Chapter 3
Mikael
At first, there was only pain. It pulsed through Mikael in deep, relentless waves.
The pain burned sharp along his ribs and through his shoulders.
Every breath he tried to take sent icy daggers through his chest until even the act of being alive felt like something forced upon him rather than chosen.
Beneath it all, the cold lingered still. Not the kind from being buried in the snow, but something that had seeped into his bones and refused to release its claim.
Then came the sounds. First it was nothing more than a buzz like a cicada in the summer. Loud, obnoxious, and with no purpose to a human being. But then slowly, words started to swirl out of the hum. Someone was speaking, but to who? Him?
The tornado in his head kept any coherent thoughts from forming. He tried to move, but his body was disconnected from any commands. He couldn’t even open his eyes. Through the pain and the chaos, he was a prisoner within his own body.
But then she moved closer. Or maybe she had already been close, he wasn’t sure. He was so cold, but he recognized that the only warmth he felt was when she touched him. A touch that seemed to allow his dragon to stir from its slumber even when it should have been healing him.
Why was he not healed?
Her hands pressed against his skin as she examined him. He felt their heat followed by the inexplicable chill when she pulled away. He wanted to protest when she moved away, but his voice failed him time after time.
A voice came with the touch. It was soft and low, yet somehow familiar. He couldn’t grasp the words at first as they moved through the haze. He tried to follow it blindly, but his thought process was too sluggish. He couldn’t pull himself from the bog that he seemed to have fallen into.
“…easy… you’re alright…”
The words slipped through him but dissolved before he could hold onto them. Frustration flickered weakly because he should understand, and he managed to move his hand slightly, but beyond that, he didn’t have the strength.
There was another voice nearby. It was a child’s voice, but Mikael couldn’t understand his words any better. Panic flared through the chaos and he tried to make sense out of… anything. He had no idea where he was and no matter how much he fought, he couldn’t remember how or why he got there.
Freezing cold… free falling…
Mikael’s thoughts tried to latch onto something solid, anything to make sense of his situation or the events leading up to it, but the effort was too much and slipped away from him.
He felt her move away and tried to stop her. All he managed was a slight groan.
“It’s okay,” the woman murmured as she moved closer again. “I’m right here.”
Something in him quieted, but not entirely and he had no idea why.
Beyond the pain and the cold sensation, his dragon twitched and tried to respond.
That only added to the complexity of the situation.
His dragon felt sluggish and detached, something that had never happened before.
But somehow, much as he himself felt the warmth of her touch, the dragon was drawn toward the woman’s voice like it recognized her.
But also, just like his own mind, he could feel the confusion in his dragon.
Nothing was as it should be. It should have been pushing against the injuries and forcing his body back into alignment the way it always had before, the way it was meant to.
Mikael should have been healed by now, regardless of the injuries.
But he wasn’t. His dragon was pretty much useless.
Mikael became aware of that slowly as his thoughts struggled to piece themselves together but all he could come up with is that his body was still broken in ways the dragon should not have allowed.
Why?
The question dragged through him but the answer remained incomplete. He couldn’t focus long enough to come close to a solution.
Stay.
The word popped into his mind suddenly like a possessive command that made no sense. It came from the dragon, weak as it may be. A word of warning or a plea, Mikael couldn’t tell. The warmth pulled away again and he once again felt the chill that was difficult to ignore.
Mikael’s fingers twitched weakly against whatever surface they rested on, the effort small but significant. He tried to hold onto her presence, but the cold crept back in.
“No…” It came out more like another groan than an actual word, but it cost him what little strength he had left to muster.
“Lyra, what’s wrong with him?”
Lyra.
The child’s voice echoed in the chambers of his mind. He knew that name. It was familiar to him but he couldn’t figure out why. The memory remained somewhere just beyond his reach.
“He has several injuries, Beckett. His ribs, his shoulder, and he has a severe frost bite. I don’t know how long he was buried in the snow before we found him.”
“How’d he get there?”
He heard Lyra huff out her breath. “That is a good question, honey. Maybe we can ask him when he wakes up.”
“When will he wake up?”
Even Mikael sensed her patient frustration.
“Why don’t you go watch television for a little while? I think your show is on.”
Through the fog in his head, Mikael heard little footsteps hurrying away. Then the warmth brushed his skin again, firmer this time. His body reacted instantly, and his dragon settled down under the calm presence.
Lyra.
Despite her warmth, darkness pressed in around Mikael like deep water. He fought against it so he could focus on her.
“Mikael?” Her voice was soft and close to his ear.
How did she know his name?
He clawed toward the sound and tried to break the confusion that held him quiet, but nothing happened. He could no longer force his body to move on command, not even to twitch a finger. Panic fluttered but the darkness dulled even that. Sleep was close by, but he fought against it.
“Mikael, I don’t know if you can hear me…” Her voice stayed low and quiet.
He wanted to answer but the words stayed trapped in whatever limbo had swallowed him. A slow, grinding ache lodged somewhere behind his right temple and spread in dull waves through the haze in his head.
“You’ve been badly hurt, and I need to know what happened. Why were you near the mountain? What am I supposed to do?” She let out a sigh and pulled her hand away. “What am I doing? He probably can’t even hear me.”
How had he been hurt? He reached for the memory, and pieces surfaced only to dissolve again.
Cold. Wind biting at his face, and horses. He remembered horses. And a snow cat. Had the cat spooked his horse and thrown him?
He tried to hold onto it, to make sense of it, but the details blurred and slipped away and left him back in the dark.
A frustrated groan built inside him, but it never made it past whatever invisible barrier locked him inside himself.
Lyra was speaking again, her voice low and tight with concentration.
“It doesn’t make sense, but it is what it is,” she muttered and he wasn’t even sure if she was speaking to him or herself.
He felt her smooth his hair back. “That’s why the wounds aren’t closing like they should be.
” She tapped on something. “I was hoping I was wrong, but I checked everything twice.”
What is she talking about?
“The blysembloom test has always been accurate.”
He had never heard of a blysembloom. What was accurate?
As if she could hear his frazzled mind, she paused and touched his shoulder. “Just in case you can hear me, I mixed a drop of your blood with water and then added two drops of blysembloom extract. Nothing should have happened, but in your case, it turned black.”
Her words were distant and he really wanted to sleep, but he tried to pay attention the best he could. He would have frowned if he could. He still had no idea what she was talking about.
“You were poisoned, Mikael, and I have no idea with what. It’s definitely nothing I’m familiar with, but I’m limited on what I can do.
” She paused. “I need to call the castle, but what if someone tried to kill you? The snow is pretty deep out there from the blizzard, so I’m counting on that being my excuse for not reporting this immediately.
” She let out a sigh. “I’m just hesitant to call anyone until I have a better idea of what happened in case this was an assassination attempt. ”
Poison in his blood? No. That couldn’t be right. He fought again to sort his fractured memory. An ache in his skull flared white-hot, and his ability to remember shattered completely.
“No idea how it got into your system, but I’m going to figure it out.” Her thumb brushed across his knuckles. “You’re not allowed to die over some ridiculous poison; do you hear me?”
He poured everything he had left into trying to move the hand she held so he could squeeze it back, just to give her some sign, but his body remained stubbornly still.
Silence stretched until she spoke again. “I know you’re still in there, and I’ll find you.”
He gave up fighting the exhaustion that wanted to claim him. He was trapped in the dark with his memories slipping away, but he was still there.
And Lyra was waiting for him to find his way back.