43. Chapter 43
Chapter forty-three
Erix
Iwanted to scream, but no noise would come out. My lungs could not draw in enough air—it had all been sucked out of the room when Keera’s soul left her body. Instead, I gasped out silent, shuddering sobs.
It would have been easier to curse and rage.
I wished for the clean heat of anger, the injustice, that this had been the price, after I had already steeled myself to pay with my own life.
But I couldn’t force myself to turn and shout at Kelvar, who had stood silently behind me during the whole exchange.
In fact, I couldn’t move at all from my position holding Keera’s limp form to my chest.
If I laid her down, it would be admitting she was gone.
If I held on to her, though, burying her face in my neck and my nose in her hair, I wouldn’t have to see her golden eyes turned a dull yellow without the spark of her life to fill them.
I wouldn’t have to look at the hole in her chest that I had put there, piercing her heart.
A heart for a Heart.
In contrast to the tumult inside me, the world beyond had calmed.
The red hue of the sun had faded to a gentle gold that drifted in through the window in beams, revealing motes and eddies of dust. The rumbling and screams had quieted, and the world was still, as if the moment was suspended endlessly in time.
I had no wish to change it. I would sit there until my body gave out if it meant never letting go of Keera.
There was nothing left in the world but me and Keera’s lifeless form—until a hand landed on my shoulder.
My head snapped up, tears in my eyes as I finally summoned enough breath to tell Kelvar to leave me alone. I did not care that he was already dead, I would find a way to kill him nonetheless, for he had cost me this. He had guessed the price I would have to pay and refused to tell me.
Instead, I looked up into a pale face with kind eyes rimmed by silvery white lashes. I blinked and looked back and forth between the woman and the bed, which now lay empty—except for the gemstone that lay on the pillow where her head had been, still in two pieces.
“Alyx,” I gasped out, my voice just a broken rasp from the force of my grief. Still, my bewilderedness seeped into my tone.
“Let me see,” Alyx said, her voice light and melodic as she nodded at Keera in my arms.
I clutched her tighter, not ready to let anybody take her from me.
“It’s okay. You can hold on to me instead.” Alyx smiled sadly, reaching out her hand to me. Warmth seemed to radiate off her, and she waited patiently.
Slowly, I peeled one of my hands from where it was tangled in Keera’s hair and grasped her fingers.
They were so delicate, they must have creaked with how hard I gripped them, but she didn’t complain.
Instead, she just waited patiently as I managed to loosen the vice grip of my other arm, letting Keera lay in my lap.
I would not have been able to manage it without the reassurance of her touch.
Alyx kneeled before me, and her silver hair fell forward like a waterfall as she looked down.
She looked so delicate and gentle that I expected her to flinch at the sight of Keera’s wound—a deep chasm beneath her ribs, still bleeding and gaping.
It made me want to retch, but Alyx didn’t flinch, just reaching out and laying a hand on it.
“I can help,” she declared. “But you will need to heal her.”
I shook my head, refusing to grab on to the thread of hope her words tried to imbue me with. I could not stand it being stolen from me again.
“She’s gone,” I insisted, even though the words felt like driving the sword into my own heart this time.
It was Alyx’s turn to shake her head. “I spent decades stranded between life and death—living in the space where Keera is now. I would reckon I know it better than most.” Her smile was wry. “Her destiny is not yet decided. You can heal her.”
“I can’t heal anything.” My voice broke on the admission. I realized now the true horror of my curse—bred to hurt and never to heal.
“Of course, you can. You are my descendant as much as Kelvar’s.
The power lies within you too.” Alyx released my grip and laid the hand that wasn’t on Keera’s chest on my head.
Her touch was warm and sure—a bulwark against the tide of grief in my chest. And then, I felt the touch of her magic.
It was a blooming, golden plant, running gentle tendrils over mine, diving through layers of storms and anger without fear.
“Only a touch of my power seems to have returned with me after so long in the in between, but it is enough to direct yours,” she admitted as vines and leaves unfurled, reaching toward a dark, quiet part of my soul.
I gasped. I had barely ever seen this part of me—only ever known it existed in the deepest part of my subconscious—but as I mentally approached it and reached out, its power nearly overwhelmed me, silent but unspeakably strong.
Alyx’s smile widened. “Destruction is loud, and when it is as powerful as yours, it can make it hard to hear anything else. Healing is quiet, but you can find it if you know how to listen. With the anger of the desert falling silent, now you can hear it.”
Gently, I pulled on delicate threads in this new part of my magic that Alyx guided me to. I drew forth more and more, before following her guidance to direct it down my arm to my fingers, which I splayed across Keera’s ribs.
There was a tear in the fabric of her magic—a violent rip.
If I could just knit it back together, I could bring Keera back to me.
With gentle strands of Alyx’s magic urging me on, I began trying to knit together what had been torn asunder.
At first, the threads wound themselves back into shape, but then they wouldn’t quite reach.
The damage was too much.
I began to slip out of the near trance I was in.
The back of my eyes burned anew, and my hand began to tremble where it lay on Keera’s chest. I opened my eyes, and even as tears clouded my vision, I could see that the wound wasn’t as gruesome as it once had been.
My sword had pierced Keera’s heart, though.
Even if I closed the gash in her chest, I could not heal that.
“It’s no use,” I whispered to Alyx in desperation.
The air stirred as somebody kneeled next to me: Kelvar.
His eyes were bright as he stared across Keera’s body at Alyx, but to my surprise, he grabbed my saber—his saber—where it had fallen to the ground. “You two already share a heart, just as Alyx and I do. You can gift her a new one.”
He held the saber to the crook of my elbow.
I hissed as he made a shallow cut, and blood flowed readily down my arm from the prominent vein there.
Alyx’s magic nudged mine again, and I tried to return to the task of healing Keera.
Now, though, I felt more threads I could grab—fibers of glimmering magic that could be used to patch the hole.
It was my own blood, flowing down my arm and into Keera.
A flutter of life beneath my fingertips had me gasping and reopening eyes I didn’t realize I had closed.
I looked down just in time to see a glimmer like a gem in Keera’s chest. A fresh Heart, crafted of shimmering glass from the mixing of our blood and magic.
It looked just like the broken Heart that remained on the bed beside us, but new and whole. Finally, I understood.
Our love, and the sacrifices we were willing to make for it, were the true magic.
Then the wound closed, unfolding our shared heart in Keera’s chest, and a shuddering gasp ran through her as she sucked in a new breath.