Chapter 51
T hey say your life flashes before your eyes when you die.
I’m not sure about that, but I do know that time moves impossibly slow, drawing out each of those last milliseconds.
I see the arrow zoom toward me. Feel the sharp intake of my breath, the tensing of my body, and the widening of my eyes.
A deep roar of anguish cloaks all other sound save the shrill scream nearby.
I want to move. The urge is there. The need. But the milliseconds it takes for my body to register what’s happening and transmit that message to my limbs is too long. Humans just weren’t designed to react that fast.
The arrow nears, my death promised in its lethal point.
It’s almost here.
Then, a blur of black and white fills my vision. Strong arms band around me. Familiar scents fill my nose. A roar, the one from before, echoes in my ears.
Elias.
I barely register it's him before his chest slams into mine and we tumble back onto the rocky ground.
The impact knocks the air from my lungs. His armored weight atop me is crushing.
My head rings, stars dot my vision.
But I’m alive.
How?
With a pained groan, Elias shoves up on one arm.
Finally, I can breathe again, though each one is agony. I blink rapidly, and the world around me clarifies and ceases to spin.
“Elias.” His name is a hoarse rasp. I reach for him. “You—”
One hand is clenched against his chest, blood dripping from his fingers. He draws it back, and the sight is worse than Orek’s crossbow pointed at me.
“Oh my God! Elias!”
The broad, pointed arrowhead juts from the front of his chest plate, right over his heart.
He didn’t knock me out of the way of the arrow. He took it. For me.
Time slows again as his gaze rises from the arrow sticking out of his chest to me.
“Aimee?” One blink and then he topples to the side.
“Elias!”
An unearthly shriek leaves Katiya, who stands beside us, gaping in horror at the wound to her brother.
I scramble to Elias, taking his bloody hand in mine and cupping his cheek with my other, forcing him to look at me.
“You’ll be fine. We can heal this,” I promise. We have to. I refuse to accept any other option.
He clenches my hand in return, grimacing and trying to sit back up.
“No, stay there,” I tell him. “Save your strength.”
Several things happen at once. Magic tingles across my skin, and suddenly, Riven, King of the Court of the Forest, is there, kneeling at my side and putting his hands on Elias.
Healing. Riven can heal. He can help Elias.
“Healer! Quickly!” Someone else calls, maybe one of the other kings.
Katiya lets out another cry of fury. One moment she’s standing there with us, and the next, she vanishes. There’s a flash of pink on the rise ahead as she reappears in front of Orek. He’s barely lowered his crossbow. Hasn’t had time to reload. She doesn’t give it to him.
No sooner has she appeared in front of him than she brings her short swords together in an X, severing Orek’s head from his body and sending it tumbling to the ground. She snarls at those nearby, dropping into an attack stance, blades ready to clash with anyone who would retaliate.
A few bark in outrage, but none of them move.
More Seelie fae appear around us, squeezing in to touch Elias’s face. Skin-to-skin, a healer’s touch.
“The poison,” one hisses almost immediately.
Poison?
“Strong,” Riven snaps. “I—” He grits his teeth. “It’s working faster than I can heal.”
Numbness consumes me. It wasn’t just an arrow. It was a poisoned arrow.
“—worst I’ve seen. What is this?” another asks.
Not enough. Their healing is not enough against this poison, whatever it is. Elias trained himself against poisons, and yet…
I shove my hand in my pocket and draw forth the last of the healing potion then hold it out toward Riven.
“Use thi—” But my tongue is heavy. It won’t finish the word. My extended hand falls limp, and I find myself slumping to the side.
“Aimee!” Elias rasps, eyes wide and pleading, fingers crawling across the ground as he tries to reach for me.
Riven turns to me and curses. Then one of his hands is on me.
Why?
Heal Elias. What are you doing?
He grabs my shirt, ripping the fabric down the center. A distant part of me is outraged. The rest is just curious, and I glance down, marveling at the cut on my chest, the little bit of blood trickling down between my breasts, and the greenish sheen to it.
Huh.
I flex my hand holding the potion vial. Give it to him, I try to say.
Another Seelie is beside me, whipping at the blood on my chest, their hands on me. Something tingles under my skin in the most delightful way. “It’s in her blood.”
Poison should hurt. But I just feel heavy. Sleepy. How strange.
“Aimee.” Elias claws toward me, fighting against the Seelie trying to hold him down and heal him.
Listen to them, you idiot. Let them heal you.
Katiya is back, wide-eyed, panicked.
“To him,” I croak, barely managing to sit upright. Why is no one listening to me?
The Seelie trying to heal Elias finally stop fighting him and help him get to me.
The few feet could be an eternity for how he’s struggled to reach me.
That horrible arrow has been pulled from his chest, but there’s blood, so much blood, staining his black armor, still running free.
His white hair is stained in places and sticking to him.
Finally, his fingertips find my arm, and the touch feels like a sigh. I slump forward, falling against his chest as he scrambles close to me on the ground.
“Aimee. Don’t leave me.” His arms are around me, holding me close. Others are there too. I can feel them, distantly, like shouting underwater. Magic still tingles under my skin, trying to fight the poison.
“Take it.” My gaze dips to the vial in my open palm between us.
Save your people. Help them. Bring them the future you promised.
