His body hits the trunk, half hanging perilously over the side, hands scrabbling desperately for a hold on the bark.
“Hang on!” I shout, dropping onto all fours, Helos yelling in the background. Wes lifts an arm and reaches farther, trying to wrap it more securely around the trunk. I stretch out my hands, but his pack is already pulling him back toward the water.
He slips over the side.
“WESLYN!” I scream, as he plummets toward the river. “WES!”
I’m scouring the waves frantically, hardly giving thought to my own security on the tree, desperate for his head to break through. I wait another instant before rising, shedding my pack, and hurling it with all my might onto the land ahead. It hits, and I go down.
The descent through nothingness lasts no more than a handful of heartbeats. I slam into the water with the force of a bear, engulfed at once by the waves.
Cold water surrounds me from every angle, yanking and twisting me this way and that. Eyes clamped shut, cheeks puffed out to preserve the air in my lungs, I flail wildly in the darkness. I have no idea how far down I’ve sunk, or which direction the surface is in, and panic begins to consume me.
Up. The one thought that cuts through the rest. Swim up.
But which way is up?
I force my eyes open just enough to make out the haze of light, then kick and claw toward it with all the strength I possess. My lungs are going to burst, they’re going to burst—but I break through the surface, gasping and choking.
The churning water bellows in my ears, enraged and ringing with ire. Wes is ahead; I can see his head above the surface now, arms fighting desperately to stay afloat. The weight of the pack keeps pulling him under for long stretches.
I throw myself forward, riding the current, swimming toward him as fast as I can manage. Spray clogs my nose and mouth, and I’m forced to stop and cough every few strokes. I consider shifting to lynx, but I don’t know that that would make me any stronger.
I swim. I spit. I swim more.
In the chaos, a flurry of driftwood surges past my spiraling arms. Before I can try to warn him, one of the pieces collides with Wes’s head, and I inhale another mouthful of water when I shout for him.
My arms close under Wes’s just as he’s about to sink too far to reach. His body is a deadweight in my hands, and for a few terrifying moments I’m pulled beneath the surface. The sounds of the world above grow muffled.
Then we’re out again, and our shot at salvation appears up ahead: the banks of Telyan curving out to meet us. Using all of the strength that remains in my body, I fight toward it, one arm around Wes’s chest, the other churning the water. The current slows the closer to shore we get, and in time my feet strike rocks and sand. I keep swimming over until it’s shallow enough for me to stand, then drag the unconscious Wes toward me, over the rocks and onto the bank. Then I collapse.
* * *
For several moments, all I can do is lie there on the muddy riverbank, coughing water that burns like fire, my breath coming in horrible, sticking gasps. A sharp pain razors through my chest and upper back with every inhale, and my limbs feel heavy, so heavy. Waterlogged. Completely exhausted. It takes everything in me to dig my hands into the soft earth and drag myself forward, then upright.
I crawl to him.
The sight of Wes lying broken on the ground is enough to drown me anew. His arms have been cut up even more than mine, some wounds still bleeding, others covered by the debris that caused them in the first place. His chest—is it moving? Frantically, I place my hands on his stomach and lower my ear to his mouth. My hands rise, then fall. Barely.
“Wake up,” I sputter, my hoarse voice choking on the words. “Weslyn. Wes!” I cradle his face in my hands, smearing dirt in his beard. “Why did you try to save me?” I murmur furiously, lowering my forehead to his. “I have wings.”
He doesn’t answer. Eyes closed, hair plastered to his skin, he looks deathly pale and utterly vulnerable. One of my nightmares from the last few days come to life.
It’s wrong. So wrong. Like Helos honing his horns into weapons and Finley keeping him away. Like patients dying of a relentless illness, away from the people they love. Like cages and corpses, and a mother leaving her children to die. This cold, expiring thing is not my friend. It’s not Wes.
