by Meagan Hurst
Her unknown caretaker was quick on the uptake though; a warm cloth was placed over her eyes for a moment before the barest of pressure was applied and the cloth was pulled away. This time she managed to open her eyes, but her vision was its typical has-not-been-used-in-months-and-therefore-is-blurrier-than-hell which made her caretaker a fuzzy blob. Since that wasn’t good enough, she closed her eyes again and counted to ten before once again letting them open and moving her gaze upwards, so she could see at last who had been tending her all this time. What she saw this time didn’t help. What she saw—who she saw—was an impossibility.
That impossibility regarded her without blinking and didn’t so much as flinch as her magic came at her call to test him. Magic swirled around his form, seeking answers and searching for a hint of an illusion. Not even Midestol had been able to fool her, so when the results told her she was seeing what her mind had believed, Z managed to do nothing more than continue to gape at the being before her. Opening her mouth to speak, she found her throat had tightened and her mouth had gone dry. The apprehensive gaze she received from the immortal before her caused a small amount of guilt to fill her, and she struggled again to speak.
“Don’t speak,” Nivaradros advised as he watched her. His eyes were a brighter green than she would have liked to see, but she could tell he was nervous about her reaction to his presence. He looked weak, far weaker than she wanted to see him, but he was alive, and he was here.
Wanting to reassure him—wanting to say something—she opened her mouth to speak again and ended up doing nothing more than bursting into silent tears of relief, joy, and surprise. He moved then. Touching her cheek with a hand, he managed a smile before bending down to pick her up. Holding her close and holding her as though he was frightened that she would break if he moved, Nivaradros nevertheless began to carry her from the bed to a part of the room she was grateful to see: the bath.
“Your skin is stained with blood. I don’t think you’ve been bathed since you were wounded, and with all the ointments and other concoctions you have been subjected to while you were unconscious, I have a feeling you will want this. Otherwise you will find you resemble a very, very bad painting. I, myself, can no longer differentiate between what is a bruise and what is a stain from one of the seventeen ointments I have been using to keep you safe from further infections and to encourage your skin to heal. If you don’t wish to bathe, just let me know any way you can.”
Kneeling without so much as shifting his grip on her, Nivaradros lowered her into the water—bandages and all. She felt a barrier of magic holding her up on each side and in front of her and she glanced up at the Dragon.
“You have a history of trying to die in baths,” he reminded her in a level tone, though his eyes danced. “I thought we might want to save your attempt for a little later.”
She managed a smile and lost track of time soon afterwards when exhaustion settled over her like a cape. When she managed to drag herself back, she discovered the Dragon had moved her. She now rested back under the covers in the bed, yet she was propped up against a mountain of pillows. She blinked and looked for Nivaradros. She relaxed when she found him over at the table, chairs, and food, and she closed her eyes once more before opening them again and attaching them to the Dragon. She felt noodle-ish, and for once she found she was willing to accept that sensation. She had the Dragon back; she cared about little else for the moment. Not to mention that thinking took far too much energy.
Nivaradros glanced over at her as she watched him. A slight smile softened his features, and Z again was struck by just how much weight the Dragon had lost, how ill he looked. He was better off than her, of course, but the sight of him was a painful reminder of what he had gone through. Like her, he had been hit with those arrows. Unlike her, he had supposedly not survived. She wanted to know how his presence was possible, but she also didn’t care too much, as she wasn’t about to lose this gift by angering him.
He returned to her side with a small plate of food cut into the tiniest of pieces. He hesitated for a moment and began to try and feed her. She recalled that the last time he had attempted this she had been in a less than charitable mood, and she managed a smile before accepting his aid without a fuss. She was too tired, he was still injured, and any distrust she’d had of him had vanished in light of his disappearance.
“Your unnamed, annoying visitor,” he told her at long last. “He came to visit me after my crash. I was barely conscious, and barely able to focus on him, but he told me he had made you a promise he intended to keep: a promise that he wouldn’t let me die.” Nivaradros’s lips twitched into a grimace. “I didn’t trust him—I certainly don’t like him—but I was in no condition to argue, and he was offering me a chance to return to you. I took it.” She stared at him, struggling to find words, and as she tried to speak, his grimace changed into a crooked half smile.
“Unfortunately, what he offered was a slow process. He likewise promised me he wouldn’t let you die before I could return. It was…exasperating,” he added. “I would have preferred he hadn’t put that particular concern into word, but I was in no condition to argue.” Her eyes began to close again, and she heard Nivaradros sigh. “Sleep, Zimliya. We have all the time in the world to talk, and you are so very, very weak.”
Sleep was an idea she was on the fence about, but she felt the familiar feel of weights being attached to her consciousness, and they began to drag her down. She struggled to speak—angry she still couldn’t manage it—and she let out something akin to a growl without any sort of weight behind it.
“Nivaradros,” she murmured.
“Yes,” he replied at his most neutral.
Damn her ability to only speak his name! He was bound to get frustrated over that. He was far too quiet for her preferences anyway. “Injured,” she breathed as her mind struggled against something that not even she could win. “Rest?” The word turned into a question at the end, and she didn’t even make the attempt to fix it.
