,” he says.
“Where am I?”
“Mass General.” He gestures to the starched white of the bed upon which I lie, the tangle of instruments in the corner.
“Back in Boston? How’d my mom get here so fast?”
Daerios smiles, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. “You’ve been out for three days, Quinn.”
“Oh.” I chew my bottom lip, unsure what to do with that information. Unsure what to do with anything. “Where is she now?”
“Outside with Michael. She’s… processing.” He pauses, watching me carefully, then adds, “They both are.”
“And Cara? Berendir?”
“Both safe.”
I nod, closing my eyes and letting my head fall back against the pillow. “Good,” I say. “It was worth it, then. Sacrificing myself to stop the war—it was worth it.”
For several seconds, Daerios doesn’t speak, and I think he’s going to let me drift off to sleep again. Instead, featherlight fingers flutter over my bare arm, and I open my eyes.
His voice is soft. “You don’t even know, do you?”
I tilt my head. “Know what?”
“You did it, Quinn.” He looks on the verge of tears. “You saved Elaerion.”
“I-I did?”
“You did. When you drove the Shadow Sword into your chest—a decision about which we are going to have a very serious discussion in the near future—”
“No, we are not.” I try to sit up, but my body gives a great shriek of pain. Daerios lays a gentle hand on my shoulder and eases me back onto the bed.
“Regardless,” Daerios continues. His hand lingers on my shoulder, tracing little circles with his thumb that send sparks dancing through my chest. “When you drove the Shadow Sword into your chest, you fulfilled the prophecy. You sacrificed the Lightbearer. And the effect was immediate—light exploded from your body like a bomb going off. And it just kept growing. And growing. You were a fucking human sun.” He shakes his head, the corner of his mouth quirking up.
“For several seconds, no one could see a thing. You blinded us. But when the light faded, the whole world had changed.”
Cautious excitement flutters in my chest. “What do you mean, changed?”
“I mean everything. The leaves, the trees, the grass, the sky. The fucking sun, Quinn.” His eyes glow a brilliant silver. “Birds. Flowers. Color. Fucking color, everywhere. It was back. It was all back. The valley of árrion. My old home—just as I remembered it.”
To my surprise, a lump builds in my throat. “I wish I could have seen it.”
He smiles. After reaching out and gently taking my hand, he says, “You will.”
I want to relish in that promise. In the fact that we might have a future at all, when not long ago, I thought I lost him forever. But I have more questions. “And the Shadow Elves?”
“Fled the minute you lit up. They knew what was happening. We didn’t go to Shadowfell to check, but, as far as I know, that’s where they are. Back where they belong.”
“Along with the urrath and the skria and all the other beasts?”
“All of it, Quinn.” He reaches up and lays a palm on the side of my face. I lean into it and shut my eyes, breathing in his scent. “You saved my home.”
For several moments, we stay that way: my face tucked into Daerios’s palm, his body pressed up against the bedframe.
My eyes remain shut. I say nothing. Daerios says nothing.
We sit in silence, listening to breath drag in and out of my chest. The same chest into which I plunged a three-foot, razor-sharp piece of metal.
I should be dead. I should. I know that Daerios said I’m strong, that the sword missed my heart, that they helped sew me up with magic, but it certainly didn’t feel like the sword missed my heart.
And if I hadn’t truly died, then how would Elaerion’s curse truly be lifted?
I open my eyes and begin to ask exactly that, but Daerios interrupts:
“Now,” he says, reluctantly dropping his palm from my face. “About your decision to shove a sword into your chest—”
“Nope.” I shake my head. “No conversation to be had. I did what I had to do.”
“What you had to do,” he repeats.
“Yes.”
His voice softens. “And what was it that you had to do, Quinn?”
“I had to sacrifice myself.”
“Why?”
I look down at the blanket, saying nothing.
“Was it to save Elaerion?”
“No.”
“Was it to save your friends?”
I thumb the edge of the blanket. “Partly.”
Now is the moment. The moment I tell him. I know it is. But even after everything we’ve been through—even after we both sacrificed ourselves for the sake of the other—I can’t. I’m too scared.
His voice grows even softer. “And the other part?”
I gather a fistful of the blanket.
“Quinn.”
“Because of you, you moron,” I say, throwing the blanket back onto the bed.
Pain sings through my chest, but I ignore it.
“Because you’re a bleeding moron. You went against your father’s command, even though you knew the punishment.
Even though it meant death. And when I pictured you gone…
when I pictured a world without you…” My eyes squeeze shut.
I inhale raggedly. I have to force the next words out, because I know my voice will crack around them.
“I couldn’t do it, Daerios. I just couldn’t. ”
When I finally open my eyes again, Daerios has gone completely still. I’m so used to his restless playfulness—the jokes and jibes, the flirtatious winks—that his stillness unnerves me. His face is blank. He seems to have ceased breathing entirely.
I blink once. “Daerios?”
“There’s something else,” he blurts out. He fidgets, hands twisting in his lap. “Something I didn’t tell you. About how you survived that sword going into your heart.”
“So, it did go into my heart.” I edge up further on the pillow. “I knew it. I should be dead, shouldn’t I? So, how am I not? How did I survive?”
When Daerios doesn’t immediately go on, I prod further. “Well?”
“Do you, um…” He clears his throat. “Do you remember when I told you that it’s rare for elves to fall in love? And even more rare to marry, to remain monogamous throughout their entire lifetime?”
“Yes.” I narrow my eyes. “What does that have to do with my miraculous recovery?”
“Well, the thing is…” Daerios raises a hand to ruffle his black hair.
His eyes search the corners of the room, looking anywhere but at me.
“The thing is, is… um…” He exhales, then says, “When elves fall in love—and I mean truly in love, not just a passing lust, like, the kind of love that makes you want to spend all of eternity with someone—a connection forms between them and their partner.”
My eyes narrow further. “What kind of connection?
“A life bond.”
“What the hell is that?”
Daerios is practically squirming in his chair now. I’ve never seen him this nervous before. It’s kind of adorable, actually—not that I would tell him that.
“Daerios.”
He glances up at me, then back down at his lap.
“A life bond is a magical connection that forms between two mates. It’s a form of protection.
A fail-safe. If one mate is injured, the other can channel part of their life-force into the injured mate to help speed along the healing process.
It comes at a cost, of course. The mate giving their life force will be significantly weakened, for a time. ”
“For a time,” I repeat. For the first time, I register the slight tremble of his shoulders, the quiver in his fingertips. Until now, I thought it was simply nerves. But now—
“Daerios.” My voice lowers to a venomous whisper. “What did you do?”