Chapter 24
ADERYN
Stone.
Roland had literally turned into stone, right before my eyes.
One moment he’d been trying to deny me, telling me he didn’t need my help—I wanted to think because he was trying to protect me—and the next he was made of pale, smooth, nearly translucent stone.
“No, no, no,” I muttered, grabbing his arms and shaking him, as though he was just drifting off to sleep and that would wake him up, but instead, it sent him wobbling back and forth, and I wrapped my arms around his middle, afraid he would topple over and shatter into a million pieces.
I couldn’t lose him. Not Roland. I needed him, whether he was sick or angry or addicted to my blood and needed me to open a vein for him every single day. None of that mattered. Only he did. Only Roland.
When I was sure he wouldn’t topple and shatter, I reached up to cup his cheek, and it was cool under my sweaty palm. Roland was never cool. Even though humans tended to run cooler than dragons, Roland had always been warm against me.
“Roland. Roland please, you have to wake up. I”—my voice cracked, and big fat, sloppy tears started to roll down my face—“I can’t do this without you.”
I didn’t want to say it, but as things were, I couldn’t do anything without him. I couldn’t transform and carry the stone he’d become back to the palace, and beg his family to help me. If anyone could fix it, it would be Gillian, but she was so far away, in Brynaf, taking care of the twins.
Without my wings, I could never hope to get Roland to her.
I couldn’t hope to take Roland anywhere. He was made of stone, and far too heavy for my weak two-legged form to move at all.
“Please, Roland, I need you. Please don’t leave me.
” I buried my face in his unforgiving stone chest, and that made the tears come even harder.
Roland was always there for me. Always soft and warm and willing to drop everything to wrap his arms around me and tell me that everything was going to be fine.
The worst thing I had faced since the Battle of Windy Pass was the one thing Roland couldn’t help me with: the loss of himself.
But no. No, I didn’t accept that.
I would not lose Roland.
I left my arms wrapped around his middle, and slowly, gently lowered him into the sand.
Halfway down, my arms started straining to bear the weight of a statue the size of my best friend, and the fact that I was sweaty and sobbing wasn’t helping me keep traction, so the smooth stone started sliding down, out of my hold.
I paused there like that, wrapping my arms fully around him again, holding him tight to me, even as my arms screamed in pain at the continued weight of him.
That didn’t matter.
He was Roland, and no matter how heavy he was, I would carry him wherever I had to. Whatever had to be done.
And if I couldn’t get him away from there, then . . . then I would lie down there with him in the sand and reeds and die alongside him.
Life without Roland, I realized in that moment, simply wasn’t an option. I had no life, if Roland wasn’t in it.
Once more, I started lowering him, and finally, just as I was sure the muscles in my arms would tear from the exertion, we reached the ground.
We lay there, him in the utter silence of his alabaster perfection, and me panting and wheezing like an old man who had just tried to run for the first time in a decade.
When I finally caught my breath, I leaned in over him, looking down into his closed stone eyes, beseeching. “Roland. Please Roland.”
But it was no use. He couldn’t hear me. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, return to me.
But . . . I knew what was wrong with him, didn’t I? I knew why this had happened, why he had been so out of sorts, hearing things and angry for no real reason. I knew what he needed.
What he’d told me he didn’t want.
So if I gave it to him, it was . . . it was a betrayal, of sorts. I would be taking his choices away from him, forcing him to do something he didn’t want to.
Would he ever forgive me if I forced my blood on him?
It didn’t matter, I realized. Because Roland was more important than I was. Oh, maybe not to him, or my family, but to me? Roland was everything.
I sat back, looking both of us over, and realized that neither of us had a single sharp object on us.
I’d been naked from flying, and Roland had been kidnapped.
Of course they weren’t going to let him keep a dagger.
I cast around, looking for sharp rocks or jagged plants or anything that looked likely to cause damage, but there was nothing.
How was there nothing?
When I randomly slipped and fell outside, there was always a sharp rock just waiting to break thin two-legged skin. But when I needed something, there was only sand and tall grassy plants.
If I could find a shell on the beach—but who had time to spend all afternoon searching the beach?
No, I had one option, and nervous as it made me, there was no choice.
I had to summon up my own claws.
Last time I’d tried to touch the dragon inside me, it had hurt so much it had made my whole body convulse, and it hadn’t been all that long ago. No doubt I had not healed much in the intervening hours.
There was no choice now, though. I had to cut myself. Had to bleed for Roland.
I reached deep inside myself, and part of me instantly shied away, because my dragon was a huge ball of pain.
Absently, I wondered if I had done myself real, lasting damage by flying so far on an injured wing. Maybe I would never fly again.
That didn’t matter, though. Again: all that mattered was Roland. Roland, safe, back in Llangard, and most of all, not made of stone.
So instead of letting the dragon fall away as soon as the pain came, I grabbed it, demanding it come to me. Not the whole dragon, I promised myself. Just my claws. I had need of them.
I wrestled with myself for long, tense moments, sweat beading on my brow and the world seeming to grow hotter, but just as I feared I was going to explode trying, there it was. A single claw. Not even all of them, but it was enough.
I dragged it along my opposite forearm, making sure to draw blood, and not allowing myself to wince away from it. No, I didn’t like bleeding. I especially didn’t like drawing my own blood, let alone for this, but if it fixed Roland, that was all that mattered.
I turned my arm and let drops of blood fall, crimson and shining in the midday sun, across Roland’s alabaster lips. It dripped over them, bright and garish, like the color ladies at court sometimes used to make their lips seem bigger, sliding between the slightly parted lips, and . . .
Nothing happened.
I waited for long, excruciating minutes, counting to a hundred once, and then again, and still nothing.
The tears came again then, and I fell across his chest, sobbing.
“No. You can’t do this. Not to . . . to Llangard.
To Tris and Bet. To your aunt. To me. Please Roland.
I can’t—I can’t live without you. I”—I had to stop, to gasp for breath, my whole chest seizing up and trying to refuse to breathe at all—“I love you.”
I wiped the blood away from his lips, suddenly too dark and too garish and too much, because Roland’s lips were never meant to touch that. Roland’s lips should only touch good things.
Maybe . . . maybe if I’d been able to become a dragon again. Maybe what he needed was real dragon blood. Maybe it was all my fault, and I would never see his perfect blue eyes again.
Only the white nothing before me. Only stone.
Maybe it was all I deserved, for running away instead of facing my problems.
Leaning down, I pressed my lips to Roland’s cold, stone mask of a face.
That was it, then. I would lie down and stay beside him, forever. This was where we ended.
But then, his lips warmed beneath mine, and a moment later, he was kissing me back. When my eyes flew open, his were as well.
No shade of blue had ever been as perfect or as beautiful as the feathery vibrant blue of Roland’s irises. When he reached up to wrap his arms around me, no touch had ever been better.
I fell against him and cried again, this time because we weren’t going to die here. At least, not like this.