by R. K. Ryals
“Kye,” I whispered.
I thought back on the sand storm, on the way he’d thrown himself on top of me at the end, almost desperate. Hold on, he’d said. I love you, he’d told me. He must have been stung by the wyver before he’d thrown himself over me.
A tear trickled from the corner of my eye.
“No.”
A hand cradled my face, the thumb rubbing my cheek, and I looked down to find Kye peering up at me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him, my voice cracking.
“Because you’d have killed yourself trying to save me.”
His voice was so weak.
“Kye,” I breathed.
He smiled, that gentle smile I loved so much, but wanted so bad to hate right now.
I looked down at his wound.
“I have to try,” I said.
I glanced up at the tent full of people, my eyes moving last to Reenah. I wondered briefly why she was here, what she had to do with a sick Medeisian man, but then I remembered the women after the sand storm, the one’s who’d bathed the faces of the deceased. Reenah had been among them.
My gaze flew back to Kye. He’d fallen asleep again, his face creased with pain, sweat soaking the cot.
“I have to try,” I repeated.
I started to reach for Kye’s leg, but a hand suddenly wrapped around my wrist. It was hard and punishing, bruising.
“You touch it with sand-burned hands and poison will enter your system as well.”
I looked up, my eyes meeting Prince Cadeyrn’s. He’d had a wife once. Reenah had said it had been a love match, and she had been murdered. I searched his face. I needed him to understand.
“Please,” I pleaded, tugging at my hand. “I have to try.”
The prince’s jaw tightened, but he released my wrist.
“No!” Daegan cried. “Stone, no!”
I touched Kye’s leg, and he jerked, his eyes flying open.
“Stone!”
My eyes met his as I placed my hand on his wound. He was shaking his head, but I didn’t let go.
“I have to try,” I begged.
My cheeks were so cold, soaked through with tears, and the Sadeemians were doing their temperature magic, keeping the tent cooler inside than it was outside. Kye leaned forward weakly and gripped my free hand.
“Stone,” he pleaded, but it was too late. I was already touching the wound.
I pushed every bit of magic I knew into his leg, concentrating so hard that sweat formed on my brow. My palms burned. Poison. I felt it there, against my hands, but the wound wouldn’t close. It wouldn’t close! The swelling remained.
“Please,” I begged Silveet, the Goddess of the Forest.
When she didn’t help me, I called on Escreet, the Goddess of the Scribes. Nothing.
In Medeisia there were many gods. Before Raemon took power, there were also many temples. I prayed to all of them now, my words tumbling out like a mad woman. I even offered my life to Mana Deea, the mother of all gods, in exchange for Kye’s.
Nothing.
My arm burned, the pain fierce but bearable. Anything was bearable compared to the pain in my heart. There was nothing like it. Nothing like the emptiness that ate now at my insides. I’d felt sorrow when Aigneis died, had been haunted with her death since I’d joined the rebels, but this ...
I cursed the gods. I cursed the wyvers. I cursed Raemon. I even cursed Kye. We’d traveled the desert all this time, our eyes on the sky, but never saw the threat when it came, subtle as it was, hidden by howling sand.
The room was deathly silent, the only noise my prayers and my curses.
Gryphon leaned over the cot, his eyes on Kye’s face as the prince fell in and out of fitful slumber. Kye tried fighting the weariness, but he was losing the battle.
Gryphon cleared his throat. “Wyver poison causes the person it infects to bleed internally, little by little, for hours. It is a painful death at the end. I can ease his pain.”
I sobbed. I cried because it was the only thing left to do. My magic had failed. I was supposed to be this great and powerful phoenix of peace, and my power had failed. I couldn’t bear it.
“Kye,” I sobbed.
Kye’s eyes were open now, his gaze on Gryphon. “I don’t want anything to ease the pain.”
A hand went to my shoulder. “Your arm, Stone,” Lochlen said.
I’d not heard him cross the room. I didn’t look down at my hand. It was on fire, and Lochlen lifted it from Kye’s leg. I didn’t fight him. Something cool and wet ran along my skin. I didn’t care.
My eyes were locked on Kye’s. He stared at me, and neither of us blinked.
“Please,” I begged.
I wasn’t sure if I was talking to the gods or begging Kye to stay with me.
He lifted his hand again, his fingers sliding into my hair, his grip desperate on the back of my head.
“I really like it short,” he breathed.
A tear slid down my cheek, sliding from my face to Kye’s hand.
“Please,” I said again.
Kye pulled my head down onto his chest.
“Please.”
