Chapter Forty-Two. When There’s Nothing Left
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
WHEN THERE’S NOTHING LEFT
FARREN
Someone’s holding my hand. I don’t know why that sensation comes first, but it does. When I find the right button in my brain to wake up, it triggers the groggiest and most undignified of arousals. My eyelids heavy. My skin damp with sweat. My head overstuffed.
“Farren?” a hopeful voice says. A voice I know well. “Farren!”
A worried, handsome face greets me. James Murphy. He’s sitting next to me as sunlight casts his curls in a glow so bright his hair appears red. He’s not supposed to look so good.
“I’ll go get someone.” He rises and I clutch on to him tightly.
“What are you doing?” But that’s not what I want to ask. I examine the white walls. Where am I? Why do I feel run over?
I jolt my attention to my upper arm and the most concerning question comes into play. Why does this one area blaze in pain enough to dull every other sense? A little blood seeps through the secured white bandage. “What happened?”
“It’s going to be okay. As long as you’re awake it’s going to be okay.”
“No, how did I get—” This is when I take in my surroundings. I’m familiar with the plain hospital rooms in Forsen. But I’ve always been spectator to Shelly’s treatments and stays here. I was always hovering over her. Never in bed. Never in stabbing pain.
James makes sure I’m not about to jump to my feet. “All you need to do is rest.”
A flash of panic resurfaces and a part of me wants to push it down, push down what I know to be true. “Shouldn’t I be dead?” I whisper.
“I pulled you out of the water,” James answers firmly as if he doesn’t even like me referencing death.
“But Nity…” Now that I concentrate the memories flood in. A suffocating flood.
Nity. A spear. Blood.
“No, please no,” I beg. My body seems to spasm, wanting to cave in and protect itself from this one truth. Nity is gone.
James’s eyes fill with tears. “I’m so sorry, Farren. I’m so sorry.”
I don’t know who moves first, but I’m clutching James and he’s hugging me back. “Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?” I cry into his shoulder.
“She was gone, Farren. A spear hit her chest. She didn’t come up for air.”
It feels like my heart has been ripped out. Pain so blinding, so hot. All my other senses numb trying to figure out how to stop this hurt. But there is no stopping it. I feel hollowed out, blown open.
“The hatchlings?” I choke out, latching on to my only hope, that her young remain alive.
“They’re safe,” James reassures. “The scalers couldn’t find them in the tunnels just as we planned. I don’t think they even searched for them after … after Nity. Shelly and Jeffrey are at the sanctuary not taking their eyes off them. They are going to be so happy you’re okay.”
“Why … why would the poachers not search for them?” I whisper out my uncertainty.
At my question misery takes over his face. With Nity gone why not go for her babies? Zilar. Electrum. Their scales are noticeably coated in gold. But then I understand. There’s gold somewhere else as well and easier to steal. I all but dropped it before them at the entrance getting us out.
“The cave.” My voice is brittle. “We have to get to the cave!”
He holds me. “No, we don’t. They took it all.”
Tears stream down my face, angry harsh lines. “All?”
James squeezes his eyes closed. “Yes, but for now we just need to get everyone better.”
I freeze. “What do you mean everyone?”
“Farren. I’m so sorry.” James’s voice sounds like it’s going to crack open. “There’s something else you need to know.”
It takes longer than it should to absorb the information. Especially for someone who was already warned. That scaler wasn’t trying to goad me. He told the truth. Their attack was systematic. They weren’t going to let anything stop them from kidnapping Nity.
My father was attacked, stabbed in the stomach. He got out of surgery a few hours before I woke up.
“The doctors say everything is looking promising,” James reassures again. “They think he’ll live. Your mom is with him now and—”
At that moment Mom bursts into the room. “Farren? She’s awake?”
“Mom,” I cry out.
She throws herself on me, a cushion of warmth while she trembles with worry. “Thank goodness.” When she’s done crushing me, she cradles my face in her hands. “My brave, brave girl. Thank god.”
There’s a large cut on her forehead. Circles under her eye that may be bruises they’re so dark. Then real, blooming bruises on her arms. “Mom?”
“It’s okay. Nothing serious. I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“Mom, I—Nity—” I choke.
“I know.” She brushes my hair. “James told me everything.”
After I’m thoroughly checked out once again, I’m allowed into my father’s room. He lays still in the bed. I wonder if that is how I looked—suspended between life and death.
Then he cracks open an eye. “Hey, kiddo.”
I hug him so tight I worry I’ve hurt him, but he huffs out a laugh. “I’m okay. Everything is okay,” he says just like always. We stay like that for a good long while.
When Dad naps again and doctors are out of earshot, I whisper to James what I’ve needed to say for hours. “I have gold. A vial I carry with me always.” I pat my hospital gown. “It’s in the dress I was wearing.”
James’s face falls. “You don’t actually. Not in that vial.”
I turn toward him. “What?”
“I tried to save you with it. I used the silver dust I had. God, when I thought that wasn’t going to be enough…” James takes a heavy breath. He looks me directly in the eye. “As Jeffrey told me, he switched out your vial for iron and sprinkled the gold powder in Shelly’s teas for the last month.”
Disbelief consumes me. They were so firm in denying me. So much older and wiser. “He … he used it? But—”
“He didn’t want you to know. Didn’t want anyone to know, not even Shelly. Thought it would protect you and your family if he got caught. He planned to tell authorities he bought it off the black market.”
I think back to that day I’d first offered the vial after learning about Shelly’s remission. Jeffrey’s hand covering the vial. I can easily imagine a switch as I was overcome with uselessness.
