Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
A Life Lost
A Power Awakened
Dravic followed Fiora into the forest at a run.
Branches whipped at his cloak and caught at his sleeves, but he barely noticed them. He heard Tharne behind him, keeping pace without effort, the heavy strike of the warlord’s boots never far away. And somewhere behind them, his warriors followed.
Neither man spoke. There was nothing to say.
Adira lay somewhere ahead of them, bleeding and unmoving. That knowledge had stripped everything else from Dravic’s mind. Ernach. The crown. The mercenaries. The attack on the High Council. Even the truth about his parents had been shoved aside beneath one overwhelming need.
Get to her.
Fiora’s golden light darted between the trees, disappearing for a heartbeat behind thick trunks before reappearing farther ahead.
“Hurry!” she called.
Dravic’s jaw clenched. As if anything in this world could make him move faster than the thought of Adira lying hurt somewhere beyond his reach.
The ground began to slope.
Fiora suddenly dropped lower. “There!”
Dravic saw the men first.
Three mercenaries stood near the bottom of the slight incline. One was bent over something on the ground while another looked as if trying to decide whether to flee or fight. Beyond them stood Ernach.
Spotting Dravic, the men stepped away from whatever lay on the ground.
Dravic saw it then… Adira.
Everything inside him went cold. She lay crumpled beside a jagged rock, one arm thrown awkwardly across the ground, her dark cloak twisted beneath her. Blood stained the side of her head and the snow beneath her.
She did not move.
Her name tore from him in a heart-wrenching roar. “ADIRA.”
The mercenaries went for their swords, one barely having time to raise his sword.
Dravic reached him first.
His blade swept aside the man’s weapon and drove deep before Dravic wrenched it free and continued forward. The second mercenary lunged toward him, but Tharne intercepted the blow and answered with one that sent the man sprawling.
The third ran.
Neither Dravic nor Tharne went after him.
Ernach stood several paces from Adira.
Dravic spotted the dagger in his hand, saw the blood on the blade from where it had nicked Adira’s throat earlier, and then he saw nothing but Adira.
He ran to her, dropping his sword, and went to his knees beside her.
He barely got out her name, his throat choked with fear. “Adira.”
He touched her face carefully. Cold air had chilled her skin, but she was warm beneath it. That should have reassured him.
It didn’t.
Her eyes remained closed. Blood matted her hair near her temple, and she lay lifeless, not a stir or twitch to her.
Dravic slid one hand beneath her neck, afraid to move her and equally afraid not to.
“Adira, open your eyes.”
He got no response. His heart hammered so violently that his chest hurt.
He brushed the hair away from her face. “Wake up, Adira.”
Still nothing.
Behind him steel clashed, but Dravic barely registered the sound.
Tharne had gone for Ernach.
The warlord did not shout nor did he threaten. He simply attacked with a fury that required no words.
Ernach staggered beneath the first blow.
Tharne growled like an animal bent on revenge. “You should have kept your hands off my daughter.”
Ernach caught the next strike barely in time. “She was nothing but a means to an end.”
The foolish words unleashed Tharne’s fury.
That was the last mistake Ernach made.
The fight was brutal and brief.
Ernach had cunning enough to manipulate kings and patience enough to wait years for a crown, but neither served him against a warrior who had just found the daughter he believed lost and now saw her lying motionless on the ground.
Tharne drove him backward with violent thrusts of his sword.
Ernach could not withstand the onslaught. He slipped and recovered too late.
Tharne’s sword entered beneath his ribs.
Ernach let out a gasp as his eyes widened in shock.
Tharne leaned close. “You were nothing more than a means to an end.” He shoved the blade deeper.
Ernach gagged, fighting for breath until there was none left.
Tharne ripped the blade free and ordered, “Take him.”
Ernach fell to the ground and roots rushed up out of the earth, coiled around him, and yanked him down beneath the snow and soil until he was no more.
Tharne hurried to Adira.
Dravic was still on his knees beside her.
“She’s breathing?” Tharne asked, not hiding his fear.
Dravic cast a glance at her chest as he bent his head to her mouth. There was no rise and fall in her chest, though he felt a faint breath against his ear, or his own desperate need imagined one.
“I cannot be sure.” The words nearly broke in his throat.
Tharne came down beside them, and for a moment the two men simply stared at Adira. The king who loved her. The father who had spent years searching for her. Neither could do a damned thing.
Fiora flitted nearby helpless, tears in her eyes.
Dravic touched her cheek again. “Adira.”
He had commanded armies with less force than he put into her name.
“Wake,” he ordered.
Nothing. Not even a slight stirring.
His control began to fracture. “You hear me now. I know you do, so hear this.”
Tharne watched him, watched for any sign his daughter heard Dravic.
“I forbid you to leave me.”
The command would have been absurd under any other circumstance. Now it was the only thing he had.
“You told me without words that you loved me. You made me believe you would stay with me. So, open your eyes and prove it.”
