37. Thyra
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Thyra
Every muscle in my body tenses, my mind screaming at me to move.
In that moment, I’m conscious of gripping Maxim’s arm and his desperate wrench to get free of me. A dark rune races across the back of his hand as he flexes his limb away from me.
Then the heat of a volcano hits my cheeks, the ends of my hair catch on fire, and I don’t have time to scream before—
A heavy body crashes into me.
My surroundings fill with golden scales and a thrashing tail and soft hisses, and I can’t keep up with what’s happening as I’m knocked backward and wrapped up in a curling, slithering body.
The golden serpent.
He’s shielding me!
But the fire…
Flames strike across the air above us, visible only through the small gap the serpent leaves at the top of the cocoon he’s made around me with his twined body.
He isn’t wearing that saddle anymore and the flames must be hitting his side…
Oh, no.
Somehow, his big head has ended up nudged against my cheek.
Slowly, his eyes close.
“Thyra!” Maxim’s roar bursts through the buzz in my head. “Why?”
The serpent gives a quiet hiss before his body begins unfurling from around me.
I reach for his head, trying to hold on to him as the sickening scent of burning scales fills my chest.
The serpent’s unwinding body reveals Maxim crouched opposite us, his flames doused, his hands extended toward the serpent. “No.”
I can’t breathe. I’m barely aware of the woman kneeling on my far left, huddled beneath the serpent’s leathery saddle.
Or the rush of air as two figures race toward us, coming up behind Maxim.
Stellen and Antony.
Stellen leaps from Nara’s back, deftly scooping me into his arms and pulling me away from the serpent, while Antony, fully clad in black metal armor, crashes into Maxim.
“What did you do?” Antony roars at Maxim as Stellen whisks me away. “If you hurt her, I swear to the Goddess, I’ll fucking end you.”
I try to keep them in my sights, but Stellen blocks my view. He rushes me away from the fight, my surroundings blurring again before he crouches to the ground with me, his frantic hands running across my face and shoulders and arms. “Where are you hurt?”
I gasp. “I’m okay.”
His hands don’t stop reaching for me, checking me over, and I take a heartbeat to breathe and assess my own senses because there’s a danger that I’m in shock and could be badly injured without yet feeling it.
But no. My hair is curling on my right side, but only the strands that were loose. The bulk of my braid and the yellow ribbon are completely unscathed on my left.
A second later, my armor wraps around me. I wasn’t aware of the moment the silver threads retreated, but now they wind around both Stellen and me, settling softly like a blanket, sealing us in.
I wrap my arms around Stellen’s neck and press my lips to his cheek. “Stellen, hear me.”
He stills, his hands pressing against my back, his cheek to my cheek, his icy-white hair tickling my neck.
“I’m okay,” I whisper before a deep sob pushes at my throat. “But the serpent isn’t. He’s hurt.”
Now, Nara blocks my view, her furry, white body positioned resolutely between me and the fallen beast, her soft whines telling me how concerned she is.
The awful scent of burning flesh and scales is a horror I can’t ignore and won’t accept. “You have to help the serpent.”
Stellen’s cool fingertips tangle in my hair as he gives a slow shake of his head. “The serpent isn’t in pain anymore.”
Another sob rises to my throat. I close my eyes, struggling against my tears. “This isn’t right. He can’t die without his name. I can’t let this happen!”
Stellen’s arms tighten around me. “You need to stay here where it’s safe.”
The thumping sounds of the brutal fight happening across the dark plain break through the quiet between Stellen and me.
I press a kiss to Stellen’s cheek, forcing myself to breathe through the ache in my heart. “No. I don’t.”
“Thyra?”
I draw back to meet Stellen’s unearthly eyes. “I’m going to the serpent, and I will fight you if you try to stop me.”
The corners of his mouth flicker upward. “A fight with you is the last thing I want.”
If only there was time to reach up and press my lips to Stellen’s, to breathe through this moment, the first time I’ve seen him since I thought I lost him.
I surge back to my feet, my armor quickly adjusting around me as I rapidly find my balance and race past Nara, who follows me at a run.
As I hurry back toward the serpent, I catch sight of the starlit woman retreating farther toward a pallet that rests like an island in the dark channel’s narrowest point. She reaches a fallen man who is struggling to his feet beside the pallet.
