Chapter 51
Chapter
Fifty-One
What I expected to feel when being suffocated by a creature nearly five times my size, never came.
The breath should have been knocked out of my lungs. My vision should have been dark, fogged with blood. My bones should have been crushed and my muscles should have been torn. But they weren't. I felt perfectly fine aside from my sore behind and the wound on my arm.
With a hefty thud, the alpha’s body flattened into the dirt in front of me, unchangeable in its state of death with various marks of magic inking its grey flesh.
For only an instant, everything around me felt completely peaceful. The stars lit up the sky, glimmering onto the fading glow of my own skin. There were no clanging swords or growling hybrids. The only sound I could make out was the bloodcurdling screams of Sawyer right beside me.
I snapped back into reality real quick.
“Pia!” Sebastian hollered her name over and over until she dropped to her knees in front of Sawyer.
My eyes raked down his torso, pausing at the hole in his shirt. Or should I say, hole in his stomach.
To the left of his navel, was a literal crater.
A jagged pit delved into his abdomen, from the Hykah's jaw, by the looks of it. Blood so thick it appeared black oozed from the wound in a heavy stream. Some small clots rolled down the lines of Sawyer’s abdomen, showcasing their failed attempts to dam the injury.
“No. No. No.” My voice quivered, increasing into a scream of my own.
He had jumped in front of me. He had moved me out of the way and took the force of the Hykah all for himself.
He without a doubt saved my life, but at what cost? His own?
“Oh my gods,” I repeated a few times in a panic. Layers of muscle and shredded fat dripped out the sides of the incision. A literal chunk of his body was missing. I had never seen anything like it, and if it weren't for the adrenaline coursing through me, I may have blacked out.
I crawled to Sawyer’s side, gripping his face in my hands. His eyes were sunken and nearly lifeless, though he still blinked every few seconds.
“Sawyer. You do not get to die on me. Not today,” I growled, shaking his face in my trembling palms. “Sawyer!” I cried out, putting my face closer to his.
Though it took him a moment, his emerald eyes found mine. His mouth parted and he pinched out a few coarse words. “I’m so sorry.”
Hair fell into my face as I shook my head, tears pouring out of me like a volcano had erupted. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Tears welled in his eyes as a single drop of blood fled his lips.
My sight dropped to where Pia worked to stop the bleeding, but she hadn’t made any progress.
I looked up at her. “What’s going on?”
Her head shook solemnly, panic overwhelming her features. “I can’t do it.”
“What do you mean you can’t do it?” Sebastian shouted back.
She held her bloody palms up for him to see. “I mean, I can't do it! It's too much. Too much blood and too big of a wound for just me to heal.”
“Am I going to die?” Sawyer rasped.
I put my full attention back on him. “No. You’re not going to die. Keep your eyes open. Focus on me. Breathe.”
“Maeve—” Pia began, the tone of her voice implying to prepare for the worst.
“No.” I shook my head. “No!” I yelled, pushing up to my feet. “Is anyone else here a healer? Anyone?”
No one budged.
I looked to my father. “You must have something in the infirmary ward that can help. Venay must have left some sort of enchanted salve. Go get it. Please! Get more healers!”
Though he looked about as optimistic as a plague, he ran off as swiftly as his aged legs could take him.
I dropped back down to my knees, ripping a mumbled groan from Sawyer's lips as I pressed my wet palms into his wound, trying to stop the bleeding from being so brisk.
It wasn’t enough.
I leaned over, putting my entire upper arm and shoulder into the wound, covering his bleeding body with my own.
My head in line with his face I croaked out. “Why did you do that?”
“On the gods, the moon, and the stars,” he rasped, sucking in a wet, bloody breath, “I will always protect you.”
A jolt of something like electricity shot through my body.
My vision briefly returned to where our blood mixed before refocusing on his fading expression.
Think, Maeve, think.
Sawyer's eyes were fogging over, turning white like the dying Draemornians had.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, blinking up towards the veil before dropping his gaze onto me. “Please. Please take me beyond the veil. I know I don’t deserve it. But please.”
His life began to flicker throughout my mind. It faded in and out, showing small glimpses of his memories.
“He’s dying,” I breathed out, my eyes frantically meeting Sebastian’s.
He fell to his own knees, replacing my hands with his larger ones to try and fill the hole in Sawyer's stomach. Blood seeped through his fingers despite the pressure.
“Keep trying, Pia!” I urged, feeling nothing other than pure panic.
“I’m—” Sawyer garbled, coughing out a mouthful of dark, clotted blood.
No.
“Sawyer, please. You can’t leave me. Not like this. You’re my best friend. I need you,” I wailed, my sweaty hair caking to my forehead as I dropped it to his shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was nothing more than a wet rumble through a wave of fresh blood.
“Stop apologizing,” I snapped, pulling my head back and deepening my brows. “You’re gonna be fine.”
Tears filled his eyes as he shook his head, his bloody lips quivering. “This is why I needed to tell you. I’m so glad I got to tell you.”