He watched for even the slightest movement, a flutter of her eyelids, a strong rise to her chest. Nothing. There was nothing.
Dravic lowered his forehead to hers. “Adira.”
Her name came quieter this time. It was not a command. It was a plea.
“I love you, Adira. Don’t leave me. Life would be meaningless without you.”
Tharne stared at the king, realizing how much Dravic loved Adira, his daughter.
A sudden chill swept through the forest.
Dravic lifted his head, and Tharne froze beside him.
The cold deepened. Not the ordinary bite of winter, but something sharper, something that seemed to move through the trees and settle over the small clearing.
It was familiar to Dravic. He had felt it before. His gaze moved toward the forest and he spotted it. The dark, ethereal form floated between the trees… the healer who defied death.
For one stunned moment, relief struck him so hard he could not breathe.
But he quickly found his breath. “Help her.”
The words left Dravic before the spirit fully reached them.
The healer drifted closer, her shape shifting like smoke held together by will alone. The raised hood hid her face, while pale strands of luminous blonde hair stirred around her despite the still air.
Tharne stared, shaking his head slowly.
Dravic’s patience shattered when the spirit stopped, not coming any closer. “I am king. You will obey my command. You will save her.”
The spirit drifted back.
“Wait,” Dravic called out, tempering the fear that drove his anger. “Please, I beg you. Please save the woman I love beyond all reason. Please don’t let death take her from me.”
The ethereal form raised one hand and made a small motion.
Dravic understood that she wanted him to move, and he did only after he paused to brush his lips over Adira’s cold ones and whispered in her ear, “Stay with me, my love.”
He backed away no more than a few feet.
Tharne remained where he was.
The spirit turned toward him and made the same motion.
Tharne scowled. “I am her father.”
The healer gestured again, more firmly.
Dravic almost would have enjoyed watching someone else being ordered about by a creature who refused to speak, if terror had not been eating him alive.
“Move,” he ordered Tharne.
Tharne glared at him.
“Unless you want to argue with the only being here who may be able to save her.”
That ended it. Tharne stepped back.
The healer floated to Adira, then stopped.
Dravic waited for her to hover over Adira as she had over Cadby.
She did not. Instead, the dark figure remained motionless beside her.
Seconds passed, too many for Dravic. But he wisely held his tongue, though he clenched his fists.
The ethereal form finally moved, slowly lowering herself until the shifting darkness brushed along Adira’s body.
Dravic watched as the edges of the spirit began to blur and it looked as though she would disappear. He went to step toward her, but Tharne caught his arm.
“Wait,” Tharne urged.
Dravic jerked free but stopped and watched as the healer continued to fade, not away… but into Adira.
The dark mist seemed to sink slowly into her body, curling around her shoulders, her arms, her face before vanishing beneath her skin. The luminous strands of hair were the last thing Dravic saw, dissolving like pale light before they too disappeared.
The healer was gone and the forest turned silent.
Dravic rushed to Adira, Tharne close behind him.
Adira remained motionless as Dravic dropped down beside her.
“Adira,” Dravic said with a deep breath as if he breathed for her.
Still, she didn’t move.
Panic surged through him. What had the healer done? Why hadn’t she saved her?
Tharne stared at his daughter. “Why doesn’t she wake?”
“I don’t know,” Dravic said and touched her face gently.
Her lashes moved.
Dravic froze. “Adira?”
Her breath came suddenly, deep and sharp.
Dravic caught her as her body jerked and she sat up.
Her eyes opened wide and for a moment they were unfocused. Then they found him.
Relief crashed through him so violently that he pulled her against him and held her tight.
Adira sagged into his embrace, relieved to be in his arms, and to hear him swear softly that he would never let her out of his arms again.
He closed his eyes and pressed his face into her hair.
“Bloody hell, woman.” His voice was rough. “You will never frighten me like that again.”
Adira barely heard him. Something strange filled her. It wasn’t pain she felt, nor did she feel weak. Maybe a bit tired and yet she felt strong, a strength she had never felt before now.
It rushed through her body, through every part of her, as though something that had always been hidden deep inside had suddenly awakened and stretched after a lifetime of sleep.
Images flashed through her mind—memories, she realized after a few of them, and yet she did not recall living them.
She saw a Hunter with an injured arm, a woman lying motionless in a forest clearing, a man bent over her. Then there was a healer to whom she had handed part of a necklace to. She recognized the young lass in the village who had nearly died, and Cadby who had died but the healer…
Adira gasped and pulled away from Dravic, but he would not have it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, keeping firm hold of her.
She shook her head and gripped his arm around her.
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head again.
“We need to get her to back to the castle. There are magical healers there who can help her,” Tharne said.
“That won’t be necessary.”
Adira turned at the sound of the gentle voice. She didn’t have to see who it belonged to. She knew. Though how, she couldn’t explain. She only knew it belonged to her mum.
She turned her head, and there, not far from her, stood… Feena.