Chapter 53
Richard crawled to Kaelen on his forearms. He’d wrenched the sword from the ground, then used his boots to brace against the hilt and yanked his palms free from the blade.
The pain had been a distant thing—buried under layers upon layers of fear—but he did not trust himself to stand for the forest tilted dizzyingly around him.
After what seemed an age, he reached Kaelen and hauled the man into his lap.
“Kaelen. Kaelen, look at me.”
Richard cradled Kaelen’s head against the crook of his elbow and pressed his other hand—shaking, holed clean through—flat over the wound in Kaelen’s belly. Blood spurted out in hot, thick pulses, escaping the cracks of his fingers. Richard pushed down harder, ignoring the lance of agony.
A dusky pallor settled over Kaelen’s skin. And yet, when his eyes found Richard’s face, they lit up.
“My…prince,” Kaelen croaked.
“You.” Richard forced the words through his tightening throat. “You are not permitted to leave me. Do you hear me, Sir Kaelen?” He bellowed at the canopy. “FLINT! I NEED YOU! FLINT!”
The trees gave nothing back. Only spiders that scuttled in confused arcs around the trunks. Richard’s mind raced past the suffocating panic. Flint’s tarot card. The Lady of the Stars. She could heal. She could heal mortal wounds—
“I am going to fetch Flint. I shall be quick, I swear it—”
A fist closed on the front of his tunic. “Please…do not leave me.”
“I must, Kaelen. You cannot die.”
Kaelen’s lips curved. “I had…the most lovely dream.” He reached up to brush his thumb—too cold, far too cold—against the split in Richard’s lip. “Your parents…were alive…Our fathers…almost had a duel of fists—”
“Kaelen, hush—”
“And there was a ball…the Summer Ball.” Kaelen coughed, and more blood came up.
“The generals…meant to nominate me for the Greensward…I’d taken on a squire…
” Another wheezy cough. “And then—then I—I told my prince.” A tear slid from the corner of his eye and tracked into his hair. “I told him…all that I have held.”
Richard’s face crumpled. Of course, of course, Kaelen had followed him into the dream too. “In the broom cupboard.”
Kaelen’s eyes snapped wide, pupils blown. “Yes!” He beamed. “So it really was you…You led me…through the door—”
“I was there.” Richard stroked his thumb over a cheekbone. “I heard every word.”
A howl threatened to burst out of him, but he bit it down. He would not. He would not give in to it, because to give in was to admit, and he was not going to admit, because Kaelen was not going to die—
“Listen to me.” His voice cracked. “Listen, you foolish, stubborn creature. You must not die for you have not yet heard my answer.”
“It is enough…that I…confessed.” The laughter lines around Kaelen’s eyes creased. “But is this not…the part…where my prince…grants me…the sweetness of a kiss?”
“Shut up,” Richard hissed. “You are not dying here, you are not dying, do you understand me—FLINT!” He roared at the canopy with everything left in his lungs. “FLINT, GODS DAMN YOU, GET BACK HERE!”
The forest swallowed it whole.
Richard’s breath shuddered out of him in ragged gasps. He hugged Kaelen closer, bringing a knee up to support the knight’s back.
“Please,” he whispered, pressing his lips against Kaelen’s clammy brow. “Please. I cannot lose you. We cannot lose you. Your parents, Kaelen. Think of them. My brother, my sisters. There are so many who love you. Who could not? You are everything—”
Kaelen’s eyes glazed over, lids drifting shut.
“Kaelen!”
The lids jolted open, eyes still hazy. A faint smile. “Richard.”
The hand at Richard’s tunic loosened, and the arm flopped down. His eyes closed once more.
“No!” Richard whimpered. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe— “Kaelen, please—”
“All right. What’s all this mess?”
Richard’s head jerked up.
Flint ambled out from between two trees, an apple in hand and pockets bulging with Skullbreath blossoms. Taking a bite of the apple, he glanced over the spider, Richard, and Kaelen’s limp form.
“So.” Flint grinned. “What did I miss?”
Richard trembled. Suddenly, it was difficult to just stay upright. “Flint. I beg of you.”
A sneer flitted through Flint’s features as he worked his way through the apple. “Beg, is it?”
“He is a good man.” Richard faltered. “The realm will not be able to withstand his loss.”
“Hmm.” Flint swaggered close. “Ten years of my life I’d lose.”
Richard’s throat bobbed. Releasing Kaelen’s wound, he caught the leg of Flint’s trousers and forced his fingers to curl. His hands had gone too cold and numb for pain.
