Chapter Forty-Nine
Forty-nine
Faolan
I’ve drowned a thousand times in my dreams by now, but never once on smoke.
Yet here it is, filling my lungs, thick and cloying—backed by a wall of flame.
Kiara and I stumble our way through the tower, nearly breaking our necks with how fast we fly down. I shove the hide against one of those cracks in the stone wall as flames lick up the branch poking its way in. Together, Kiara and I burst through the narrow opening at the tower’s base—or try to.
My shoulder wrenches as the shield locks between walls, Kiara’s body snapping back into mine.
“Captain, this is no time for playing games!”
Nessa’s voice breaks through the madness, and pain rips down my arm as I wedge the shield free, feeling my skin shred beneath the leather hide as Kiara gasps, holding her head where a thin line of blood streams over her eyelid from a cut just above.
“Get the relic!” she shouts, and I grind my teeth to stifle the pain.
“Move it.” Nessa nudges me aside with her elbow and grabs either end of the shield.
It takes precious seconds to push it free, Nessa shoving on one end as I kick the tarnished bronze that binds the shield and pray it doesn’t fall apart. All that gentle rustling of the Bruidin leaves is gone now, a hungry roar building in its wake.
“We’ve got to get going.”
“Shall I—spit on it and see if—that makes it come smoother?”
I’m barking a laugh that rapidly devolves into a cough as finally, the shield gives way. Nessa takes it in hand—but she’s not smiling. Coughs rack through her whole chest, fogging up the bronze. “Is this—it?”
“Aye.”
“Give it here.” Kiara waves us toward her, already holding out a leather belt. Nessa and I strap it to her back with fumbling fingers, slick with sweat.
“What could have caused the fire to burn this fast?” I ask, wrenching the belt tighter.
“A hare, startled into running? A bird trapped between branches—gods, a fecking breeze. Anything.”
“I’ll hold my breath, then—shall I?” Nessa asks, hacking again.
“By all means.” I slap my hand to the shield. “You’re good, Kiara.”
“Then, let’s go!”
Kiara shoves at my back and Nessa’s, and I start running through the crumbling halls, down toward the entry, where—
One of Kiara’s guards lies face down on the ground, gold sprawled out beneath him. A branch lies broken near his hand, flames already licking up the tree he must have caught it from. The fire’s already claimed most of his body.
Nessa stops, mouth falling open, but Kiara grabs her arm and pulls.
“He’s already gone.”
“But the body—”
“We’ll recover it in spring, now, go!”
Nessa shoots me a look, knowing damn well we’d never leave a wolf behind, but already my feet are picking their way across the gold coins after Kiara, looking for a route to escape by, and—there.
I whistle Nessa’s tune: quick and cheerful, and low enough to match her belly laugh as I take off down the path with Kiara, our feet pounding the earth without much care now, save to get out.
The fire is spreading—has spread—so violently it’s hard to say whether we’re heading toward the keep and the grasslands or deeper into the Bruidin wood.
Nessa’s coughs sound behind me, growing nasty as the air gets thicker.
Finally, I grab hold of Kiara’s shoulder and drag her to a stop. “Cover your mouth.”
“No time—”
“Cover your feckin’ mouth! You too, Ness.”
My first mate doubles over, clutching her knees as convulsions rattle her whole chest. “I’m—just grand, so I am.” But when she straightens, she has a strip of cloth in hand. I grab my own from my pocket, cut before we arrived for this very reason.
It takes seconds—precious seconds—to knot them behind our heads, and Kiara spends the whole time frantically searching the sky for the sun. “We can’t stop again.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Can’t hesitate either, or else—”
My heart stops as a branch cracks above us.
Guts spill over themselves at the sickening crunch when it falls.
On instinct, I dive forward—reaching for Kiara to push her out of the way—but she shoves my chest. Sends me careening backward as the branch swings down.
Straight into her head.
There was a queen sculpted of fire, who loved her people so.
My cousin drops.
“No!”
I scramble back to standing as Nessa claws her way past, both of us reaching the branch at the same time. Together, we shove the angry, crackling wood off her body—beating sparks and flecks of burned leaves away with our hands.
But Kiara’s not moving.
Kiara’s not moving.
“Nessa—”
“She’s breathing.” Nessa rips her glove away to shove her fingers against Kiara’s throat. “She’s alive.”
But her head is cut, blood pouring in sheets down Kiara’s face, burns and blisters ravaging her neck and hands.
“Feck. Feck.” My muscles spasm as I frantically try to beat any remaining embers out, but it’s Nessa who thinks faster: unlatching Maira’s shield from Kiara’s frame and strapping it onto mine.
“You carry this and pick the direction. I’ll carry—” Nessa’s lungs spasm on a cough, eyes gone bloodshot. “Her.”