Panic thrums through every crevice of my body.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I need my brother, but he’s still on the other side of the river; I can just hear him shouting from the top of the gorge. Once again, I’ve crossed without him.
The next ragged breath I draw sends me into another fit of hacking. And an idea hits.
As soon as I’ve stopped coughing, I press my hands into his chest. Nothing happens. I push again, harder this time. And again. And again. When I think my arms are about to break, I push still more, until I cannot push any longer. Desperately, I check his face.
Nothing happens.
“Wake up,” I whisper.
If he can hear me, he shows no sign of it. Hot tears scourge my cheeks as I cup his face once more with my left hand. With my right, I brush the hair back from his forehead. I want him to look at me. To pierce me with those warm honeyed eyes that people say give strength in the darkest of times. But his eyes remain closed. Slowly, I lower my face and press my lips against his. They’re cold.
Then I turn my head toward the river. Where his pack is still somehow, miraculously, lying. The pack with our treasure.
Make sure it remains dry. The giants’ only instruction. Outside of a living body, water is not compatible with magic.
Finley. Nelle. All the people who have fallen ill, and all those still to come. To fall. The Fallow Throes that will spread and spread, consume the kingdom, because we failed. We traveled all this way—and failed.
It’s torture to leave Weslyn’s side, but I have to know.
I open the pack, treated to repel moisture from the rain—but nothing so strong as a river. Water has seeped into the bag and through his belongings. I extract the leather-bound journal and set it on dry land, cracking at the sight of its damp exterior. Then I find the box and hold it in front of me.
The seal is airtight. At least, it’s meant to be. But when I open the latch and lift the lid, the stardust is no longer iridescent and glowing. The minuscule, pearly white beads the size of sand have darkened to charcoal. My head shakes of its own accord as I run a pair of trembling fingers through the lot. It’s coarse against my wrinkled skin. Dull and lifeless. Grainy—
A gasp escapes my lips.
There at the bottom, deep in the corner, the faintest silver glow. Like embers of a dying flame, scrambling for a lifeline, a foothold, anything in the wood, the air.
I’m scooping it out and carrying it to Wes before my mind can catch up to my legs. A tiny chance, an impossible chance, a sliver of hope.
Then logic snatches the reins.
Even if this pinch survived the river, I can’t use it. It’s meant for Finley. If no one else, at least save Finley. It was my devotion to him that made me agree to this quest in the first place. A journey that almost killed my brother.
Coolness is kissing the inside of my fist, where the precious dust is sheltered within. I can’t use it.
I think of Wes’s voice, quiet but measured, reassuring, and imagine never hearing it again. Never feeling his arm around my shoulders and his head resting on mine, his touch both a grounding presence and a promise. What was it you said about torturing yourself?
I imagine losing that future, that splinter of a future that’s taken root in my mind, with this stubborn, difficult, wonderful person, who learned the very worst of me and, somehow, still wanted to stay.
A sob breaks my throat.
A collection of images that will no longer come true.
I can’t use it.
But then, what am I supposed to do? Deliver one dead son to King Gerar in exchange for the key to saving another? Impossible. And what if I did? What
if I save it for Finley and, fortune forbid it, he’s already gone?
Finley. Weslyn. I’m ripping at the seams, torn in two.
Please, Violet said.
I kneel by Wes’s shoulder.
Across the river, high above, Helos is waving his arms frantically, screaming at me. But his words are swallowed by the roar of the current and my desire not to hear them. I’m sure he can just make out my closed fist and has guessed what I’m planning to do.
And that’s another problem. If I save Weslyn, I doom more than my friend. I doom the boy my brother loves.
Can I do this to Helos? Betray his trust in a way that might be beyond reconciliation? Helos, who has sacrificed everything for me. Helos, the noble. Helos the good.
I look at Wes’s face, and know the answer. I have always known it, because it’s who I am. Clever and compassionate and courageous and strong.
But not that selfless.
I part Weslyn’s lips and let the stardust fall between them.