“Please.” Richard bowed over Kaelen’s chest to press his forehead into Flint’s knee. “Please, Flint. I shall give you anything. Whatever you wish. Call the Star. I beg you.”
Flint crouched onto his heels. His grin vanished, replaced by thin lips and narrowed eyes.
“All right, handsome. Here’s the bargain. I call her down. I pay her price. And in exchange, every debt between you and me is settled.”
“Yes. Yes, of course—”
“Think on it. Think hard, cause there’s no coming back from this.”
Something dark coiled within Flint’s eyes and edged his words. But Richard was past the point of examination.
“Done,” he rasped. “Done. Call her.”
Flint stared a heartbeat longer, then the grin returned. He rose, tossed the apple into the bushes, and pulled out a card from his sleeve.
“Right.” His eyes glowed violet. “Up you come, beautiful.”
A white light burst into existence, and Richard ducked instinctively, shielding Kaelen’s face.
The Star was a being of utter beauty, with luminous golden constellations inscribed against her black skin. Tight curls framed her face, and her chalky gown stretched over the large curves of her arms and stomach.
“Oh, my bound-one.” The Star greeted Flint. “It has been but a single turn of the Great Wheel since you last called me from the deep.” She elongated every vowel. “My price has endured. Ten years.”
“Aye, aye, ten.” Flint gestured at Richard. “His hands, too. Ten and a half, and we’ll call it square.”
The Star’s eyes slid to Richard.
“Ten and a half, you say, for two mendings.” She sounded amused. “Boundling, you yet hold the cheek of the child you were. Twelve years.”
“Eleven.” Flint winked. “Because you like me.”
“I like you not at all.” She chuckled. “But eleven it is.”
She knelt by Kaelen and rested her hands above his belly. A soft glow, and the spurting blood slowed, then ceased. The pallor in Kaelen’s face gave way to his warmer brown, and his breathing evened.
Richard’s eyes burned, and the shudders that wracked his frame finally eased.
“There is a heart in this one that fights to live.” The Star hummed. “His innards are remembering their shape. The blood is drawing back to its rivers.”
She withdrew her hands and took Richard’s. The glow came again, and he winced as the torn meat of his palms drew inward, the edges of the wounds reaching for each other, knitting, closing. The searing throb in his forearms ebbed. Once the light faded, all that remained were a pair of red scars.
“They shall ache when the clouds cry,” the Star said. “Such is the custom of all flesh. What has been torn can be mended but not forgotten.”
“My lady,” Richard whispered. “Thank you.”
She glanced at Flint. “Eleven, boundling, to be added to your debt. I shall come for them at the proper hour.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Flint waved. “See you in fifty years with any luck.”
She inclined her head, then she was a ray of light again, fading into the Star card.
“Right.” Flint swayed and grabbed a tree. “That’ll be enough excitement for one day.”
Richard palpated Kaelen’s carotid and breathed out a sigh to find the pulse strong and steady.
“Kaelen. Come back to me.”
The knight’s lashes fluttered. On seeing Richard, his eyes softened, and a dreamy smile spread across his face. “Am—am I in the heavens?”
A flare of irritation shot through Richard, and he found his hands quite capable of shoving. Kaelen yelped as he tipped sideways into the leaves. He scrambled up, tunic in shambles and soaked with blood, at the same time Richard surged to his feet.
“No,” Richard snarled, “You most certainly are not.” He jabbed a finger into Kaelen’s chest. “And you will refrain from repeating this.”
Kaelen blinked and rubbed over his exposed stomach. “Well, I had not planned the first—”
His mouth snapped shut at Richard’s glare.
“Fool.” Turning on his heel, Richard crossed to where his sword lay in the dirt. After retrieving it, he wiped the blade against a clump of moss. It was then that he saw her.
The siren’s children had not waited. They had swarmed her body in their thousands, a moving carpet of legs and dark bodies that climbed her flanks. Most of her was gone already. The white abdomen had collapsed inward, her skeletal hide hanging in tatters over the cavity.
Looking too long made Richard feel sick, but he forced himself to shift closer. For in the centre of the cavity, half-shrouded by the seething press of her young, something glowed.
It was the size of a small fist. An emerald green shard, beautiful, pulsing with light. The spiders, for all their gluttony, did not touch it.
Their mother’s heart.
“Bring me a cloth, Kaelen.” Richard smiled grimly. “We have what we came for.”