Chapter Thirty-Seven
Fire blooms from my belly, spreading to my pelvis and down my legs. I writhe and flail, desperate to put out the flames. Hands reach through the blaze, and I shriek as they grab me, hold me down, let me perish.
“Stop!” I beg. “Stop, please!”
He has come for me. The king. I told him I would return. I told him I’d do what he asked. I just needed more time. But time is gone, and he has come to reap me and my friends.
“Get off me!” I thrash. “Get—”
A voice cuts over the roar, sharper than a diamond dagger. “Where the fuck is that Healer?”
Another voice: “We need help—”
“He was supposed to be here by now—”
“Avery!” a friend says. “Avery, you—”
But everything hurts and it’s too hot and I can’t breathe in the smoke. I roll over and vomit red sticky flames. Someone swears, then a cloth descends on my forehead and it feels like ice.
“Lila,” I cry.
“She’s—”
I retch again, and suddenly I’m staring down at a puddle of blood, so much blood, the air is metallic and thick.
“She’s bleeding from the inside!”
Everything hurts. Is this what Jeremee felt in his final moments? Did the cold that poured over Lila turn to fire on her skin? How my friends have suffered—and I have not understood it until now. Finally, after all these weeks, the reckoning has found me.
I hope Jeremee didn’t wander too far and that we may find each other again.
I hope Glenn takes good care of Benji. I hope Benji is safe, always, and loved.
I hope Lila recovers fully.
I hope Briar frees herself and her descendants with the coin.
I hope Kassandra defeats Dominik. I hope she finds happiness and replacing me is not as difficult as she said it has been.
I hope to see my mother. I hope to hold her once more without the illness between us. I hope and hope and hope as the inferno consumes me.
—
A dark weightlessness. Far off, a spot of bright light that grows into a gliding white bird.
It perches on my chest, though I do not feel it.
Smaller than a swan, lither than a dove, brighter than a phoenix.
I know this creature. I have seen it before, recently, in another life, or was it a dream? The bird cocks its head, glowing.
Faerie, it seems to say.
I do not know your name, I answer. Yet I know you.
I was sent here by a friend, the bird says, and there is a memory we share of building nests in branches in another life, on a hill somewhere.
Why? I ask.
To return the favor.
Where are we going?
Home. The bird shakes out its wings. Now hold still.
The long white bird walks to the base of my throat. I tense.
You are not alone, little moth.
But I’ve made mistakes. I keep making mistakes.
And yet they still wait for you.
The bird bends its slender neck and touches its white beak to the center of my forehead.
At first, nothing. Then the fiery pain retreats from my legs, leaving behind a cool trail.
The bird on my chest glows brighter. The anguish pulls back from my pelvis, my abdomen, a weight peeling off my chest. My skin calms, my breathing evens out as the sickness withdraws, pooling in my head.
The pain concentrates to a singular point, then is drawn out of me altogether.
The bird is luminous still as it folds my sickness into itself. I gasp with renewed vigor.
“But you will grow ill,” I exclaim.
I will heal. And now you will, too.
The bird spreads its glorious wings and takes flight. As it soars higher and higher into the darkness, its glow disseminates, and the plane around me gleams and glitters as the light envelops me, lifts me, delivers me.