Chapter Twenty-Six #2
The blood-crusted face of our enemy is contorted in pain, whether from the grip at his throat or the blade in his gut. But his eyes are alert as they glare up at us through narrow slivers. He wheezes again as his life force flickers under Soren’s unwavering strength.
I try again to pull him back, without success. No amount of tugging makes impact. He is too angry. Reaching inward for my maegic, I send razor-thin tendrils of wind swirling around his arm, twining around his fingers. One by one, I peel them back until he has no choice but to release.
The moment his hold breaks, his eyes snap to mine. I watch clarity wash back in, reason replacing the revenge that very nearly swamped him. He looks startled by his own slip.
“I will handle this,” I tell him, mind to mind. “Trust me.”
He gives a shallow nod and, with great effort, backs off enough for me to take over. My shoulders stiffen as I lean forward, aligning my face with the dying man’s.
“You will die soon,” I tell him, voice surprisingly steady. “Whether that death is quick and painless or long and drawn out remains to be seen.”
Understanding flickers beneath the haze of pain in his eyes.
“Where did they take Arwen?”
He does not answer except to grin at me. His teeth are red; his mouth is full of blood. He does not have long to live.
I grab the handle of the dagger that protrudes from his stomach and begin to twist it slowly. His grin vanishes instantly, replaced by an agonized grimace. His shrieks reverberate across the round walls of the bathhouse.
“Like I said,” I continue, voice very calm.
“It is your choice how you meet the skies. I am a healer. I could remove this blade and stitch your guts back together—not enough to save your life, but enough to prolong it.” I smile at him as the lies spill out, a terrifyingly cold grin that matches the frigid feeling at my Remnant.
“Would you like that? To remain in this state for days? For weeks?” I bend closer, eyes never leaving his. “I don’t believe you would.”
He huffs a pained breath. There is panic in his stare as it shifts over my features, judging whether I am lying. I reach again for the handle—
“The Iron Isle,” he chokes out, the words gurgling up his blood-filled throat. “But she will be dead,” he croaks, using his last strength, “long before you…ever breach it…fae scum.”
Soren stiffens.
“Thank you,” I whisper, sending out more tendrils of maegic. Pulling every bit of air from his lungs. Watching his eyes turn bloodshot as he quickly suffocates. “For your cooperation.”
His body twitches, then stills.
He is gone.
I sit back, forcing my eyes to Soren. I look for condemnation in his gaze, for traces of disgust at my brutality…and find not even a shadow of it.
Morality is well and good, as lodestars go, he told me once. Shame, on the other hand, is not.
I am not ashamed of what I’ve done. I am not ashamed of who I am becoming. Not anymore. And it seems…neither is Soren. His eyes are steady, holding a subdued shade of the same pride I saw when I wielded my lightning whip.
We stare at each other in the loaded silence for several long moments. He does not say a word, merely offers me a hand and helps me to my feet. He holds tight as we leave the bathhouse behind and make our way back to tell the others what we’ve learned.
The dead outnumber the wounded, but I do what I can for those in pain.
It is, in a way, good that I have so much experience with the aftermath of battle.
I go to that detached place in my mind born from years of training, where all that matters is the task at hand: wrapping wounds, checking pulses, stitching gashes.
I see to Mabon, then Tethys, then several injured Hylians, not looking up until I feel Pendefyre’s heavy presence at my back.
“Rhya. Come with me. Jac’s asking for you down at the stables.”
“Is he all right?” I ask, instantly panicked.
His nod is short. His grave expression does not shift. “Yes. But…”
“What is it? What’s happened now? Surely this night cannot get any worse…”
Penn’s lips flatten to a frown, a wordless contradiction.
I cast one last glance at Soren, who is on the terrace conferring in hushed tones with Alaric and Vaughn, as Penn leads me away from the villa.
My trepidation grows as we walk down the stone steps to the stables.
Or, what remains of them. Farley is there, sitting in the dirt, looking dazed but unharmed.
Jac’s arm has been wrenched out of its socket and his face is pale with pain.
He will need a sling once I fix the dislocation. But that will have to wait, for…
Gods, no.
My eyes fix on the body that lies between them, her vacant eyes staring up at the skies. Her soul has fled there already.
“No, no, no,” I breathe, rushing forward. I fall to my knees at her side, take her cold hand in mine. “Thisobei…”
Of all the Paexyrian, I knew her least. Still, the loss weighs heavily on me as I stare at her face, once so prone to impish smiles, now forever still.
