CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE #2
He cries out as I shift him around, and Talyn is at my side, helping me move his massive weight. As I pull the tunic off, my heart jumps into my throat but I compose my features. I could fit my fist into the gaping wound in his stomach. Blood and a black substance ooze from it.
“We need to get him back to Celeste,” I say ungently.
Killian passes me a wad of leaves to pack the wound, but they darken and wilt as the black ooze touches them.
Aemon’s breath stutters. “I can’t feel my legs.” He stares up towards the canopy with tears silently streaming down his face. “I can’t feel my magick! Tal, keep her safe, please.”
Talyn grabs him by the front of his tunic.
“Listen to me, Aemon Zorn. You are going to pull it together and hold on.” And then he turns to me.
“We need to get him to Celeste. If anyone will have a cure, it’s her.
Let’s move.” He hoists him up and Aemon cries out in a way that makes me wish he would just pass out.
“I got the hide!” Jesper states, holding up a black furry part of what was the spider, brandishing it like a victory cloak.
I turn towards the dead beast, its flayed body still twitching creepily even in the aftermath of death, and set it aflame before grabbing my mates and blinking us all back to Celeste’s cottage.
This is all my fault. I pray to the Fates that she can help him and I won’t lose him.
I can’t lose him. I would never be the same.
“PUT HIM ON the bed,” Celeste tells Talyn as she runs around the cottage pulling down vials and herbs and odd objects in jars. “You—Szellemi child—fill his mind with something better than pain. Nothing I have will work for it.”
Talyn does as he’s told and Jesper wraps his arms around me, holding me close as he works his way into Aemon’s suffering. The bond I have with Aemon pulses and dims with pain and numbness, like a flame sputtering before it’s put out.
“He’s going to be okay. Celeste will fix him up right as rain,” Jesper whispers in my ear.
My body shakes with fear. I can’t lose another person. Especially not my males. No. “Celeste please,” I hear myself saying as Nero nuzzles my cheek. I know he’s speaking to me but I can’t focus on anything else but what’s going on with my mate.
I glance over at the old witch as she reads through her book—which I think I heard her call a grimoire—and see her face pale as she glances again over all the things she’s gathered.
“I’m missing something. I thought I still had one, but I must have used it for something else,” she says as she paces back and forth.
“What is it?” Killian grumbles, the first word he’s spoken since Aemon got stung.
She stares at me, her old eyes full of fear. “A fire lily.”
I shake my head. “I don’t have one. I don’t even know what that is!”
She holds the grimoire and turns it toward us to show us a drawing of an orange flower. “It’s a rare bloom that only grows in this forest.”
I pull myself out of Jesper’s hold and walk towards the flower sketch like I’m in a trance. “I’ve seen this before…” I whisper, trying to remember where. “It glows in the dark…”
She nods. “Yes, and thankfully it blooms all year round. Find the plant and you will have a flower. But there are only a handful that I know of, and none of them are within a day’s walk of here.”
“We won’t be walking, we’ll be riding, or running if we have to,” states Talyn, looking impatient to get started.
Killian says, “But we don’t know where we’re going.”
“We can split up.” Jesper twirls his blades, ready for action. “One of us will find one eventually.”
“No.” Killian’s gruff tone is final. “You are staying here to help his pain. And there’s no way our heart is going into that forest alone.”
Celeste is restless. “I can tell you where the nearest ones are, but you’ll be cutting it fine. He only has another twelve hours at most. By sunrise, we will lose him.”
I don’t hear their responses. It’s then the memory surfaces—when I was escaping the castle that fateful night, the night I lost the life I should have lived and found my twisted destiny.
When I finally got the courage to open my eyes and look around as Gretchen and I fled through this forest, I remember thinking it was strange how nothing attacked us, and how dark it was, but I remember seeing a glowing orange flower as we flew by, thinking it was beautiful.
“I know where one is,” I tell her. “I can blink there and grab it and be back in moments.” I look at my mates and Killian steps forward.
“I’m coming with you,” he grumbles, stepping up to my side.
Celeste sighs in relief. “Okay, I will start prepping the potion. It will take a few hours to brew. One of you males needs to keep constantly cleaning the wound. The venom is nasty, and that black ooze will make the wound fester if it’s not wiped away.
I’ll tend to him myself as soon as the potion is simmering. ” She glances at me. “Be safe.”