I have so many questions about that woman, about this whole situation, and I need all the answers, but for now, the serpent is my focus.
Along with the fight between Antony and Maxim.
Antony’s punch sends Maxim tumbling across the rocky ground and it’s clear Maxim isn’t fighting back.
At some point, he has pulled on a pair of pants. Or maybe he was wearing them the whole time—I couldn’t really tell through the flames rushing toward me.
Maxim takes the hit and the next, stepping forward into Antony’s third punch. Fire finally leaps up around Maxim’s body, healing his split cheekbone and visibly broken jaw.
“Is that all you’ve got?” Maxim roars, proving just how fully his jaw has healed as he steps back into Antony’s space. “My bones don’t stay broken. How are you going to hurt me, Iron King?”
I’m suddenly caught in the indecision of getting between them, but my heart hardens.
They’re enemies. They won’t stop until they decide to stop. For now, their choices are not my responsibility.
I drop to the ground beside the serpent, catching my breath before I force myself to face the damage to his body.
Charred black bones. Scorched flesh. The middle of his body on his left side is…
My hand flies to my mouth. I didn’t see any of this from within the cocoon he’d created around me to keep me safe.
I lurch forward, reaching for his head again, pressing my palm to his cheek.
“Serpent,” I whisper, my fingers brushing his nearest scar. “Why would you do this for me?”
This beast barely knew me. He had no reason to protect me. Except maybe…
My focus rises again to Maxim, who rages at Antony, provoking another sequence of strikes that audibly break Maxim’s bones.
The serpent didn’t do it for me. He did it for Maxim.
Dear Goddess, but I was the one holding on.
In the haze of movement, I remember that clearly.
I stopped Maxim from moving away from me.
I may not yet understand the circumstances that drew us to that moment, but Maxim has already proven to me how seriously he takes the danger of his fire. He doesn’t live near his people anymore. He wouldn’t even step close to me earlier.
Stellen stands guard at my side with Nara on the other side of him while I take another breath and prepare to launch myself into the conflict between Maxim and Antony.
The moment I push away from the serpent, I stop.
My fingertips are tingling. An odd sensation.
I peer closer at the bumpy scar I was touching, tracing the curved welt along the serpent’s scales, following the nearly imperceptible sequence of golden ridges that extend all along the serpent’s neck.
“These marks,” I whisper. “They look just like…”
I turn my arm over in a flash, comparing the blood bind runes to the pattern on the serpent’s scales that are now leaping out at me like a blazing sun.
“This is a blood bind!” The marks are darker. Clearer. As if Maxim’s flames had caused them to rise across the serpent’s scales. “Stellen, this is a—”
He’s already at my side.
“Look.” I hold my arm closer to the scars. “This mark on my arm is the same as this mark on the serpent. This one, too!”
“They’re runes.” Stellen doesn’t touch them, his palm hovering above the serpent’s scales. “Very cleverly concealed. It looks like they were drawn in—”
“Gold ink.” A shiver runs down my spine as the images in my Oracle vision flash back within my mind: a woman drawing in gold on a baby’s arms and then lacing the lines with blood.
Stellen leans back on his heels. “Blood mixed with gold is a very rare combination. I’ve only read of it once and that was a vague mention in one of the letters I showed you.”
One of those letters strongly indicated that the fae who forged the Dragonstone Blade was a Blood Fae.
But I start to doubt myself. “Ferocie Scribes used metallic inks, didn’t they? Maybe this isn’t a blood bind but simply a decoration, like an insignia.”
Stellen rubs his chin. “As much as I’d like to believe that, these are dark marks.
I don’t know what they mean, but the stroke pattern matches a blood bind.
Parts of your blood bind, to be exact. Which could mean the similar marks are some kind of foundational building blocks from which the other runes extend. ”
My mind churns as I try to understand what this could mean. “Blood magic is specific. Targeted. Why place a blood bind on this serpent?”
Maxim said the serpent already had these scars when he slithered out of the sand two years ago, the only serpent willing to carry him.
What was the serpent’s blood bind doing?
Before I can ask, Stellen jolts toward me.
“Thyra, you’re bleeding.”
