Chapter 49 When We Need Them Most #2
The strangest question. Had it never known loss before?
Had it been so sheltered its entire existence that it had never lost anyone that it cared about?
The odds seemed impossible, especially when you considered how old the creature was.
I was well equipped to answer it, though.
I’d experienced more than my fair share of loss in my lifetime.
My mother. My father. The few friends I’d been stupid enough to make when I was younger, back in the Third.
There were bodies piled high in the mausoleum of my memory.
“It feels like trying to make sand flow backward in an hourglass. It feels like being surrounded by people and being the only one who can’t find the air in the room.
It’s drowning on dry land. It’s the hollow ache of something that you know, from that moment on, will always be missing.
It is a pain so acute and incurable that poets, pirates, and politicians alike die from it. And it never ends.”
The Hazrax’s robes blew about it on the gentle, icy breeze.
It was silent. For a long time, it remained that way.
And then: “The fox’s soul is still with you.
It is currently sitting at your feet. It seems that the beast hasn’t realized that it’s dead yet.
It follows you like a little lost shadow. Does that make you feel better?”
Onyx hadn’t gone. He was still here with me.
I glanced down at my boots, knowing what he would look like if I could see him—glassy eyes black as little chips of jet, looking up at me so trustingly, so full of love—and I shook my head.
“No. It doesn’t make me feel better. But I am hoping it’ll make what I’m about to do easier. ”
Give him to me, Fisher. Please. I need him.
What are you going to do? Fisher asked, sounding cautious, but he did as I asked. I took Onyx from him and dropped down on my knees in the snow.
“Belikon and Madra were afraid of the Alchemists. They were afraid, because the people who came before me were capable of things they would never be able to do. The Alchemists sought perfect knowledge, and they possessed remarkable control over elemental magic. But they also chased immortality. I don’t want to make anyone immortal.
But if I’m capable of healing myself from awful burns and a hole in my chest, then I can heal a tiny fox. ”
The Hazrax had already been fairly still, but now it froze, its entire being locked in place as if cast in marble.
Fisher laid a hand on my shoulder, dropping down beside me in the snow. “Saeris, that’s not . . .” The second his eyes met mine, he abandoned whatever he had been about to say, though. “Never mind. If you think you can do it, then I believe you,” he said.
“Such a thing is impossible,” the Hazrax said. “The Alchemists tried and failed for centuries to bring their Fae loved ones back from the dead.”
“And I’m sure they tried very hard,” I bit out, already pulling my magic into me.
“But they were trying to bring back people. Onyx is tiny. I know I can do it.” The reserve of energy inside me flooded and brimmed over.
I kept on drawing my magic to me, regardless, the words Taladaius had spoken to me once in his office at the Fool’s Paradise playing on a loop inside my head.
The fact that your hands are healed now, after the damage I just witnessed, implies that you also have regenerative magic.
Physical magic. Power over the body. At some point, you might be able to heal others with your abilities . . .
“No amount of magic can cheat death,” the Hazrax said, in a pitying tone.
“That’s true.” I held up my hand for the Hazrax to see—the faint glimmers of light that had returned and were trailing around the outline of the rune it had given to me. “But with the gift you gave to me, I’m betting I can undo it for a moment.”
“You want to undo death?” it said disbelievingly.
“I do.” My magic was making me dizzy now. Such a tide of it poured into me, gaining momentum, saturating my entire being. I let it come, welcoming it in, allowing it to fill me until the rush of it felt almost unstoppable.
“All this for a fox?” the Hazrax scoffed. “Speak to her, Child of Shadow. Make her see sense. She’ll kill herself before she revives the animal.”
I wanted to tell Fisher not to stop me, but the power relaying around my body was too great now. I couldn’t find the clarity to speak, not even into his mind. Fisher’s hand pressed into the small of my back—strong, warm, comforting. I waited for the words of common sense to come . . .
Fisher spoke with resolve. “He isn’t just a fox. He’s family. And if Saeris says she’s going to save him, then she’s going to.”
“Such blind faith?”