TWENTY-SEVEN
For several torturous moments, nothing happens. Wes remains immobile as ever, and in his silence I’m left to contemplate the magnitude of what I’ve done—and the fact that it may have been for nothing. What if I was too late, for the stardust or for Wes? What will Helos say?
Tentatively, I raise my eyes to the gorge. He isn’t there.
Feathers prick my skin. But before I can continue the search, Weslyn jerks awake.
Violent coughs rack his lungs, so pronounced that his entire body shakes. It’s the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. Heart thundering through my chest, I help him roll onto his side when I see the effort he’s making. His hands dig into the muddy earth, scrabbling for stability as he purges river water from his system.
When his haggard breathing finally relaxes into quiet wheezes, he pushes himself upright.
For a while, he says nothing. Just sits and breathes. And in this silence I look at him. Really look, see the skin mud-caked and dripping, the broad chest rising and falling, the taut arms supporting his weight. The thick brows, the eyes wide with the relief of the almost-dead, the mouth I grazed with my own. All of the things that were almost taken from me. I look and look.
At some point I realize he’s thinking these things, too, because he’s looking at me and my tear-streaked face, and then he’s pulling me toward him, and then he’s kissing me.
Kissing Wes is nothing like kissing the person I pulled from the river. It’s bracing and warm and wonderfully alive, mouth against mine, fingers in my soaked hair, hands on the back of his neck. Closer, closer. Greed for this thing the river tried to take. His grip falls to my waist, where drenched clothing still clings to my skin, and I pause in my tracing of his shoulders, down his chest, to rest a palm briefly over his heart. Reassuring myself of the pounding heartbeat, the spark still within. The life I almost lost. Perhaps sensing my distraction, he soon reclaims my attention with a trail of kisses along my jaw, down my neck, and my own rather strangled heartbeat tells me the move is entirely unfair.
Eventually I have to pull away to catch my breath, and when I do, he wraps his arms around my torso, steady and strong, not yet willing to let go. Which is good, because neither am I. I rest my forehead against his, savoring the feeling of his skin beneath my fingertips and his breath against mine. Not human and shifter. Not a leader of his people and the rumored subject of a prophecy.
Us.
For a few precious moments, just us.
I laugh a little, feeling lighter than I have in weeks, months probably. Weslyn smiles and brushes my tears away with his thumb, murmuring something that lights a thousand fires in each nerve, every trace of my skin.
And then he snaps back, alarm painted plainly across his face.
“The box! Fin!”
He pushes to his feet and locates his pack after a brief but frantic search, and all too soon, here is the moment I’ve been dreading, when I might lose what I’ve only just gained.
He tears through it, comes up short, then spots the box lying open nearby. The ashy dust within.
His entire body sags. Limp. Defeated. “Ruined,” he says, like he’s already standing in the future, exhausted from digging graves. “It’s all ruined.” His voice breaks a little on the word, and suddenly I’m longing to hide the truth from him. Aching to let him believe his survival is only by chance.
But something grew between us that night by the fire, when we shared the painful truths we keep hidden from the rest of the world. Perhaps the hardest thing for either of us to give another, but we gave it, anyway.
Trust.
And I refuse to betray that gift, however painful.
I gather myself, then say, “There was a little left.”
Slowly, fractionally, his gaze lifts from the box to me.
The silence is terrible.
“Wes—”
But I break off at the sight of my brother charging up the shoreline toward us. He made it! He crossed!
“RORA!” he howls, in a voice so vicious I instinctively leap to my feet. I will my heart to beat normally, attempt to stem the adrenaline leaking through my veins. This is not an enemy. He’s my brother.
Only, I’ve rarely ever seen him this angry, and never at me. Face red and limbs flailing.
He looks dangerous.
“You didn’t,” he begs, crashing to a halt before me. “Tell me you didn’t.”
“Helos—”
“How much was left? After the river, was there any left?”
I swallow. “Enough for one.”