I swipe at my nose. Only a trickle but enough to make a mess across my hand.
“Your body was under enormous stress.” Stellen’s arms are around me again, a supportive hold. Then, with a quick exhale, he asks, “Did you see the threads connecting us?”
I give him a quick nod.
He wraps his hand around my shoulder, a steadying force. “I feared they would tear out your heart.”
A heart that is suddenly thumping, a beat Stellen will be able to hear. Which he proves when his hand slides to my cheek, his thumb a soft caress beneath my earlobe.
“I kept my silences for a long time,” he murmurs, his voice melodic and soothing. “I kept my pain to myself. That pain nearly ended me. And you. And for what? I hurt you, Thyra. You could have died because of me. It’s time for the silences and the secrets to end.”
With that, he rises to his feet. “I’ll stop the fight. Then we’re going to talk. All of us.” His jaw tightens. “This serpent can’t have given his life for nothing.”
I close my eyes again and press my cheek to the serpent’s face, my palm to his scars as I whisper, “I wish I knew your name.” My throat closes over, but I manage, “Thank you for your bravery.”
As I rise to my feet, I fight the hollow in my chest, where it feels like my heart has been carved out like Stellen feared.
I take a single step forward and stumble, but not from exhaustion.
A spark flares at the corner of my vision. Golden energy. For a panicky moment, I’m afraid a blade vision is about to happen, but the spark is on my left, not along the Dragonstone Blade.
I whirl back to the serpent, only to be blasted across the ground, managing to control my ascent into the air, my levitation instincts kicking in just in time before I would have plummeted back to the ground.
My heart is leaping.
With a gusty hiss, the serpent rears his head up off the ground, his neck curving in the air.
The runes along his face spark brightly.
Like a burning rope, golden light flares along every scarred line, rushing from the serpent’s head, skipping his burned middle before continuing to his tail.
From both sides of the serpent’s wound, his undamaged scales begin multiplying, but not golden, now black. His flesh begins knitting, the wound fills out, and his new black scales close over his middle, leaving him with a large patch of charcoal scales along his left side.
He hisses, but deeply, a groaning sound that eases as he swivels his head to me, closing the gap to nudge his nose against my chest. A single touch, his eyes bright again.
I’m breathless. In awe.
I step right up to his face, pressing my cheek to his as he closes his eyes and sinks back to the rocky ground, careful to keep his horns from scraping me.
I can barely speak. “How?”
His nose nudges my nose, an action that feels like a boulder pressing to my face. Another trickle of blood reaches my lips.
My nose is bleeding.
I must have smeared blood onto his marks after wiping my nose with my hand.
Now I have even more questions than before. Does his blood bind allow him to self-heal, provided the bind is fed with blood? Would any blood suffice? Or was it mine as an Oracle?
Beneath all of those questions is the one I don’t want to ask myself.
A question that could alter my path from this moment on.
Carefully, while keeping my body pressed to the serpent, a reassuring force at my side, I turn to face the intense silence behind me.
Stellen and Nara are poised to my right.
Maxim and Antony are twenty paces away. Maxim’s posture indicates he took a step forward but stopped himself, his eyes wide, his breathing rapid, his thumping heart crashing beats in my hearing.
“Serpent.” He steps toward the beast, who slithers past me, only to stop when Maxim abruptly shakes himself and backpedals. “What am I thinking? I’ll fucking burn you again.”
Maxim whirls on Antony, barreling into him, smacking both fists against Antony’s chest as he shouts, “What are you waiting for, Iron King? Take your revenge. Get justice for your brother.”
Antony lurches back a step, as if he’d evade a continued fight. It’s impossible to see his expression behind his mask, but his heartbeats are low and heavy.
“You said it yourself.” He snarls. “I can’t break you.”
“I’m already broken!” Maxim roars. “Tear off my head already! You can’t let me live. I’m a fucking menace!”
Antony snarls again but takes another step away.
Maxim stumbles, his naked chest heaving, his focus sliding to the serpent and then to me before he mumbles, “A fucking menace.”
Turning, he stalks away into the darkness, leaving us in a new silence.
My shoulders slump before I lift my lips to the serpent’s cheek and ask him the question that will determine my future choices, right here and right now.