Another one of his memories flashed before my eyes—the moment we met. When he showed me to the throne room after the Jewel-Light Ceremony last year. The memory took me out of reality as quickly as it brought me back.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Sebastian shaking his head, while Pia kneeled behind him, no longer even attempting to heal the impossible wound.
Sawyer’s eyes began to close. I gripped his cheeks, forcing them back open. “Come on, Sawyer. Archer will be back any minute.”
His jaw went slack, his cheekbones relaxing as the rest of his face fell utterly still and he lost consciousness.
He was fading fast, and though I was unsure if it would work, and it would undoubtedly go against the gods balance, I had to try. He couldn't die. Not for me.
“Sawyer.” I shook him awake and drew his eyes into mine, then called upon the power within my constellastones, feeling their familiar tingle.
“Do not die.”
“Are you going to go see him?” Sebastian asked me when I finally emerged from the bath.
The water had run red from all of the blood that had stained my skin, but I still stayed until it turned ice cold.
Wringing my hair out into my towel, I nodded. “How is he?”
“Stable. Thanks to you.” He kicked his boots off, having just returned to our room from his time in the infirmary ward.
While he and Kohen had carried Sawyer to the infirmary, I came up here to clean up, per Sebastian's request. I had been covered head to toe in the blood of my friend.
“You were right, Venay had left some salves which helped a good amount. Archer woke some of the other healers who were able to help Pia close the wound after doing some detail work on the inside. I guess part of his intestine was perforated and leaking, so they had to clean that up.” He ran a hand through his hair, matted down with sweat.
“They don’t even know what part of the Hykah caused an injury that bad. ”
I grimaced and dropped onto the bed, lazily pulling on some loungewear. Numb was the only word to describe how I felt. My magic had saved Sawyer, but knowing that I just created an uproar in the balance of nature terrified me.
Life and death must always balance each other out. Especially when manipulated with.
Sebastian approached me, brushing his knuckles along the nape of my neck. “Are you okay?”
“Sure.”
“Maeve…Tell me the truth.”
“What do you think? My best friend almost just died, and he was talking to me the same way the Draemornian had back in the interrogation room. Then I disrupted the balance of life and death to save him, and now I’m too scared to even go see him because—”
Sebastian's eyebrows lowered. “Because why?”
“I don’t want to relive what happened back there quite yet. And if I go see him, all I’ll see is him dying in my arms. And I can’t handle that again right now. I just can't.” My voice broke at the end, cracking as my eyes were swallowed by tears.
Sebastian pulled me into his arms, wrapping them snugly around me. “You don’t have to go right now. He’s not awake, anyway. Why don't you try to rest? You can visit in the morning if you're feeling up to it.”
“Yeah,” I squeaked out, but I wouldn't be here in the morning.
“Seb? Are you in there?” Azain's voice followed his knock.
“It's open,” Sebastian called back.
Azain, Kohen, and Kade sauntered into our room, all of them looking beyond defeated.
“Where’s Pia?” I asked Kohen directly, noting her unusual absence.
“Showering, She just finished with Sawyer. I think she's going to try and rest after.”
“Good thing you two were out there,” Azain said, casually dropping into the armchair as if he owned it.
“What were you guys doing out there that late anyway?” Kade questioned.
Sebastian and I hesitated, and our brief glance towards each other was enough of a response.
“Oh, come on,” Kohen scoffed, genuinely shocked. “In the courtyard? Seriously?”
“You have a bedroom!” Kade bellowed, splaying his hands by his head. “Is there anywhere you two haven’t fucked?”
My cheeks burned.
“Haven’t been in your room yet, Lyrise,” Sebastian shot back.
“We went out there to get high,” I added in defense, not that it made our situation much better. “What happened after that is no one's business.”
Kade, disgusted, hung his head and scoffed.
“I know the rest of Mealioria's soldiers won’t be here for a few days, but I think we need to do something about this. Now. They know where we are and there will be more. We can’t keep dancing around the problem. We need to act.” My tone was a stern threat to not argue with.
“What are you suggesting we do then? Pack up and leave now?” Azain inquired. “No offense, but you still need the rest of Mealioria’s soldiers, or you are just as screwed as you were before.”
“That battle was intense with what we had, and it's only going to be worse in Draemor,” Kohen added, Kade agreeing with a low grumble.
“No. We're slightly less screwed,” I countered.
Sebastian swiped a hand down his jaw. “We could entertain the idea of leaving in the morning?” he suggested with a degree of apprehension.
Kade seemingly felt like he could make the decision for us. “No. We can hold out a few days for the rest of the soldiers to show up. Should more Hykahs show up, we know how to kill them and we know that we can. We will be much better waiting off to have a full army before we attack Draemor.”
“Once again, we're just going to wait around to die?” I retorted in plain disbelief, crossing my rather sore arms around my chest.
Kade stepped towards me, his stare hollow. “If we go to Draemor unprepared, we will all die anyway.”