“In her? Yes,” Fisher answered.
“And if she dies while trying to accomplish this fool’s errand?”
I felt my mate’s shrug. “It is her life to spend. Her decision. I will respect it.”
The sheer volume of power was starting to hurt now.
It clawed at my insides as if my body were a cage and it wanted to get out.
I wouldn’t be able to hold it for much longer.
I concentrated on splitting it down the middle.
I called on a part of myself that I’d never reached for before—on a rune I didn’t even have yet—and I fucking hoped with every last part of me that this would work.
“Look at me, child,” the Hazrax ordered. “All magic has its limits. If you proceed any further, you will shatter the rune I gave you. You will not be able to use it to save anyone else. You will not be able to use it to free your other friends from their oaths, as you freed your mate.”
I didn’t care.
There would be another way to free the others. I would find one. Make one if I had to. Right now, I was saving Onyx. I could sense the flicker of his spirit there, sitting next to me in the snow, watching me as I held my hands over his cold body.
“Do it, Osha,” Fisher whispered.
The Hazrax’s rune blazed, lighting up the night. The creature had called it a silent rune, had said that it didn’t possess magic the way my others did, but it sure as hell responded when I forced the flow of my magic into it.
And it hurt.
It kept on hurting as my palms swelled with light and poured into Onyx’s broken and bloody body.
So much magic. A monumental tide rolled through me and kept on going . . . and I was met with darkness. A nothingness so vast that trying to fill it felt like a ridiculous task.
Cold seeped into my fingertips and into my hands. It climbed up my arms, creeping slowly, slowly up toward my elbows. The agony of it fractured me—my body, my mind, my hope—leaving only my will intact. I would not give up here. Even if I wanted to, I suspected that I couldn’t.
I’d opened a door, and death stood on the other side of it. If I didn’t push it back and succeed in my goal, he would step through and claim me instead.
Higher.
Higher.
The cold of the eternal dark crawled up to my armpits.
Come on, Osha. You can do this.
Wind whipped at my hair. My eyes were closed or unseeing—I couldn’t differentiate. I was locked in a tug-of-war, funneling my magic into a bottomless vessel that did not want to be filled—
Keep going! Fisher urged inside my head.
The cold clamped around my throat, closing off my airways. It beckoned to me, promising such restful sleep . . .
I pushed harder, hurling my magic into the Hazrax’s rune. Blisters ballooned on the backs of both of my hands, filling and bursting in seconds, the flesh beneath raw and singed.
Yes. That’s it, Saeris. Go! Go!
One last push. One huge shove . . . and the door between this life and the next slammed closed.
The cold in my chest disappeared.
I—I—
Onyx’s eyes were closed. He was so still. He—
He moved. His paw. There! I saw it! It moved!
But his body was still broken. His side was torn wide open and bleeding afresh. He didn’t have long. I’d brought him back into his body, and it could not sustain him. He had a minute, maybe. Seconds. I reached for the magic I had bet everything on and found . . . nothing.
I’d used it all. There was nothing left. I’d drawn so much power to me, and it was all gone.
I reached for it again, again found nothing. I was falling through the air, stomach churning, weightless, trying to find a handhold, something to stop the fall, but there was nothing.
Panic—
No. There was no time for that.
I reached beyond my magic. Beyond my runes. Beyond the bond there, connecting me to my mate. I reached, fighting millimeter by millimeter, until I finally found what I was looking for.
I didn’t know the words.
Was I even supposed to say anything?
Was there some kind of covenant, or . . .
ahh, fuck it, my intentions would have to be good enough.
Death rattled the door handle. I could feel it.
He was coming for Onyx a second time. I acted quickly, plucking up a small kernel of the energy I had discovered, and I pushed it up, past my bond with Fisher, past the empty reserve where my magic should have been, into my body, into the raw Alchimeran shield that was smoking on the back of my hand . . . and then into the little white fox.
The world trembled in response, a shock wave rocking the snowy slope, and out of nowhere a grim white dawn broke over the saw-toothed mountain range of Ajun, casting back the dark.