38. This Stings
38
This Stings
Idris
I ground my teeth together furiously, every muscle in my body rigid, primed to spring into action, however foolish that might be. Sage’s potion had worked a little too well, and I was very much awake.
The healer’s hands were gentle as she pressed them against my abdomen, but that didn’t prevent the urge to leap out of my sweat-pricked skin.
“Relax, Your Highness.”
I tried to obey, tried to sink deeper into the lumpy mattress, but my body refused to cooperate. Instead, my hands curled into fists around the sheets.
Her fingers moved, and I let out an involuntary snarl.
“My apologies.” She lifted doubtful eyes from my bare torso. “Perhaps restraints might help?”
“I’m fine,” I lied on a hiss.
“The wound is deep, Your Highness. This will be slow and painful.”
It was glaringly obvious that the wound was fucking deep. My abdomen had been sliced clean open; it was a wonder my innards hadn’t spilled over the ground. I’d only survived long enough to see the healer thanks to the witch’s blood replenishing potion, though even that was fighting a losing battle. Blood continued to seep into the mattress, warm and sticky against my clammy skin.
“Of course, we could just let you die?” Anwir offered hopefully from where he lounged at my bedside, his frantically jiggling foot propped over his knee.
“Anwir!” Sage reprimanded, and despite the pain holding me rigid, I threw a thankful glance to where she lingered beside my brother’s chair. She was the reason I still drew breath. Much to my surprise, I was grateful. I wasn’t ready to die just yet.
“What?” Anwir chuckled, amused by his own thinly veiled joke.
However I looked at it, however his timely actions had contributed to my continued survival, my death would be a blessing to him. It would clear his path to Aliza and the throne, though I’d done a pretty thorough job of clearing the way myself.
The healer abandoned her probing of my injury, turning to rummage through her leather bag. When she straightened, she held a short, wide stick in her hand.
“Take this, at the very least. I’d rather not be responsible for the prince biting off his own tongue.” When I eyed the stick doubtfully, she waved it at my face. “Open wide.”
Oh, I see.
It was an effort to unclench my jaw, but when I managed the feat, the healer placed the stick in my mouth, wedging it behind my fangs. Her face became intolerably grim.
“Make as much noise as you need to, but you must lie still while I repair the internal damage.”
My pulse quickened, reaching unmatched speeds, the last thing I needed considering all that frenzied blood was exiting my body via the slice to my gut. With my mouth forced open around the stick, my breaths turned to pants.
The healer returned to my abdomen, her hands hovering over the mangled mess as she shot me a questioning glance. I tightened my grip on the sheets. This was it. Now or never.
I gave the barest of stiff nods, and then pain erupted.
My body seized, bowing clean off the bed as I screamed.
I was blind. I was dying. I was being peeled apart from the inside out, and all I could do was howl.
My limbs rattled and my head thrashed, and still the pain kept coming. Wave after wave of agony. It was a storm-tossed ocean, and I was drowning.
With a clatter beside my head, something warm and heavy clamped my shoulders to the bed, blanketing my face, but still I screamed.
“You’re alright.” Somewhere, underneath the white-hot flaying, a voice I knew as well as my own sliced through the agony. “It’ll be over soon.”
But that was a lie, I realised as fire spread from the wound, consuming every inch of me. It was just another of his lies.
Acid ate through my flesh, millions of burning teeth tearing me apart, strip by strip. My warbled yells redoubled.
“Nearly there.” Hands tightening on my shoulders. “You can do it.”
I couldn’t. This was death. I’d seen it before, from the outside. I’d come close to it myself today. I knew it well enough to recognise it from this side of things too.
My throat burnt under my endless roars .
But then the unimaginable burning cooled to red-hot, and then merely hot. My screams dropped along with the heat, dissolving into desperate breaths that burst around the crumbling stick clamped between my teeth. Then warm. Only warm.
The pain faded into something light and pleasant, like the touch of summer’s sun, but beneath the surface of my skin.
“Easy, now,” Anwir said, loosening the vice that held me down. Him, I realised through the dissipating fog. He held me down. He ruffled my sweaty hair as though I really was his little brother. “Nearly there.”
My trembling body sagged, as limp as wet leather. I couldn’t have moved even if I’d tried.
“Well done, Your Highness,” the healer chimed, her proud, airy voice at stark odds with what she’d just inflicted on me. “The worst is over. I’m just patching up the skin.”
No sooner had she said it than the strangely painless sensation of my skin shifting and tugging, knotting back together, seeped through the glow of her magic. Inch by inch, the wound pulled shut, tightening under that warmth.