“That was his chance!” he cries, arms swinging madly. “His one chance, the whole reason we left Telyan.”
“Finley is not the only one—”
“—the one who mattered to us.”
The cold words fracture the silence like shards of glass. All Wes does is turn back to the river, the only sign that the blow landed. I lock on to my brother, staring at him like I’ve never seen him before. “There are others we set out to save,” I say again, anger mounting. “And barely any stardust remained. I had no choice.”
“Of course you had a choice!”
“He was dying!” I yell, looking at Wes, who’s looking away.
“Finley is dying,” Helos pushes out through gritted teeth. “Remember Finley? Your friend? Or maybe you’ve forgotten, blinded by a pretty face.”
“Don’t you dare say something like that,” I tell him, still unsure of how to navigate this attack. I’ve been blamed, I’ve been shouted at, yes—but never by him. “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t care.”
“Your actions speak for themselves.”
“Helos,” Wes mutters, taking a step forward. “That’s enough. It’s done.”
“No, you don’t get to speak!” my brother retorts, shoving Wes away.
“You think you care more than I do about what happens to my own brother?” Wes challenges in a rising voice, still a bit hoarse from the river.
“Yeah, maybe I do,” Helos says, pushing him again.
“Stop it!” I cry, stepping between them. “This isn’t you. Everyone here loves Finley. You know that.”
He scoffs loudly.
“Maybe we can return to the giants,” I suggest. “We made a good impression. I’m sure they’d give us more.”
“We have nothing else to trade,” Wes replies, eyes still avoiding mine. “And I need to return to Roanin. I must warn my father about the attack on Glenweil; I’m sure they will come for Telyan next.”
Helos swears. “Back to the start with nothing gained. The whole journey, a waste.”
“A waste?” I echo in disbelief. “Have you overlooked the compound? What have you forgotten for a pretty face?”
“You know what I mean,” he says impatiently.
“No, I don’t. If you would set aside your own grief for an instant, you’d remember there’s more at stake now than our own problems. You think I don’t feel awful? Or that I don’t wish there had been another way?” I’m shoutin
g at this point. “What would you have done, Helos? Can you decide one life is more valuable than another? What gives you the right?”
He shakes his head. “By the river, you’re so selfish, Rora. I don’t believe you.”
The words are as callous as a slap to the face. I recoil, stunned.
It’s the way he said it, like I’m dirt beneath his boot. The fact that he specifically chose the fear that tormented me for so many years.
“You can’t mean that,” I whisper. And he can’t, because he knows me better than anyone in the world, and if he means to wound me as badly as his words suggest, I really am lost.
His expression relents a fraction, as if he’s coming to his senses at last. He runs his hands through his hair, and for a moment his mouth tightens in shame. But he does not take it back. Unable now to separate himself from the truths he would rather not face. Unable to pretend ugliness does not exist in his world. The wall has come crumbling down. Our journey through the Vale began it. My actions on the riverbank have seen to the rest.
“Is there a way out of this gorge?” Wes asks quietly. He wishes I hadn’t used the stardust on him. He’s still not looking at me, and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
Helos glares daggers at him, then jerks his head back in the direction from which he came.
I watch my brother a moment longer, needing him to recognize his own mistake, the hurt he has inflicted. Maybe I should have expected this, even without my betrayal. Maybe he was bound to snap sooner or later under the weight of too much caring.
Or maybe I’ve been wrong all along, and there’s no such thing as Helos the good and Rora the bad. Maybe we’re just … us.
I was the one who wanted to investigate the soldiers further. I argued we should stay. Helos is the one who refused, his need to protect everyone he loves blinding him to the greater issue at stake. I have always thought of that protectiveness as a mark of his selflessness, an inherent goodness. But now I see the danger to it, how others may be left by the wayside, eclipsed by his singular focus. I never saw it before, because it has always been just him and me. Growing up, there was no one else for him to worry about, nothing else at stake beyond keeping us alive.
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