I could hear his heart beat against my ear. It was a weak sound.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
“Please,” I whispered.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
“Please.”
Kye’s fingers tightened in my hair, and I gazed up at his chin.
“I love you,” I breathed. “Please.”
Thump, thump.
Kye’s fingers began to relax in my hair. My tears soaked his tunic.
Thump ... thump.
I gripped his shirt, my hand tracing one of his scars, the one that stretched from his torso to his neck. He shivered, and I wasn’t sure if it was from my touch or pain.
“One,” I said, my voice breaking. One scar. No one else would understand, but I knew he would. I traced another. “Two.”
Kye exhaled.
Thump.
My fingers traced the small scar that started at the corner of his eye and ended at his temple.
“Three,” I managed. He had so many scars, so many I’d never have time to count them all.
Thump.
And then nothing ...
Nothing!
My heart burst, the pain so intense, I think I screamed. My throat was on fire, my stomach gutted.
My finger stayed on Kye’s scar. There was moisture at the corner of his eye. A tear maybe? I sobbed.
“Stone,” someone called.
The voice was distant. I ignored it, my cheek pressed to Kye.
“Stone.”
Hands fell on my shoulders, and I shook them loose.
“Don’t call me that! No one call me that!”
Stone. I never wanted to hear that name again. Ever.
“Stone,” another voice said gently.
“Get away from me!” I hissed. I didn’t care who it was.
Vaguely, I heard Cadeyrn order everyone from the tent, but I didn’t move.
This time, the hands that gripped my shoulders were firm, uncompromising.
“Drastona,” a voice said.
I screamed.
“Drastona.”
I screamed, and I screamed. The hands pried me off of Kye, and I screamed harder.
Arms wrapped around me, so strong they were like iron chains, tightening until I couldn’t breathe.
Still, I screamed. I screamed and struggled until there was nothing left in me, until I was as dry as the sands that shifted within the Ardus.
“Drastona,” the voice said against my ear. Cadeyrn.
I struggled, and I screamed. I would struggle and scream until I died from it.
The arms tightened even more. The air was forced out of my lungs, and so I screamed silently, my mouth open, my eyes squeezed shut. I yanked on the prince’s arms, but he didn’t loosen his grip.
“Drastona.”
I thanked Cadeyrn even as I hated him. Stone
was Kye’s name for me, and Cadeyrn didn’t call me that.
“Please,” I begged.
I just wanted to lay with Kye, to press my cheek against his chest and pretend I heard his heartbeat.
“Please.”
“Drastona,” the prince said again.
I opened my eyes, my gaze falling on the cot, on the lifeless face of the man I loved. His eyes were closed, his head turned to the side, his scar obvious. There was pain in his face, but there was a smile on his lips. A small one, but a smile nonetheless.
I didn’t think I could scream anymore.
I proved myself wrong.
Part II
Chapter 15
I think the worst kind of deaths are the unexpected ones, the kind a person never sees coming. I couldn’t see past the pain, couldn’t see past Kye, the tent, and the cot. My strength was gone, completely gone.
At some point after Kye passed, Prince Cadeyrn left the tent and Reenah entered. I waved her away, taking the basin of water she held before kneeling next to Kye. I washed him, running a cloth over his face and down his chest. And I cried.
“Make it stop,” I begged. “Make the pain stop.”
Cradling Kye’s cool face in my hands, my eyes ran over his face. My love for him had come so quickly, from hate to love like a whirlwind, wrapping me in its embrace before I’d even realized it had happened. It swept me off my feet.
“I don’t think I can do this without you,” I whispered.
It is amazing how all-consuming love can be. There was a life before Kye, a childhood where I hadn’t known him, a past where I’d lived just fine having never met him. And then there was a dark wagon, a fire, a tattoo on my wrist, and a green tunic-clad young man covered in scars. Suddenly, everything changed. I’d been drawn into Kye’s world; his emotions, his strength. He was like no one I’d ever met before.
“I can’t let you go,” I told him. “You were fine. You held my hand in the desert, and you seemed just fine.” If Lochlen and Cadeyrn had known Kye had been struck by a wyver, why had they not told me?
“Why didn’t anyone say anything?”
A cool nose suddenly pushed against me, and I lifted my arm. Oran’s head eased itself into my lap, his sad eyes peering up at me. His feet were silent on the sand, so I’d not heard him approach.
“It was something you couldn’t heal, Phoenix. Looking back, it was best no one knew.”
The tears came so fast, I couldn’t see, blurring my vision.
“It’s never best not to know,” I managed.
