Chapter 24 Svenn
Dawn arrives painting the cell walls in shades of gold. Aelfric's sword is still lodged in my sternum. The blood has long since dried, creating rust-colored waterfalls down the stone and my chest.
The pain should be unbearable. Instead, I hang here in silence.
"You still with us, vampire?" Hrolf's voice drifts from the neighboring cell.
I ignore him. What is there to say? That I'm counting down to the end of everything that matters?
Maybe she will pull through. A small voice whispers.
Rhianelle is a fighter. She survived the forbidden forest for nine hundred years.
A child alone in a forest of horrors, abandoned by everyone who should have protected her.
I remember her telling me about it. How she'd hidden in hollow trees during the darkest hours, befriended creatures with too many teeth and eyes that glowed in the shadows.
Now she's dying because of me.
I have destroyed everything I have ever touched. I don't know why I thought she would be any different.
"Stop that."
I open my eyes. "Stop what?"
Hrolf grunts. "That spiral you're in. I can hear it from here."
"You don't know what I'm thinking."
"I've been around long enough to recognize the sound of someone tearing themselves apart from the inside." The dwarf shifts, chains rattling. "You can't remember what happened, so you're filling in the blanks with the worst possible version of events."
I hear her heartbeat, distant and labored. Thirty-five beats per minute.
It's been dropping steadily since they took her from me. Every hour it slows a little more. Fear strikes me to the bone every time there's a pause that lasts a fraction too long.
Please keep fighting. I whisper to her through the impossible distance. Please don't give up now. Not after everything you've survived.
Everything else fades. The sword in my chest becomes distant, the flooded prison, Hrolf's occasional comments. All of it recedes until there's only that soft thumping from the healing house. It's the only thing keeping my sanity intact. The only proof that I haven't lost everything yet.
The sound of footsteps in the corridor pulls me from my vigil. I recognize the gait before I see him.
Red.
He appears at my cell door in his crimson cloak, dressed in plain clothes rather than armor. His face is drawn, exhausted.
"Still alive, I see," he says, looking up at me pinned to the wall.
Unfortunately.
"I came so you wouldn't worry when you suddenly can't sense her." He produces the prison keys from his belt. "They're transferring her to Southern Fort."
Panic spikes through me. "Why? If they move her in her condition—"
"The healing springs there are stronger. Crystal-fed with Malachite, it has more blessings than what we have here." He unlocks my cell door and steps inside, water sloshing around his boots. "The healers think it's her best chance."
"When?"
"Within the hour. I wanted you to know before her heartbeat disappeared from your range. I didn't want you thinking..." He swallows the next words.
He didn't want me thinking she'd died.
"Thank you," I manage.
Red goes still for just a moment. He wasn't expecting that. Frankly, neither was I.
He approaches carefully, eyeing the sword embedded in my chest and the wall behind me. "We need to get you down from there."
"It's fine."
"We're doing this." He grabs the sword hilt, testing it. The blade doesn't budge. It's lodged deep in the stone. "Hrolf, can you help?"
"Finally, someone with sense," the dwarf mutters from his cell. "Get me out of these chains and I'll help. I can't move easily with the damned thing."
Red hesitates for a moment, looking between us. Then he moves to unlock Hrolf's cell and free him from his irons. The dwarf emerges, rubbing his wrists where the shackles had been. He splashes through the water to examine the sword up close.
"You boys have no respect for dwarven steel," Hrolf mutters, running his hand along the blade. "This is masterwork. Forged in the deep fires of Darvan."
"Can you get it out?" Red asks.
"Of course I can get it out. Question is whether the vampire wants it out."
They both look at me.
I'm too tired to bother.
"Seems I'm always fishing blades out of you." Hrolf grumbles and grips the hilt with both hands. "Right then. This is going to hurt."
Together they work to extract the blade. Red positions himself to catch me when I fall. Hrolf braces his feet against the wall for leverage, muscles bunching in his thick arms.
"On three," Hrolf says. "One. Two—"
He pulls on two, the lying bastard.
The blade slides free leaving a wide gaping wound in my chest. Fresh blood flows freely before my vampire healing kicks in.
My legs go out and the floor comes up fast.
Red catches me before I can collapse, hauling me back against the wall until I can hold myself upright. He drags a chair over with his foot and shoves me into it.
"Look at this edge. Still sharp and true," Hrolf grumbles, examining the blood-covered blade. "They don't make them like this anymore."