There was a lengthy pause in which Nivaradros struggled over her words, but after several minutes, she felt the bed shift as the Dragon added his weight somewhere close to her, but far enough away that she would have to expend a great deal of energy to reach him. Sighing with irritation, she readied herself to do just that when the Dragon reached out and pulled her close against his chest, so her back was touching his stomach.
“My wounds are healed enough,” he assured her. “And I hope this was what you sought. If not, I will move. Sleep, Zimliya,” he said as she felt a thin stream of magic encircle her. “I want to see you well again.” She felt his lips on the top of her head and marveled at the Dragon’s actions. She knew whose fault Nivaradros’s current demeanor was, and she fully intended to yell at him the next time he appeared.
“Working on that,” she managed to murmur as she shifted close to the Dragon’s frame. He was warm, and she assumed she had to feel like ice next to him, but he didn’t so much as flinch when she shifted from a tendon that pulled wrong. Moving until she felt it relax, she settled and felt Nivaradros’s hand touch her forehead. “Cheater,” she breathed with a hint of spite in her tone before beginning to slip into the sleep that was brought with magic.
“My kind is prone to do that, it makes things much easier than when we are forced to play fair,” he agreed with a soft laugh. That soft laugh was the last thing she heard, and it was such a welcome sound—one she had never thought to hear again—she was almost certain she ended up falling asleep with a smile.
When she awoke next, however, she was alone; the Dragon’s presence wasn’t even in the room. Struggling, she sat up with a hiss, feeling the skin stretch across her chest in two places. She forced herself to keep from moving. Heart beating frantically, she closed her eyes and tried to perceive Nivaradros within the lair, but her senses were too weak to extend that far. Opening her eyes and struggling to keep calm, she inhaled and exhaled until she was once again her own master. If Nivaradros had been a hallucination, s
he would have to accept it. The thought was crushing, but she couldn’t even detect a hint of his presence in the room and, although her senses were weak, she assumed she would have felt something unless he had been gone for hours.
The doors opened at that moment, and she turned her head to see who it was. Nivaradros took one look at her and closed his eyes, exhaling in a long, slow motion that was meant to expel anger or something else powerfully felt. He approached her then and pushed her back down onto the pillows behind her.
“I went to alert the Shade that you were alive, awake, and doing as well as expected, but he was surprised to see me, and it took more time than I wanted.” His eyes went from neon to a forest green and he pulled the blankets away from her so he could tend to the wounds beneath them.
“I thought I would be able to hold off aversion towards the Shade for a few months after the first initial contact, but since I’ve been informed that this is my fault, I find I am less inclined to.” Nivaradros’s movements were lithe, gentle, and fast.
Undoing the thick bandaging that had been instrumental in her recovery, the Dragon disappeared from view briefly as he bent to pick something up off the floor. Z, however, found her gaze drawn to the giant cavity—the one she could see—that was mere inches away from her heart. Nivaradros had been right about the staining. Even after the bath there were rainbows of colors around the skin that hadn’t been eaten away by magic and poison. Her lightning seemed to be proud of itself, or reacting to the Dragon, as it was a storm across her shoulder and the lower parts of her side. Where the wound had brushed up against it, though, it was the most condensed; it looked like a ball of lightning had been created and set against the wound on all sides.
Seeing where her gaze was, Nivaradros paused when he rose, and set the dressing on the bed. “Crilyne and I both believe those scars are the only reason we are still talking; they kept the magic and the poison in the arrow from reaching your heart.” He brushed a finger over the circle of lightning and Z watched in astonishment as strands of it—strands finer than a single hair—clung to his fingers. Her lightning had decided Nivaradros’s touch and interest were flattering. “If that is the case,” he added, “then I appear to be indebted to a scar.” His grimace was real, but the amusement he displayed was as well.
She laughed at his expression, and he tapped her nose with a finger in response. He returned to cleaning and redressing her two wounds before he bound them again. The thickness of her bandages, made her wonder how often he had to leave to gain more supplies. She called up her senses as he worked and, once again, found her magic sensed something different about the Dragon.
“Nivaradros?” she whispered in horror as a thought occurred to her. “What was his price? What was the cost of his aid?”
The Dragon froze. Just froze. Closing his eyes, he turned away from her. “It was a difficult situation,” he said with his back facing her. “Understand I was dying, possibly dead when he came to aid me. He was able to ease some of the pain, but what he offered, as you know, came with a price. Perhaps we should speak of it when you can hit me.”
“I’m not going to hit you. Nivaradros, what did he offer?!” she asked as fear and anger gave her the strength she needed to speak.
She struggled to sit up again and Nivaradros turned back at once to help her when he heard her move. His hand brushed her cheek, and she leaned into it, seeking comfort from his touch without any of her old fears ruining it.
“Understand my only concern was—is—the ability to aid you. I knew what you would face. I knew you would fall prey to those arrows as well. Even when you see the trap, you often let yourself get taken by it. It is something I intend to work on when we have the time. I had to be able to return, and I had to be able to help you.” Nivaradros didn’t turn away this time, but he moved a small distance from her and his eyes were at their most dangerous.