He did exactly what I wanted him to. But that means …
“I think that’s how they knew,” Mom says softly.
I gape at her in horror.
“Not that it’s your fault or Jeffrey’s.” Her expression goes stone-still. “Those men are to blame. But I think that’s how they knew we possessed gold. Then they used the wedding as a cover to search the sanctuary.”
The tears come thicker. “They saw James and me go down the cliffs to check on Nity. That’s how they found her.”
“Farren, please don’t blame yourself. When they couldn’t find gold, they would have started threatening us. They probably only followed you in order to use you against Dad.”
“You don’t need to say they like we don’t know who sent those poachers,” James says, in a tone I’ve never heard before.
“James, honey,” my mom answers gently. “You can’t blame yourself either.”
He clenches his fists in his lap. “I don’t. But I’m just saying, you don’t need to tiptoe around the truth. My father ordered this.”
The next day I’m released from the hospital.
Two days after that, when I’m strong enough, James takes me to the caves.
I’m trying to see if maybe … maybe they missed a few pieces.
Not for me, though I’d appreciate the ache in my arm to fade.
And not even for Dad, who’s recovering slowly, but steadily.
There are three little dragons who need that gold, who are too young to be weaned off metal.
We can give them silver, but for Zilar it won’t be enough this late into development.
I’m not even positive Oria could survive only on silver.
Nity’s nest was always dark, but a gloom now lives in the newly forged shadows.
Without gold, or Nity, it’s emptied of its joy, its beauty.
No, it’s more than that, more than the visual emptiness.
The scene before me is also a hollow thing, devoid of possibility.
Because now there will be things that cannot happen.
Saving the entire species? Seeing Zilar, Electrum, and Oria grow up with strong metaled coats?
Nity’s existence broke open the impossible.
I spend all my energy searching for gold, trying to sense even a scrap of it.
Nothing. After a solid hour, I fall to my knees.
I begged her to trust me and she had. Failure, my brain loops the word.
Failure. But I didn’t just fail to save the last of the species, my charge.
I failed myself because I’ve been living only for her.
Pretending, hiding, breathing to protect her. And without her?
I’m nothing.
It should be me at the bottom of an ocean.
“You should have let me—” I start and then drop the sentence. Blame grows like vines over my heart, choking me.
“Don’t you dare say I should have let you drown,” James demands, pain etched in each word. He holds my shoulders; tries to calm my shaking. “You are worth more than gold. You are more precious than anything, and I almost lost you.”
I must not look convinced because he continues. “You know that, right? You know you are more precious than any metal.”
I nod as I sob like his words make sense.
But the thing is I’m not sure. I’m not sure my life is more precious than gold because with Nity now taken from me I feel less than worthless.
I’ve lost everything. The dragon I was meant to protect is gone.
Nity is dead. And now her babies will die too without her gold.
When I’ve gotten my fill of emptiness, I stand back up. I refuse to stay in this barren cavern when the hatchlings are in the barn, waiting for me. They’re my solace in this.
As always, the hatchlings are as excited to see me as I am them. They bound forward in bunny-like hops. My tears begin at once. Relief and happiness mix into the misery.
Oria nudges my armpit, and I let her crawl into my lap. Her scales stay silver, fear or maybe even grief keeping her unable to relax. It’s how I feel, coated in sorrow and pain.
I pet her and one of her scales catches my eye.
“James?”
“Yes?” His voice is also clogged in grief.
“Did Oria always have this one spot here?”
James lifts his head. “What spot?”
“This spot.”
He stares at where I indicate, where my fingertips rove over her chest. Because right there, right over her heart, a cluster of five scales shine gold. Not silver. Brilliant Nity-gold.
“That’s new,” James breathes.
“Oh my god.” I twist. “Electrum,” I call, pulling him to my side. I scan every last inch and yes, it’s there too. There’s more gold than silver.
“Where’s Hort?” I ask.
James doesn’t ask me why. He sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles, one long blast. A moment later, Hort trots into the barn, head swinging toward us with a look that asks, Playtime?
Same old Hort, who loves puddles of water and pools of sunshine. And I’ve grown used to Hort wearing his orange, black-tipped scales instead of his silver. Even more reason to test my theory. “Could you make him put on his metal?”
James frowns. “You don’t think?”
“I don’t know what I think. But I need to confirm.”
With a nod, James whistles. This time though, the sound echoes in a low register.
“Hort. Shield.” Like a sword drawn, silver covers Hort’s body, a brilliant shiny thing.
I step forward, peering at each scale, reaching out with my crafting to feel for it.
James scans as well. And then there it is, on the once-broken wing, right where we bandaged him for weeks—a patch of golden scales.
I gasp. “Do you know what this means?”
“Their metal can change. He’s turning golden.” James stares at Hort. “I have a golden dragon.”
A thought clangs in my head, hollow like the cave below. “Only if they keep eating gold.”
Rage ignites again in my heart. Nity’s gold wasn’t just nursing them.
She was protecting her children, turning them golden.
That’s why she was shedding for so long, why she was still vulnerable, why she spent so long filling the cavern with tons of the stuff.
She had to overwork, oversupply, in order to shield her kids.
Another thought adds on, heavy to the misery of losing Nity. If we can get that gold back, Oria will turn golden, fully golden. Which means Nity wasn’t just protecting her children, she was reversing extinction, creating a way for the species to continue.
A new resolution fills the emptiness in my gut. “I’m not letting her work go to waste. I’m getting it back. I’m stealing Nity’s gold back.”