I nod and grab Killian’s hand, pushing aside guilt and instead thinking of the surrounding forest where I saw the flower, and everything fades to black as the shadows wrap around me.
The darkness fades from sight in our new location and Killian checks we’re safe before spinning me toward him. “Stop blaming yourself for this. If any of us were closer to you, we would have done what he did. He blinked in front of you to protect our heart—you.”
“I would have done it for any of you too. I know you’re right, but I can’t help but blame myself—if I was faster, if I didn’t scream and just reacted, then we wouldn’t be in this situation. Then I wouldn’t be on the verge of losing my mate.” I sob and then choke as I try to keep my emotions at bay.
He sighs, wrapping his massive arms around me. “He’s going to be okay. Celeste seems to know what she’s doing. And once she saves him, I won’t be suspicious of the old bat anymore.”
“Why were you suspicious? I got nothing but warm motherly vibes from her.”
He shrugs. “Everyone I don’t know is suspicious.”
A choked, tearful laugh escapes me. “Right.”
I take a breath and look around the area; nothing is familiar, but is at the same time.
We’re on a path and it looks smaller than I remember from my childhood, but it’s definitely the same one we rode down that night.
I see a gnarled tree root that looks so much like a snake it spooked our horse until Gretchen made it jump right over.
Which means… this isn’t the same place. Disappointment squeezes my chest.
“Don’t worry. It might be close. Let’s check. How big is it?” Killian peers into the darkness between trees, walking as he searches.
I cover more ground by heading in the other direction, towards the tree root. The way the shadows shift make it look like it’s moving.
“Ravina, watch out!” Killian bellows.
I’m already jumping backwards as the tree root—or should I say snake—slithers forwards and launches itself right at me.
I roll and spring up onto my feet and pull shadows from every direction to hold it suspended in mid-air, as Killian runs to my position.
In a heartbeat he grabs it by the tip of its tail and uses his Vopn Fo strength to whip its head against the nearest tree, crushing its skull.
Adrenaline courses like fire through my veins as I glance around and see nothing but gnarled roots, thick brush and no glowing flower. Frustration builds as I worry for Aemon. What if I can’t find it? Would the Fates be so cruel to take him away from me—from us—after everything we’ve been through?
No, I can’t think like that. I need to focus.
I try to think about where I’ve seen it before and grab Killian’s hand, blinking us somewhere else.
Killian raises his blade, ready for danger at any moment—but the coast seems clear here too.
Yet as we look around, I don’t see the fire lily anywhere.
Tears spring to my eyes. I know I’ve seen it, but what if I can’t find it in time? What if he—
“Little Warrior, look at me,” Killian hums softly. “You’re panicking and your thoughts are erratic. If you’re not careful we could get lost in the shadow realm and never find our way out.”
I take a deep breath and nod, trying to calm the panic. He’s right. We can only blink somewhere we’ve been before, or we may never escape the shadows. And I have been at that fire lily before. But which memory is it?
Killian continues, “You have the memory. Just take a minute and feel it. Remember what you felt that night. Remember the sounds you heard, the temperature…” he continues muttering soft words as my mind sinks into the deep recesses of my memories.
The feel of the horse galloping through the woods, its warm, powerful body moving under us. Gretchen's grip as she clings to me just as much as I did her. The cool night air as it whips past my face and through my hair… and as I open my eyes, I see it, so clearly as if I’m there now.
We blink again and the forest holds its breath, almost as if it was waiting for us—and as the shadows free us from their cool embrace, that is when I spot an orange glow, just up ahead, illuminating the far side of a bush.
“This way.” I point in the direction and he takes my hand again and squeezes it three times, his way of comforting me.
I return the three squeezes and jog over to what I hope is the flower and cry out in relief when it is. I pluck the flower carefully from the ground and gasp in amazement as it keeps its glow.
Above us, just like in my memories, the sky peeks through the canopy but the moon is nowhere in sight. Fuck, we must be nearing sunrise—we need to get back now if we have any hope of healing Aemon. Fear swims in my gut. I can only hope I’ve found it in time.
I hold a shaking hand out to Killian. “Let’s get back.”
AEMON LOOKS SO pale that one might think he’s already dead except for the croaking breaths he takes, his body vibrating with each inhale. Celeste says that it’s because the stinger secretes a paralytic that slowly shuts everything down.