49. Farron
Farron
There is noise all around. Metal clashing against metal. The moan of my soldiers, fallen yet forced to walk. Dayton crying out my brother’s name.
But I hear only one sound.
Snap.
“Billy!” My voice is lost in the hiss of flames as orange fire envelopes my body. I fling myself over the cliff.
The propulsion of my blaze keeps me from free-falling as I search the dark and mist. There, sixty feet down. An outcrop of rock.
My brother.
Thatch of red hair. Freckled face. He’s lying on his back, limbs splayed, hands up and open. A maple leaf with the edges curled, fallen too soon from its branch.
I land beside him, flames extinguishing, and collapse to my knees. “Billy!”
His eyes are wide and glassy, and they dart around before they find my own. He doesn’t turn his head to look at me. A trickle of blood dribbles from his mouth.
“You…found me.”
“Of course I did,” I whisper, stroking his hair. “Of course.”
“I can’t…feel my…hands.”
His voice. So wet and raspy. So familiar. I know the cadence of this voice because I hear it in every nightmare. My mother’s voice, when her lungs were thick with blood.
No. No no no.
I won’t let this happen again. I promised this would never happen again. I made sure of it.
“You’re okay,” I tell him, but my words snap in half. “I’m going to fix this. It’s going to be okay.”
The power is close by, as if it were lingering just around the corners of my heart, watching, waiting. The gift of the Green Flame.
I gaze upward through the mist. Green lights dance along the edge of the cliffside. In their glow, I can barely make out Dayton and Dom, desperately trying not to be overrun. They need help. But I have to do this first.
Knit him back together, Malekai Furiondemius whispers in my mind. You can do it. Unbreak his spine. Pull the ribs from his lungs. Make him one of us.
I can do it. I won’t mess this up like I did with the soldiers. Billy will be just how he was, my brother, forever at my side.
The strange magic rises in me, blood humming. A cool heat burns my eyes, flooding my vision with a green haze as I’m flush with the Baron’s power.
Billy’s golden gaze burrows into mine, pupils shaking. “Where’s…my brother?”
“He’s up top, with Dayton. Dayton will keep him safe.”
“No.” Though weak, his voice is fierce. “Where’s my…brother? I want…my brother.”
What—
I release my hold on the Green Flame’s power, letting it drain out of me. My vision clears. “I’m here, Billy. I’m right here.”
“Don’t go. Stay…with me. ’Til the end.”
I curl over him, tears falling from my face onto his. “No, no, no, Billy. You’re not going anywhere. I’m going to keep you with me, okay? Okay? I’m going to fix your body. Fix you right up.”
A smile twitches over his mouth. “I don’t think…I need a body…anymore, Fare. Not where I’m going.”
“No.” The baron’s magic rises in me again. “I won’t let you go. You’re my brother. Mine. I have to keep you with me.”
That’s right, Farron, Autumn blood. Remake the world as you desire. It is yours to control.
Rage mingles with my fear and my grief. What did I do to keep losing them?
Is this my punishment? Was it never the beast but rather a curse to watch those I love die and die and die again?
I won’t let it happen. I gave the Baron a part of me, and now Caspian can yank on it at whim. It has to be worth something.
“I won’t let you die,” I gasp, putting my hands on my brother’s chest.
Billy’s eyes are losing their glassiness, but somehow, he still finds a way to hold my gaze. “Do you feel it? The wind found…me, even down here.”
“The wind?” There’s no wind. Only the dark, miserable mist.
Billy closes his eyes. His voice quickens, breaths coming in sharp gasps. “Smells like the orchards. There’re leaves. Do you see them? Yellow and red and orange. How’d…they…make it down here?” His eyes burst open, pupils huge. “It hurts, Farron.”
“I’ll make it stop.” I dig my fingers into his chest, feeling the flow of the Green Flame pass through my chest, over my arms—
“No.”
“No?”
Billy’s staring straight up now, even though there’s nothing there. “I…want…Mother…to recognize me…when I get…wherever I’m going.”
“No,” I say, because there is nothing else. “No, no, no.”
“I’m gonna keep protecting you, okay?”
I want to scream. To beg. To plead. But I stoop over my brother until we’re nose-to-nose, and I know, more than ever before, I must be brave.
Because he’s going somewhere I can’t follow. And he’s said he’ll watch over me there. So right now, in this last moment, I need to protect him.
Once again, I release the power of the Green Flame, willing it to become embers in the hearth that holds my magic. The baron’s screaming at me, telling me this is my chance, I must save him.
And I will. In the way he’s asked me to.
I close my eyes and listen. Listen for the wind my brother heard. It whispers out of his lungs, dancing around his body in celebration.
The last wind. We are the final breath of life as it passes into the beyond.
But it’s not an ugly thing. In fact, it’s beautiful. The changing colors of the leaves, their journey from tree to forest floor, the transitions to long nights filled with stars.
We are the grand adventure between life and death.
And as High Prince of Autumn, my job is to shepherd the journey.
There are other winds nearby. I feel them above me, snagged on bones too tired to carry on, caught in the half-life I trapped them in. They are thralls in a way. Thralls to life, which they no longer belong in.
Thralls to the Baron.
As I am.
“I’m going to protect you,” I whisper over the constellations of freckles on Billy’s face.
It’s not a spell read from a scroll, as I did in Autumn.
It’s a breath. My wind mixes with his wind. I will see you to the arms of our mother. Wait for me. One day, I will join you. And in the meantime, go on grand adventures, and I will do the same. When I next see you, we will have stories upon stories to last us until the end of time.
I keep breathing, one breath at a time. My wind flows with Billagin’s and up through the dark cavern to meet those of my soldiers. I will show you the way.
I gave you a gift, a voice snarls in my mind.
This is no gift, I say back. And I will not let it poison me anymore. For when it is my turn to join my family wherever the Autumn wind blows, I will have them look upon me and know my heart.
I expect him to fight. To crawl into the cracks of fear that lace through my body.
But I have my brother’s wind with me. For his last adventure in the Enchanted Vale, we blow together, filling my chest with all the strength and love of Autumn. And I feel something dark and evil within me extinguish.
Goodbye, little brother.
Up above, lights begin to wink out. One by one, the soldiers I cursed with the Green Flame blow away like embers on a wind.
The air becomes very still.
Now, knowing he is free of pain, I grab Billy’s body and clutch him tight. My heart is shards, as shattered and jagged as bones dashed upon rock.
But it is mine, fully and completely.
“You did that,” I whisper to my little brother, rocking him against my chest as if he were but a baby. “You gave my heart back to me.”
I can’t endure the thought of him down here in the dark. Orange flames envelop us as I propel up the cliffside.
Dayton and Dominic stand back-to-back, surrounded by the fallen bodies of our comrades. Free now to go wherever their families await them.
Dayton’s breathing heavily. He rubs his chest and shakes his head, skin pale. “F-Fare…”
I lower Billy to the ground, and Dom lets out a horrid wail. In this moment, his soul, his heart, has forever been cleaved in two.
I collapse, burying my face in my dead brother’s chest, and howl my grief into the abyss.