It can happen now. The fighting has stopped. Orek is dead. Peace can happen. But Elias has to live. He has to give it to them.
“No,” he bites out. Sweat runs down his face. His gaze is glassy and unfocused. “You—must live.”
Idiot. You have to live. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.
Another shriek leaves Katiya. My heart skips a sluggish beat. If war has broken out again, we’re doomed. But when I finally manage to glance over, she is clutching her head, rocking back and forth where she stands. “No! No!”
Lysandir is there. He reaches for her but then draws back, cursing. “It’s the magic!” he says with urgency. “It’s settling on her!”
The magic is picking a new monarch. An Unseelie Queen.
Because the king is dying.
Elias is dying.
With a renewed burst of energy, I pop the stopper on the potion and hold it up to Elias’s lips. “Take it. Please.”
“Aimee,” he rasps.
“Please.” I shove the lip of the vial to his lips and tip it up, watching the last of the shimmering purple liquid flow out of the glass and into his mouth.
Clarity and awareness flood his eyes as they widen, staring at me in shocked horror.
I smile, even as my hand goes limp and the vial falls from my fingers. Good. It is good.
My body goes slack. All sound fades to a pleasant hum.
I don’t feel much of anything anymore except the arm bound around my back, holding me tighter. Elias’s face swarms in front of mine.
What a pleasant sight to die to.
Then his lips are on mine. A final kiss. A farewell.
I sigh, giving myself over to the end, to him.
But then there’s something in my mouth, hitting my senses like an intense dose of smelling salts.
Every part of me is alive. Tingling. I shiver and shake, vibrating with a flood of feeling, like a million tiny pricks of light. Amid that light, there are other lights too, adding to it, pouring into me. I sense their life forces, their healing magic.
And in the middle of that glorious moment of pure bliss, dark realization blooms within me.
Elias’s kiss was a farewell, but not in the way I thought.
He gave me the potion, passed it from his mouth to mine in his kiss.
And it’s too late. It’s in me now, burning away every ache, every pain, racing to my heart and then back out through my limbs.
Nothing should pass through the body so quickly, so thoroughly, searching me inside and out and healing me anew.
But if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that magic, like so much else in this strange world of Faery, doesn’t play by the rules of science.
I gasp, pulling in a breath as the world around me comes back again. I feel like I’ve just broken the surface of a lake, burst from the depths into a new world, freshly remade.
My gaze darts around, but I find what I’m searching for almost immediately. Elias lies on the ground next to me, eyes closed, healers still pressed around him.
“Help him!” I cry. “Heal him!”
Riven is there, hands on his cousin’s face, brow furrowed in concentration.
Someone has taken off Elias’s gauntlets, likely to get more skin contact. I lunge for one hand, grabbing it and squeezing tight. “I’m here. Elias, stay with me. I’m here.”
The healers are still working. He’s not gone. He trained himself against poisons. He can beat this.
I refuse to cry. “Stay with me.”
Through a crack between two healers, I spy a glimmer of metal.
His sword. The ancient blade of the Unseelie.
Reluctantly, I let go of Elias and race to the blade where it must have fallen from his grip when he took the arrow for me. I wrap my hand around the black hilt and lift it. It’s fucking heavy. Way more than I expected, but I will not be stopped.
“You healed me,” I tell the sword as I carry it back to its master. “You will fucking heal him too, got it?”
No one stops me, though many stare as I come to stand over Elias, sword raised.
I angle the blade over him, the tip pointed toward the wound in his chest, and run my palm over the sharp edge, much like I did the night we repowered it.
The sting is fierce, brutal, but I’d do it a hundred times more if it helped.
I hold my hand to the blade, letting the blood slide down its length before dripping onto Elias.
“Heal him,” I command.
There’s no research behind my actions. No study. No methodology. It’s instinct. And a whole lot of desperation.
“Heal him. Heal him!”
Elias’s eyes flash open.
A ragged sob tears from my lips.
“Aimee,” he gasps up at me in wonder.
And then I do cry. The sword shakes in my hand. I nearly drop it, but thankfully, someone takes it from me before I can. I sink to my knees at Elias’s side, taking his hand in mine once more.
Suddenly, Katiya is there, practically shoving a healer out of the way to get to her brother. “You’re alive!” she cries out. “The magic returned to you?”
He manages one weak nod.
A strangled sob leaves her lips before she covers them briefly with her hands. Then she sniffs and drops them. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
Of all things, he smiles. “Don’t plan to.”
Riven opens his eyes and removes his hands from Elias. “The poison is out.” He turns to me and nods, sweat dripping from him. “He will live.”
A fresh wave of tears forms and runs down my face.
We did it. It worked.
Maybe it had nothing at all to do with me, my blood, or the sword, and it was the healers who saved him—his cousin and the rest.
I don’t know. I don’t care.
He’s alive, and that’s all that matters.
“Elias.” His name is an answered prayer. I lean in and kiss him, quick but full of love. “Don’t you dare try to die in my place again.”
He reaches up and brushes a stray strand of hair behind one ear before cupping my cheek.
“That I cannot promise. I love you, Aimee. If I had died, my regret would be never telling you that properly.” He groans before taking another deep breath.
“I plan to tell you every day, for as many days as I can have you.”
“All of them,” I sniffle, staring down at the man I love, one who tried to give his life for mine. “They’re all yours.”