Chapter 59
FIFTY-NINE
ARYELLA
My horrified scream pierced the air.
Mavic’s and Ezra’s binds disappeared with Molochai’s departure, causing them to drop to the ground.
I lunged for them, attempting to catch one in each arm, but they were too heavy and too far apart.
While Ezra knelt with his hands at his throat trying to stem the flow of blood, Mavic lay helplessly on his back, head turned toward me, his body violently convulsing.
Both stared at me, wide-eyed and terrified, silently begging for help.
Molochai couldn’t have known Gemma was pregnant. He didn’t know that I had saved two lives that day. I’d done it once, and I could do it again. I had to.
Both cuts were fatal, but Mavic’s was deeper.
Wasting no time, I lunged for Mavic, who’d already fallen unconscious. The moment I felt Viridian’s green power flowing out of me, I turned to Ezra, who was growing pale but still sat upright. “I’ll save you! I can save you both!” I insisted.
He managed a weak nod before letting out a low, gurgling groan and crumpling into a limp heap.
“Hold on, Ez!” I begged, willing the power to flow faster. “Please hold on!” When Mavic’s wound finally closed, I removed one hand and shifted close enough to reach Ezra, too. I wanted to give Mavic even more, but my vision started to blur, and my knees trembled. I was already fading.
When Mavic sucked in a long, steady breath as the color returned to his face, I gasped in relief and turned completely to Ezra. He was barely awake now.
“You’re going to be all right,” I promised, placing both hands over the gash. His groan made me think the cut wasn’t that deep, but he was still losing too much blood. I began to sway in place as my body drained of its power.
Ezra blinked up at the sky while his heartbeat and breathing steadied. It was working, but slowly.
“Come on, come on, come on .” My voice collapsed into a weak rasp. It didn’t matter if I fell unconscious. Elias would find me, or when Mavic and Ezra came to, they could return me to the Caves.
When the gash on Ezra’s neck finally closed, I sank back onto my knees beneath the weight of exhaustion. It hurt just to hold up my head, so I let it fall forward between my shoulders, chin to chest.
“You’re okay,” I muttered, nearly incoherent. “You’re okay.”
“Ary?” Ezra’s bloody hand reached for mine.
“You’re okay,” I repeated. I needed to lie down. “I’m?—”
“Ary.”
I dragged my heavy-lidded eyes up to Ezra’s face, but they didn’t make it that far. The gash on his neck had reopened, and it was deepening and widening quickly. I gasped and fell forward, pressing my trembling hands back over Ezra’s wound and reaching for more power.
But there was nothing left.
“No!” The dam on my tears broke. “No, no, no, Ezra!”
“Ary… it’s okay,” he croaked as the gash on his neck slowly worsened. I couldn’t stop it.
“I’m sorry,” I whimpered, taking his hand in mine. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I lied.”
“Just”—he coughed and winced—“just do the right thing for everyone. Promise me?”
“I promise.” I nodded, forcing back sobs. “Yes, I promise.”
He coughed again, and blood sprayed out.
“Don’t be afraid.” I wished I could give him Effusia’s peace, but my power was drained, and words were all I had to give now.
A peaceful smile softened his face. “It’s so beautiful, Ary. The temple. The colors.”
“Good,” I croaked. “Just stay in the temple with me. No one will try to hurt us this time.”
No thieves. No Insidions. Even no Gavin Smyth throwing blades at our captors. Just us and the Selvaren.
But then sudden fear and melancholy drowned Ezra’s peace as he gurgled out, “But the gods are missing.”
“What?” I breathed, searching his fading eyes. “Ezra, what do you mean?”
I stared, helpless, as the gash opened so deeply into his neck that he could no longer speak, and he began to choke on blood. A few short seconds later, his chest shuddered and stilled.
He was right here with me, and then he wasn’t.
“Ezra?”
He gave me no answer, and each breath of my own felt like a betrayal. One more second alive that he didn’t get to have.
“Ezra,” I pleaded again.
Those blue eyes that I’d latched on to from the first day in Warrich were now vacant.
“No!” I wept, fumbling with the collar of the shirt beneath his leathers, ripping it open. As if that could help me save him. “Help! Somebody help me!”
“Ary!” A familiar man’s voice, strained from running. “Aryella!”
It wasn’t the voice I needed, but it was the one I had.
“ Ary! ” Shera’s voice followed Elias’s. “ I couldn’t find you! ” Panicked, she called down the pathway, then bumped into me. “ He dragged you too fast, and I couldn’t find you! ”
“Aryella, what happened?”
“I can do it,” I insisted when Elias tried to pull me away. I shrugged him off, refusing to leave Ezra. “I can bring him back.”
I told myself I would find the power, but I was already too familiar with how it felt to float adrift in helpless, grieving silence while I reached inside the wheel the gods gave me and found nothing to grasp but air.
“Ary, he’s gone.”
“No.” My fingers tightened around Ezra’s blood-drenched shirt. “No, he’s not!”
“I’m sorry, Aryella.” Elias pulled me into his arms, trying to console me.
“I tried to save them both, Elias. I?—”
“It’s not your fault,” he assured me.
“We can’t leave him.” I wept as the world began to fade around me. The burst of adrenaline keeping me awake was dissipating. “And Mavic?—”
“We won’t leave either of them. I promise.”
I promise.
When Elias spoke, I heard Gavin’s voice as if he were there with me. For a moment, I felt him.
As quickly as he came, he was gone.
“I want to go home,” I whispered, growing numb to my tears. At this point, Elias was supporting all my weight. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Okay.” He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me up. “Let’s go home.”
“No!” I shook my head, suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to push him away. “No, wait.” Not his home. I couldn’t explain what I needed. All I could confess was, “I want… my home. ”
But Elias scooped me into his arms, oblivious to my meaning. He didn’t know that home wasn’t a place.
Home was ten feet under.