20. Chapter 20 #2
If we were to drown in here, then we would perish together. I would die without the tendrils of Erix’s magic in my mind, and as angry as the thought should make me, my oxygen deprived brain could only manage soul-crushing sorrow.
A sudden jerk came on the length of fabric in my hand, as if somebody had joined Aderyn in pulling. It nearly yanked my shoulder out of its socket with its force. Hope rekindled in my chest. It was the fire under my ribs that refused to die, no matter how dire the situation was.
I fought against every protesting muscle to tighten the arm banded across Izumi’s chest and squeezed my fingers around the cloth. I willed every last bit of energy in my blood to help me hold on.
An awful squelching sound echoed through my head as I finally crested the surface.
I gasped and tried to blink my eyes open, almost regretting it as grit filled my throat, but the feel of air filling my lungs was too sweet.
Through my watering eyes, I could just make out the figure that had joined Aderyn in hauling us out of the pit: Badha.
A shuddering gasp broke from her as Izumi crested the surface just after me. I struggled to pull her out of the edge of the sinking pit, but my muscles still shook and were slow to respond to my commands. Then, strong hands grabbed my shoulders.
Betrayal and rage were temporarily muted by my oxygen deprivation, and relief crashed over me as Erix knelt in my line of vision and pulled both me and Izumi back onto solid ground.
I shook and coughed and spat sand from my mouth, but it didn’t matter, because Erix’s arms were solid around me, and he was real and here, no matter how hard he had tried to tear us asunder.
He had come back in a way my parents and my clan never had, no matter how hard I yearned. And then I felt it.
The loose tendrils of my magic that had been left exposed and raw found his, as if they had been reaching out to them in desperation—the same way Kelvar and Alyx had been reaching out to each other in death, their fingers just inches apart.
With me crushed to Erix’s chest and him breathing in my hair in relief, they instantly began knitting themselves together once more.
It wasn’t the strong rope of many fibers it had once been, but the basting stitches of connection already returned.
Erix might carry the mighty power of the desert within him, but even he could not permanently tear what was one in two.
The momentary relief was split by a scream of despair. I turned my head, my cheek pressed into Erix’s shoulder as his arms caged me in.
“No,” Badha sobbed, where she kneeled over Izumi. Every strand of her dark frizzy hair was coated in sand, and her tan skin was unusually pale as she laid on her back. Her lips had a sickly blue tinge, and her chest did not rise and fall.
Dread was a heavy weight in my belly, as Badha interlaced her fingers and placed her palms on Izumi’s chest. She pressed savagely, trying to force air into Izumi’s lungs. Aderyn stepped up behind her, but Badha growled as she pumped at Izumi’s chest, causing Aderyn to take a step back.
Dhara and Elion appeared from the far side of the next row of tents. Dhara opened her mouth as if to exclaim in relief, but Elion stopped her with a hand on her arm as they took in the desperate scene.
“You’re not. Allowed. To die.” Badha grit out from behind bared teeth in time with her compressions. “You have to fix this. Fix us.”
Tears started to prick my eyes that had nothing to do with the way I still gulped down grateful lungfuls of air, or the tenderness with which Erix held me. In fact, it almost seemed to make it worse, while witnessing somebody else’s grief so close and so raw.
A horrible hacking wheezing split the air, and everybody gasped. Badha rolled Izumi onto her side as she coughed up mouthfuls of wet sand. She rubbed soothing circles between Izumi’s shoulder blades as she cleared her lungs out and gasped in shuddering breaths.
“Why did you do that?” Badha asked, her tears evident in her voice.
“I couldn’t lose you. Not to the sand… not again,” Izumi wheezed once she finally had enough breath, her voice raw and scratchy. “It’s not worth it. None of it is worth it—not if it cost me you.”
With a wheezing sob of her own, Badha threw herself down atop Izumi, and together they wept. I couldn’t help the few tears that tracked from my own eyes down my chafed and sunburned cheeks as I squeezed my eyes shut.
It was then that I noticed the quiet. Where there had been screams and chaos when I dived in after Izumi, now the air was relatively still, besides the sound of Izumi and Badha weeping in each other’s embrace.
I opened my own eyes and pulled back from Erix’s chest, and although he let me, he still left his arms looped around my waist. I didn’t want to sever our physical connection either, afraid that it would pull apart our new and fragile bond again.
Aderyn seemed to have sensed what I did, looking around. “It’s quiet. The desert has calmed.”
The crunch of boots on baked earth approached.
“It seems you all don’t just exaggerate the perils of the desert to keep away outsiders.”
Standing at the edge of the harrowed circle, with copper hair gleaming in the sun and scarred cheek twisted with a scowl, was General Warrick.