Finally, the glow faded, leaving me clammy and shivering in its absence. It took a few seconds for my senses to come wading back. To really notice the bright sunshine painted across the cracked ceiling of the commandeered farmhouse Anwir had claimed as his temporary war residence. To feel the brief, reassuring squeeze of my twin’s hand before he released me. To feel the sticky wetness of my blood beneath my bare back .
“As good as new,” the healer declared, straightening. She turned away, but not before I glimpsed her red hands and forearms, still wet and shining. She wiped them surreptitiously on a towel.
I lifted a violently trembling hand, unhooking the wood from behind my teeth. It had splintered under a perfect set of imprints. “I ruined your stick.” My voice came out impossibly weak and hoarse.
“Keep it,” the healer said with amusement in her voice. “A souvenir.”
As though I’d want to remember this.
I let my head fall to the side. Anwir was righting the toppled chair, as though he’d leapt from it, knocking it over in his hurry. Something alien tightened in my chest as he resumed his seat, his legs giving way and setting him down with a thud. Was it the blood loss affecting my vision, or did he look paler than usual? His eyes were wide as he met my gaze.
“You were always one to make a fuss,” he sneered, without any real conviction.
My lips twitched. With a groan, I tried to shift higher up my pillows. My blood was slick and slimy beneath me.
“I think not.” A small hand landed on my chest pushing me back down. It was a mark of how close I’d come to death that I collapsed under the light pressure the witch applied.
Sage held a small bottle to my lips, tipping a mouthful of cool, herbal liquid down my throat. Recognising the taste, I swallowed without complaint.
“Lie still. You might be sealed up, but most of your blood is spoiling these lovely bedsheets. Give it a few minutes before you make an even bigger nuisance of yourself. ”
As grim as my bed was, I couldn’t find the strength to object. If I didn’t know any better, I’d guess the healer had melted all my bones, leaving me as nothing but a heap of limp, formless flesh. I sank into the mattress, letting my eyes drift closed at last.
I’d only intended to doze for a few minutes, but when I opened my eyes, night had fallen. Despite being surrounded by the tents of our war camp, the farmhouse was impossibly quiet, with only the faint scratch of a pen breaking the sleepy silence.
Anwir still occupied the chair, his brow furrowed as he poured over the stack of papers balanced on his knee. A lamp containing a softly glowing orb of light illuminated the shadows under his eyes.
“Still here?” I rasped.
His eyes darted to me, and some of the tension melted from his face as he straightened, leaning back in the chair. “Thanks to your noble quest for truth, you remain the only heir I’m likely to have. I’m merely ensuring that a royal bloodline remains to inherit the very thing we fight for.”
He dropped his gaze, aggressively scratching out something on his paper. I didn’t bother to correct him. He would not be the one to inherit the throne, and nor would I.
“Where’s Sage?” I probed, aggravating the sore spot.
Witch and fae unions did not result in living offspring, which had been the driving force behind Anwir’s attempts to manipulate Aliza, the fertile human. I’d initially been unaware of the identity of the witch in question, but I’d put the final pieces of the jigsaw together over the past few weeks.
Sage and Anwir seeking each other out could be dismissed as nothing more than two leaders conferring and plotting, but I suspected it was more than that. Anwir conceded to her in a way he rarely did with anyone else. He positioned himself beside her during every meeting. He’d allowed her to reprimand him when he’d suggested letting me die.
She was the witch he’d fallen for. The one he’d chosen over Aliza.
My chest tightened at the mere thought of her, but I pushed the sensation away. I’d almost died today because of my reckless despondency. Perhaps it would have been better for everyone if I’d succeeded.
Anwir ignored my goading, answering me in reasonable tones. “A messenger arrived from Nairsgarth. She went to meet with them a while ago.”
Silence fell again. In the still and quiet, I took stock of my body. I was definitely still alive, and my earlier torture had receded, leaving only a tight pull across my abdomen. I eased upright, pressing a hand to my new scar in case the pressure undid the healer's work, sending my guts spilling over my lap. My flesh held, though my skin seemed to have shrunk a few sizes.
To my surprise, the sheets beneath me were clean and bloodless, as was I. Somebody had managed to change them out from under me and bathe me without me knowing a thing about it. Clearly, I’d been all but dead by the time the healer fixed me up.
I twisted, setting my feet cautiously on the floor. The room didn’t sway, nor did my body burst open. A good start.
Anwir scribbled a short sentence .
“Don’t you have kingly work to be getting on with?” I asked.
“What do you think I’m doing? Writing poetry?” he scoffed.
“What’s that? The guest list for your next party?”
My brother fixed me with a shrewd glare. “You believe yourself terribly superior, don’t you? Yet it was you, not me, who abandoned our people. At least one of us has the backbone required to wear a crown.”