“Nessa—”
“Now, Captain.”
Pressing the cloth tighter over my mouth and nose, I nod, then map the sun where it dips west, whistling Nessa’s tune once. She returns it, and we both bolt down a ragged stone path.
There are fewer roots on this than the others.
Fewer branches—but too many feckin’ leaves.
Every step sparks a new burst of flame, licking up the hide wrapped over our ankles and trying to climb our legs.
I keep my eyes on the broken cobbles, shoulder screaming under the weight of Maira’s shield after getting caught in that tower base.
But I keep whistling as we get farther down the path.
As the branches grow sparser, more of the sky showing through.
As my lungs battle the smoke, same as Nessa’s, though—
I stop in mid-stride, feet tearing into the ground as I whip around to face my first mate.
And find nothing but embers drifting on the wind in her place.
“Dammit—Nessa!”
Stonework bleeds into a dirt path under my feet as I stand between them, whistling her belly-laugh tune.
Nessa doesn’t whistle back.
Panic starts to set in as I retrace the path I’ve been on.
Whistle louder. Sharper.
Finally scream her name.
“NESSA!”
I’m about to run straight back into the worst of it when a faint, ragged whistle comes at my left, from where an entire tree trunk has fallen, sparks coursing like veins down its bark.
“Ness—”
My first mate lies sprawled on the burning ground, coughs wracking her entire body. Kiara lies just beside her, her face and half her shirt drenched in blood.
Too much blood.
A jolt of raw panic hits my gut as I kneel between them, heat washing over my skin from the fallen tree, but I can’t process what’s happening.
Can’t wrap my head around the swelling on Kiara’s forehead.
The sooty black streaks painted across Nessa’s skin as her coughs slow down, chest shuddering with every breath.
I don’t know how to fix this.
How to save them both.
I don’t know how to be a hero.
Still, my hand fumbles as I tear the thick hide away from my hip bone and reach down into my trousers for the vial half-filled with shimmering blue liquid, just like the waters in that world where Saoirse and I would meet.
The last of the Spring of Leigheas.
My mother’s final gift.
But there’s only a mouthful—hardly enough to matter.
Enough to save a life.
Heat stings my eyelids as I blink away wetness, and reach not for Kiara’s cheek, but for Nessa’s, giving it three firm slaps.
“Nessa? Ness?!”
Her eyes flutter open—relief crashing through me so much, I nearly drop the damn thing.
“Cap—t’n?”
“I’m here. I found you.” I cradle her cheek, thumbing away some of the soot as Nessa cracks a weak smile.
“Took you…long ’nuf.”
“Sorry—gods.” I drop my forehead to hers, my other hand shaking as I roll my fingertip over the cork. “I’m going to get you out, all right?”
“…Right…”
“Just—hang on, Ness. Keep breathing.” Giving her cheek one more pass until I see a few freckles pop out, I make sure her mouth and nose are still covered before turning back to Kiara, heart in my feckin’ throat.
She looks like a corpse. Paler than I’ve ever seen her, face swollen, blood matting her hair to her head.
My fingers fumble the cork three times before I finally grab it with my teeth and spit it out. Smoke still drifts in the air around us, heat radiating off the log and the woods, but it’s not spreading here. There’s too much stonework, thank the stars.
“Kiara?”
She doesn’t react.
I tip her chin higher, nudge her mouth open with a sooty thumb. Swear when it stains her lip black. But the vial lights up when I raise it to her mouth and tip all the liquid in. It pools in the back of her throat—immediately causing her to gag.
“Shite!” I snap her mouth shut, pinch her nose—swearing a blue streak as her body rattles, jerks—until finally her throat moves with a swallow.
I let her go, grabbing for her hand instead.
“Please work, please work, please feckin’ work.”
It takes a few seconds—miserably long seconds—as I stare without breathing at the cut on Kiara’s forehead, waiting for it to heal. And then—
Kiara lurches up so fast, we nearly knock heads.
“What the—”
I hurl my body into hers, weeping shamelessly as I snatch Kiara closer and bury my face in her bloody shirt. She’s stiff as I hold on to her, hands passing from her shoulders to her forehead to the burns on her face.
“What are you doing?!”
“You’re alive! Gods, Kiara, you nearly—you were—”
I shove her back to look her over again. It’s not quite the miracle of Saoirse’s healing—that was water poured over one specific wound—but it’s the worst of it, gone. The swelling of her forehead, the cut, the largest seeping blisters and burns.
Again, Kiara pushes me away from her, glaring now. “What are you on about? And why are you wearing the shield?”
“A branch fell. Hit your head and dropped you. If it weren’t for Nessa, you would have—”
My eyes flit to the side of her.
To my first mate.
Nessa.
Lying still, open-eyed, on the ground.
The crackling roar of the fire stops.
Or maybe it’s time.