Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Alistair screams. It’s such a raw and haunting sound that it feels as if someone is raking claws of ice down my spine.
Above us, Lyra’s legs buckle as the massive weight of the ice wall lands on her back. A roar of pain and desperation rips from her throat, and her entire body shakes as she forces herself upwards again so that we won’t get crushed underneath her.
“Lyra!” Alistair screams again, his voice breaking.
Tilting her right side downwards, she shoves up with her left shoulder and hip.
The ice wall slides to the right.
A boom echoes across the mountainside as it hits the stones.
The impact makes the ice shatter, and blocks of it roll across the ground.
I yank desperately against the boulders that keep my leg trapped, but it’s hopeless, so I just throw my arms over my head to protect myself against the chunks of ice that tumble down the sloping mountainside.
Pain pulses through me when some of them roll right over me, burying me further, but now they’re at least small enough in size that they don’t cause any life-threatening injuries.
The moment the ice wall hits the ground, Lyra shifts into a human.
Black smoke rolls over the mountainside, obscuring my view. I push at the rubble I’m now buried under, trying to claw my way out of it. But my leg is still trapped.
“LYRA!” Alistair suddenly screams in a voice that rips the air from my lungs.
I snap my gaze back to the space where the middle of Lyra’s dragon body used to be. For a moment, all I can see is smoke. Then a strong wind blows it clear, and my heart just… stops.
Lyra is lying on her back on the stone ground. Her eyes are glassy with pain, and blood sprays into the air and drips down her chin when she tries to draw a breath.
Chunks of ice roll down the mountainside as Alistair shoves aside the blocks that were burying him. Pure terror pulses across his entire face as he staggers to his feet and runs towards Lyra.
Grabbing my leg with both hands, I once more try to yank it out from the stones that it’s wedged between, but it’s impossible. A short distance from me, a pile of rubble is moving as Orion no doubt tries to get the stone and ice chunks off him and Isera.
Alistair throws himself down on his knees next to Lyra, and he takes her hand with such heartbreaking gentleness that I almost sob. Her eyes flutter closed.
“Lyra,” Alistair yells. “Open your eyes.”
She drags in a wheezing breath and then coughs more blood onto her chin. But a soft smile blows across her lips when her orange eyes focus on Alistair.
“You… made it,” she presses out. Then she draws in a strangled breath and coughs again. “I… don’t think… I will.”
“Yes, you will! Take my magic! It will heal you.”
“Don’t know… how.”
My heart clenches. Of course. Only the Icehearts and the Commander of the Dread Legion gets a fae life slave. None of the other dragon shifters know the technique to take our magic for themselves.
Alistair whips his head towards me and screams, “Selena! How do I give her my magic to heal her?”
Both times that Draven was healed by my magic, when I wasn’t wearing an iron collar, it involved me giving it to him freely.
The first time, in the pocket reality during the Great Games, I just did it without thinking.
I offered my magic, he took it, and I gave it.
Pure instinct in the heat of battle. No explanation behind it.
If that had been the only time I did it, I would have no idea how to explain to Alistair what to do.
But thankfully, the second time I healed Draven, which was in the cave after the battle above Rin’s floating isles, I actually asked him what I’m supposed to do when I give him my magic.
And now, I’m incredibly grateful that I did.
After quickly recalling what Draven told me back then, I yell, “You’re supposed to open the gates to your flow of magic and release your grip on it, and then you just breathe the magic into her!”
Panic and confusion crackle across his whole face, but he leans down over Lyra and presses his lips to hers. I desperately try to pull my leg out from the rubble again, but it still doesn’t budge.
Alistair snaps his head up and locks eyes full of dread on me. “It’s not working!”
On the ground, Lyra coughs again. Blood slides down from the sides of her mouth, and her chest shakes when she tries to breathe.
“I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do!” Alistair continues screaming at me.
“That’s not… what I wanted… our first kiss… to be…” Lyra presses out, and then tries to laugh. But it just turns into a severe coughing fit that sends a cloud of blood spraying from her mouth.
“Visualize a door between your chest and your throat that you open,” I call to Alistair. “And then visualize releasing the grip on your magic like unclenching a hand.”
He presses his mouth against Lyra’s again. But then he snaps his head back up, and locks eyes with me. “It’s not working!” Fear and panic pulse across his whole face. “I don’t know how to visualize something!”
“Create an image of it in your mind.”
“I don’t know how to create images in my mind!”
“Iron, then! Grab something made of iron! Then you don’t need to visualize.”
He whips his head from side to side. Chunks of stone and blocks of ice and pieces of furniture from the ice palace lay scattered all across the mountainside around us.
“Tell me where!” he screams at me.
My heart breaks when I realize that he doesn’t want to leave Lyra to search blindly himself, because he doesn’t want her to die alone if he can’t find anything.
Pushing myself up as far as I can, I sweep my gaze back and forth over the mess around us, desperately searching for something made of iron.
“I don’t… regret… anything,” Lyra gasps out. Blood bubbles pop on her lips with every word. “Only that we… didn’t meet sooner.”
“You are going to live,” Alistair growls. At her. At the universe. At the gods themselves. Deep agony is written all over his features, and tears stream down his face as he cups her cheeks. “I love you, you crazy dragon shifter. So you are going to live. Do you hear me?”
A burst of light glitters in Lyra’s eyes, and another smile touches her lips. “I… love you too… you insane fire-wielder.” She drags in a strained breath. “What a life… we would’ve had.”
“What a life we will have,” he insists, his voice breaking on those final words. “The sun doesn’t die. And you, Lyra, you are the sun.”
She smiles. It’s a broken smile tainted with blood, but her eyes shine like the warmest of sunlight.
“I should have told you months ago,” Alistair says, tears still streaming down his face. “And I would have, if I hadn’t been such a coward.”
“You… were worth… the wait.” She coughs, and her gaze slides in and out of focus several times. Blood trickles down from the corner of her mouth. “And I… will wait for you… in the next life… too.”
A cry of pure agony rips from Alistair’s lungs.
“Alistair!” I scream as my gaze finally snags on something sticking up between two chunks of ice. “The pipe! Grab the pipe!”
“Stay with me,” he forces out, and presses a desperate kiss to Lyra’s forehead.
Then he shoots up from the ground and sprints over to the broken piece of an iron pipe that is wedged between two blocks of ice. Fire whooshes through the air as he melts them in a flash. The metal pipe clangs as it hits the ground.
Lyra’s chest stops moving.
“Alistair!” I scream.
Snatching up the broken pipe, he lets out a hiss as the cold iron touches his palm, but he doesn’t hesitate one second as he sprints back to Lyra and throws himself down on the ground next to her. With the iron gripped in one hand, he cups her cheek with the other.
But Lyra doesn’t open her eyes.
“Come back to me, sunshine,” he pleads.
Tears stream down his cheeks as he draws in a deep breath and then presses his lips to hers. Then he breathes out.
Lyra’s chest rises as he breathes both air and magic into her body.
And for those endless seconds, it’s as if time isn’t moving at all.
There is no mountain looming above us. No shattered ice palace lying broken on the ground all around us. No past. No future. Just this one moment in time.
Then the breath ends.
Alistair pulls back.
For one second, he just looks down at Lyra’s beautiful face. The iron pipe falls from his hand, but his other palm still cups her cheek. Then he topples to the side.
I scream as Alistair just falls sideways, landing hard on the ground. His body tips over and then settles so that he is lying on his back. His hand is only inches away from Lyra’s cheek where the two of them lie on their backs, side by side.
Neither of them opens their eyes.