“He offered me a choice,” the Dragon said in a low voice as his body tensed. “I could keep my Dragon form, and only my Dragon form, while sacrificing a small portion of my power to go into the extensive healing my wings would require to once again be whole and sound enough to bear me in the skies, or I could keep this form, and never again be able to call my native form, the form of my birth. I would keep all of my power with the second choice, but the ability to fly as I was meant to would no longer be mine. Nor would I be able to do a great number of things I once had been capable of doing in my native form.”
And he was in his lesser form. Z swallowed, hating herself. “Nivaradros—” she whispered in dismay.
“I was willing to lose a lot,” he continued in a steady tone, as though he hadn’t heard her. “The loss of this form, and the loss of an insignificant amount of power, would have been easy to accept. I would have done it without a second thought a few years ago. But, Z? I cannot touch you safely in my Dragon form. I could not help you in my Dragon form. It is the form I prefer to this weaker, lesser one, but I would have lost you if I had decided to let him cut this ability away. I was not—am not—willing to lose you.”
His stance was about as giving as a mountain. Actually, it was less, you could carve a mountain; nothing was going to make a dent in the Dragon. “I chose,” he informed her as his voice softened. “And there is no going back. It was the right decision,” he added as she opened her mouth. “I will miss the call of the sky and the feel of flight, but I would never have forgiven myself if I had been unable to do this,” he said as he gestured at the bandages upon her chest.
“Do not blame yourself,” he continued as an edge touched his tone. “This was my choice and mine alone. I also know I may have to deal with the fact that you accepted my death as the end to my existence. If you chose someone else—”
“No!” she half shouted. Knowing where it was going and seeing the flash of anger and pain it brought the Dragon. He fell silent, assessing her word while she touched her collarbone, or attempted to. “Nivaradros…I claimed you as much as you claimed me. I didn’t—couldn’t—go back on that.”
The Dragon regarded her with suspicion for a moment before he sighed and muttered a string of curses under his breath. “I am going to kill the Shade,” he observed as though he was commenting on the weather. “He informed me I might want to speak with you about your relationships. According to him, you had received fifty-five offers from various races with regard to the fact I was no longer living and could therefore not claim you.”
It was evident Crilyne had felt like torturing the Dragon. Z was going to have to talk to him. Especially in light of what Nivaradros had just told her. He had surrendered his native form for her. She couldn’t accept it, but she couldn’t change it either, so she said and did nothing, knowing if she spoke, she would only anger Nivaradros and lessen the importance of his choice. He had chosen to be with her—she was grateful, yet worried she wasn’t worth it. She didn’t want him to regret his decision down the road.
“I did receive fifty-two offers,” she admitted, “but I declined every one of them. I wasn’t willing to make a decision because doing so meant I went back on what you had offered me, and what I had offered in return.”
And she wouldn’t have changed her mind. No matter how many years had passed, she wouldn’t have accepted anyone else—not like this. Knowing now why his feel was different, she blamed herself for his decision. He had fought for her, been injured—died—because of it, and as a result of his choice, was bound to walk on the ground like a one of the races he considered to be lesser than his own.
“If you’re trying to blame yourself for this, expend the energy on something a little more worthwhile, please.” Nivaradros returned to her side and sat on the edge of the bed. “It was my decision, every part of it, and I have heard my willingness to loan you to Midestol turned out to be a blessing. That stupid Shade said Midestol was with you when you were struck, but not only did he not take advantage of your wound and kill you, he also allegedly fetched the Shade, and therefore brought you enough aid to keep you ali
ve until I was healed enough myself to come.” His eyes darkened further, and he managed a smile. “Do I get to force feed you?”
She snorted. “I can’t even hold a damn feather yet, but, no, you may not force feed me. I will, however, permit you to feed me politely. If you attempt to shove it down my throat, I will give you a flying lesson, wings or no wings.”
Nivaradros chuckled. Chuckled. She wasn’t sure she trusted her magic. The Dragon she knew, the Dragon who had once wanted to eat her, would have lost his temper by now. This Dragon, however, didn’t. He was amused, but that was all. Holding up a small morsel of food between his fingers with a grace he hadn’t possessed when she had last seen him, Nivaradros began the demeaning process of feeding her.
The only time even a hint of his temper showed was when she tried to get him to stop feeding her before he was willing to. And he hadn’t bothered to say anything, that black stare had been enough because she didn’t have the energy to hit him. It was a well-rounded meal though: cheese, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, some sort of meat, and a familiar type of bitter bread she had grown fond of from the Ryelentions. Which meant Shalion.
“Did you ask Crilyne about anyone?!” she demanded as it dawned on her just how long she had been lying unconscious while everyone else had been forced to deal with their own problems. “Is everyone okay? Where do things stand?!”
Nivaradros ignored her with a silence that could have brought a layer of ice to cover the room; offering her another bite of food first. Putting the plate down beside him with care he met her eyes with an irritated look. “Wait until I answer the first question before you throw a second and third at me. You used to be perfectly capable of waiting. Was it the injury or your immortality that caused your patience to lessen?” When she stiffened and opened her mouth to reply, the Dragon’s lips twitched upward into a small smile.