“It is a guest list then?” I flashed him a grin. Sage’s potion had worked its magic, and I felt much better.
Anwir tutted. “While there is to be a celebration of this momentous victory–I am grateful for your part in it, incidentally, even if you did disobey my commands and almost kill yourself in the process–I’m currently preoccupied with going over the names of those we lost today. There will inevitably be some restructuring of our forces, and it needs to be done right if we’re to stand the slightest chance of winning the next battle. Now, I would thank you to do something useful and go back to sleep.”
I sobered from my momentary flare of delighted tormenting of my twin. He was right on both counts. However much I might regret not being what Aliza needed me to be, however much I’d pondered the validity of my choices over the past week, I didn’t have what it took. I’d bypassed my claim for a reason. I wasn’t cut out for this.
But was I cut out for a life without Aliza?
She had filled my heart and mind in what should have been my final moments. She was still there now, leaving little space for anything else.
Sage’s return spared me from examining that particular wound any further. Upon seeing me sitting, she gave me an approving nod, crossing to my brother’s side. He looked up at her approach .
“What news?”
“Granny has taken ill,” the witch said brusquely, marching to a sideboard, where she busied herself with a chipped tea service. A moment later, she pressed a steaming cup into my hands. “You still look a little peaky, Your Highness. Drink up.”
I sipped, grimacing at the grotesquely sweet, floral tea. Sage fixed me with a glare, and I swallowed a deeper swig. She narrowed her eyes slightly in apparent threat, leaving me in no doubt over what would happen if I failed to drain my cup.
“It seems likely I will have to return to Nairsgarth sooner rather than later.”
Something squirmed to life in my chest, sniffing the air. Wild excuses to accompany the witch chased each other around my mind, all eager for the chance to glimpse Aliza. That was all I wanted. Just to see her again. To know that she was alright. I’d almost lost that chance today. Our last moments together had not gone as I’d intended, and the memory of her crying and burning was one I needed to replace.
I hadn’t dared ask about her, but I knew she was no longer in Tir o Gaeaf. I’d seen not a glimpse of her in the days leading up to this foolhardy battle. There was only one other place she could be. I wanted to be there, too.
But I couldn’t. It would be selfish and unfair for me to impose on her when I’d caused her pain, so instead of offering my services to Sage, I said, “When you go, will you look in on Aliza?”
The witch stiffened, her eyes sliding to me. “And how would I do that when you have spirited her away to the Mother knows where?”
My replenished blood froze solid. “What? ”
Anwir glanced between us as Sage faced me fully. “Aliza is not at Nairsgarth.”
That couldn’t be true. Sage was lying. She was protecting Aliza by keeping her hidden from me. She had to be, because there was nowhere else for Aliza to go, unless…
“Shit.” I leapt to my feet, slopping tea over the nightstand as I all but threw my cup aside. “Shit!”
“Idris, what’s this about?” Anwir demanded as I tossed aside cushions and blankets. I was wearing a pair of trousers, and nothing else. My flightsuit had obviously been ruined.
“I need a shirt,” I muttered, my hands shaking as I wrenched a drawer open.
“Tell me what’s happening!” Anwir snapped.
“Aliza’s gone through the fucking rift , Anwir! It’s been a week.” I straightened, fixing my brother with a desperate stare.
He’d never been to the human world, but he knew what an extended visit meant for our kind. What it meant for Aliza.
“That’s not possible. You took her away. I saw you leaving Rhewlif Palace with her. You were supposed to keep her safe!” His voice rose steadily, until he bellowed the last words, lurching to his feet. “We need her!”
“I know!” I needed her.
What was I doing to myself? Why was I so intent upon destroying every good thing that came my way? I’d found happiness. Somehow, in the depths of darkness, I’d found a reason to live, and what had I done? I’d destroyed it, lying to myself that I was doing the right thing. That I was being selfless .
Was I truly so self-absorbed that I prized punishing myself over protecting and nurturing the people I loved? Was I so deluded that I could convince myself my actions were made with them in mind?
I hadn't done this for Aliza.
I’d done it to punish myself.
Who cared if I’d make a sorry excuse for a king? What did it matter? The selfless thing to do was to embrace my discomfort and step the fuck up. To be what she needed me to be.
Because I couldn’t live without her, but if I’d have stopped thinking about myself for long enough, I’d have realised that she couldn’t live without me either. Her dragonshit lies about not loving me were just that. Lies. But there was more to it than that, if only I hadn’t been too blinded by my own ego to see it.
“I need a fucking shirt!” I roared.
Anwir’s face whitened and he thrust his papers at Sage, tugging his shirt free of his belt and hastily fumbling the buttons loose. He tossed it at me.
I was still wrestling my arms into the sleeves when I teleported.