He produces a cloth from somewhere and begins cleaning it with careful strokes.
“Aelfric was out of his mind when he did this," Red says quietly, crouching beside me. "You have to understand, he lost her sister before. Aerin was more than just his mentor. She was everything to him."
"I know," I rasp.
"I don't think he'll survive if anything happens to her." Red's voice drops to something barely meant for me.
At least when this is over Eyepatch can die. I have to suffer this for eternity.
There's no fight left in me. I slump against the wall, letting the wound knit itself closed slowly.
I've never treated her right. Protected her, yes. Fought for her, certainly. But I've never cared or loved her the way she deserved. The girl believed I was disgusted with her for months. She thought I found her repulsive when the truth was I was terrified of hurting her.
The thought of wading through this endless existence without her is eating me from the inside out.
"How bad is she?" Hrolf asks quietly. There's genuine concern in his gruff voice.
"They stopped the bleeding," Red says carefully. "But she lost too much blood."
"So give her more," Hrolf says, frowning. "Surely you have a reputable healing house here."
"She has a rare type. Loran-Sylphvein. Maybe one in ten thousand elves carry it.
" Red runs a hand through his hair, a gesture of frustration and helplessness.
"Her uncle kept reserves stored at the capital for emergencies.
Self-Blood rite, they call it. Using her own blood that was drawn and saved earlier. "
"Get the reserves then."
"The capital is in ruins. A missive was sent, but the healing house has crumbled."
The silence that follows is heavy.
Hrolf lifts his head. "I carry Loran-Sylphvein."
Both Red and I turn to stare at him.
"All due respect Master Hrolf, but you're a dwarf," Red says slowly. "Dwarven blood and elven blood, they're not—"
"Are we not all children of Wildermar?" Hrolf interrupts.
His voice carries the weight of mountains and ancient knowledge carved in stone.
"Before your people forgot the old ways and started worshipping the Seventy-seven as gods, we came from the same place.
The stone remembers what the forest chooses to forget. "
"What are you saying?" I ask. My voice comes out hoarse, desperate.
"Before Casimir conquered the interior of this continent, before your precious Aelfheim even existed, elves and dwarves were one people.
" Hrolf's eyes are distant, seeing something beyond the prison walls.
"We came from the same land, far across the sea.
Wildermar shaped us both. Then came the separation and war.
Different paths, same roots and destination. Same blood."
"That's just a myth," Red protests.
"Your scholars love to forget inconvenient truths." Hrolf fixes him with a hard stare. "But the mountain dwarves remember. We keep the old stories. We know where we come from, even if you don't."
Hope sparks in my chest for the first time since I found Rhianelle bleeding out.
"Test it if you do not believe me." Hrolf extends his arm. "What's the harm in trying? Unless you'd rather watch her die for the sake of ancient prejudice."
The dwarf moves before Red can argue further. From his belongings he produces a small flask. He drinks the contents in one gulp, rinses it clean with water, then slices his palm with Eyepatch's clean sword.
"You'd do this?" My voice cracks. "For an elf? For someone whose people nearly destroyed yours?"
"I'd do it for you," he says gruffly, not meeting my eyes. "You're my student. My apprentice. That makes her family."
Hrolf lets the blood run into the flask, filling it halfway before pressing a cloth to the wound. He holds the flask out to Red. "Take it. Test it. If I'm wrong, I've wasted a bit of blood. If I'm right, you save a life."
Red takes it and stares at the dark blood inside, then at Hrolf, then at me.
I meet Red's eyes. "Try it."
"Young elf," Hrolf says, his tone hardening. "This does not leave this room. Elves have killed dwarves for less. This knowledge would start wars."
Red inclines his head. "It stays between us. You have my word."
When Red leaves, I look at Hrolf. This dwarf who has every reason to hate Rhianelle's kind just bled for her without hesitation.
"If this works," I say, my voice thin with emotion, "I'll owe you my existence. My eternity. Anything you want, whenever you want it. Just ask."
"You already owe me a new hammer and two broken tongs." He returns to examining the sword Eyepatch left behind, running the cloth along its length.
"You hate her kind," I say quietly. "The elves. They almost wiped yours from existence."
He's silent for a long moment. The cloth moves rhythmically along the blade.
"Aye," he finally says. "They razed my city, burned the northern spires and laughed while they did it. My daughter died waiting for aid that never came because elven infantry blocked the roads."