“Rhya.”
My tear-glazed eyes attempt to focus on Jac. “Y-yes?”
“You need to see to Yara.” His eyes, always so playful, are deadly serious. “You need to get her to…move away.”
I do not understand. Not remotely. But I nod and rise to my feet, following the sound of ragged breathing until I find her sitting in the darkness at the center of the grazing fields.
There are several bodies littered around her—Efnysien’s blood purists, gutted without mercy during an earlier skirmish.
Umyr’s head rests in her arms.
I weep as I see the beautiful chestnut bay Paexyri no longer breathes.
Her vast wings are flattened against the ground, her thick mane limp and lifeless.
Her glossy, intelligent eyes are unseeing.
The blood that seeps into the earth from the death wound at her flank is silver as the moonlight that shines down upon us.
“Oh, Yara.”
She does not look up at me as my voice breaks on her name or as I drop into the dirt by her side. Her hand continues to stroke Umyr’s velvet nose, so tender it tears my heart.
“She stepped in front of a blow meant for me.”
I flinch at the raw grief in her voice.
“Meant for me,” she whispers again, quieter.
“Yara—”
“I wish they had killed me instead.” Her throat is thick with tears. “I wish I was the one lying here, and she was still flying high, guiding my soul into the aether.”
My head shakes back and forth as tears track down my cheeks. “Do not say such things, Yara.”
“Why not? It is the truth.”
“Do not wish for death. Not ever. No matter what.” Tentatively, I reach out and lay my hand atop hers, stilling its constant motion with a soft squeeze.
“Life is the most precious gift we are ever given. To squander it would be a waste. To stop living in the face of loss…it does a disservice to those who are no longer here with us. Umyr would not want you to follow her into darkness.”
“I do not know how to live without her. There is no meaning with her gone.”
How do you find the words to say goodbye to a love so great, there seems no purpose existing without it? How do you carry on, knowing the rest of your days will be only the palest shadow of something extraordinary?
You do not.
You cannot.
I have no wise words to offer her, no comfort that will ease the pain of such a loss. I can only wrap her in my arms, holding her as she holds Umyr, and let her tears dampen my skin until, at long last, they run dry. When she looks up at me, eyes red rimmed with desolation, her words are a vow.
“I will avenge her.” She rattles out a broken exhale. “Even if it takes my final breath to do it, I will strike down those who took her from me. So help me gods.”
I glance around Soren’s kitchen. We are a macabre group.
The mood is decidedly somber. We have suffered unexpected losses.
Faces flash in my mind. Thisobei, Umyr, Arwen.
Many are wounded, not only bodies but souls.
The sound of Thisobei’s winged dapple-gray mount rends the sky as she flies in low loops above the royal grounds, mourning the loss of her rider.
Atyr’s deeper brays reverberate along with hers, an unbroken refrain that makes all of us wince each time it fills the heavens.
I have never heard a Paexyri in the throes of grief before. I pray I never will again.
“We embark at first light.” Soren’s voice is matter-of-fact. “Two ships. Should one be unable to continue, the other must carry on.”
“Why can’t you portal there?” Mabon asks quietly. “Wouldn’t it be quicker?”
“Would that we could. There is no portal on the island. They will have taken her somewhere in Dymmeria first, then moved her to the prison. There is no way onto the Iron Isle except by boat.”
“My fleet is fastest,” Alaric offers. His eyes appear only partially focused on the room around him. “I will have my men prepare our two best brigs. Anything that can be off-loaded will be, to lighten the load.”
Soren nods. “We will not need the cannons. This mission will be one of stealth and speed.”
“Maybe keep one cannon,” Vaughn mutters, scratching at his blood-crusted beard. “Just in case.”
Jac scoffs.
“The roiling surf around the prison makes anchorage impossible,” Soren says. “See here?”
We all bend close as he taps one finger against the huge map he’s unfurled across the tabletop.
It shows the entire eastern coast of Anwyvn, from the mist-cloaked cliffs of Prydain to the protruding Daggerpoint peninsula, down the jagged length of Eastwood and, finally, to the deathly black shoals that surround Dymmeria.
Off the southeastern coast of that dark kingdom, there is an island—hardly more than a dot of ink, to my eyes—drawn amid ferocious brushstrokes that indicate an especially turbulent sea.
“Someone will have to remain behind on the ships while the rescue party makes landfall. Alaric, you’re a skilled skipper, perhaps—”
“No.” The blond man shakes his head, a flat rejection. “I’m going ashore.”