Oran pressed his head against my stomach. It didn’t help with the emptiness, didn’t lessen the lonely hole that invaded my gut.
“What could you have done?” the wolf asked. “It was likely no accident. King Raemon wanted Kye dead. He has sorcerers he uses to control the wyvers. It’s one of the reasons they attack so often in the desert. The sand storm, the tent flying up ... it was Raemon’s chance, and he took it.”
Tears slid down my face, rolling across my chin before dripping onto the wolf in my lap.
“He means so much to the rebellion. We can’t do this without him,” I sobbed.
Oran’s head lifted.
“You don’t know, do you?”
I rubbed my dripping face with the back of my hand, my eyes going to the wolf.
“What?”
Oran sat up. “Kye was never our leader. He knew that. You have always been the one, Phoenix. You have always been the reason we fight. Kye just led your army.”
I shook my head. “No.”
Oran placed his paws against my leg. Using them to lift himself up, his tongue slid along my cheek. A kiss.
“You, a scribe with the powers of a mage. You, a girl who stole the heart of a prince. You, who was chosen as a rider by the golden dragon. You, Phoenix. You.”
Oran stepped back then, thudding silently through the sand to the tent flap before ducking into the night.
My gaze went back to Kye, to his silent, beautiful face.
“I can’t let you go,” I said again. “The pain, it’s too much. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be, but I’m not whole now. I’m not whole.”
I touched Kye’s cheek again. “Come back to me. Set me free.”
But he didn’t wake up. He didn’t magically sit up and touch me. Our final moment alone in the Sadeemian camp came back to me, the moment when we’d stood at the tent flap in the middle of the night while the rest of the rebels were sleeping.
“It’s not supposed to hurt,” I said before his lips could touch mine again, “but it does.”
Kye’s gaze searched mine. “It is supposed to hurt. The best kind of love always hurts like hell.”
The best kind of love.
“It hurts,” I whispered. “It truly hurts.”
The pain was unbearable, and I let it take me away. As I held onto Kye, I cried.
***
I’m not sure how much time had passed when I heard the voice.
“Drastona.”
I lifted my head. I wasn’t sure if I had slept or if I’d just cried myself into a strange moment of shocked peace, but the voice brought me out of it. It brought me out of my reverie and back into the present, to the silent prince still in front of me on the cot.
“Drastona,” the voice said again. It was the Sadeemian prince. “We need to take him now.
I looked at Kye’s face again, at his still, almost peaceful expression. I nodded, but didn’t move.
Cadeyrn gripped my shoulders, lifting me gently. I didn’t fight him, my eyes still locked on Kye.
“The best kind of love,” I whispered. Cadeyrn froze, but I didn’t look at him. “The best kind,” I breathed, “always hurts like hell.”
Tears slid down my cheeks. I kept thinking I couldn’t cry anymore, and I was always wrong.
“Yes,” Cadeyrn said suddenly. “Yes, it does.”
He set me down in the sand, and I pulled my knees up to my chest. My blank eyes watched as Cadeyrn, Lochlen, and Gryphon approached the cot. Daegan and Maeve were there too, but neither of them seemed capable of lifting anyone. They both sagged; their spirits looked as drained as mine.
“Now,” Cadeyrn said.
The men lifted Kye’s body, pausing once he was in their arms. Cadeyrn’s gaze swept mine before moving to Daegan and Maeve.
“A prince should be carried by princes,” Cadeyrn announced.
I swallowed hard, but the lump in my throat wasn’t moving, wasn’t going anywhere.
They were at the tent’s entrance before I was finally able to say anything.
“Don’t burn him,” I requested. “Please don’t burn him.”
And then they were gone. Kye was gone.
The sand next to me stirred as Maeve sat down. Daegan settled on the other side, both of them flanking me.
“What do we do now?” Maeve asked.
Oran’s words came back to me. You have always been the one, Phoenix. You have always been the reason we fight.
I stared at the empty cot, the same one that had just held Kye moments before. Anger suddenly overwhelmed me; anger at Raemon and his tyranny. He’d killed Kye. Even if he hadn’t been in the desert during the storm, he’d still killed him. He’d killed Kye with his oppression, with his grand ideas of war and power. He’d stolen a young boy’s life, turned him into a soldier, and then killed him.
I had often heard that Raemon was using sorcerers to control the wyvers. I didn’t know what that meant, I’m not sure any of us did. I, like everyone in Medeisia, knew that before Raemon came to power, the wyvers had not been as aggressive. Travel through the desert had been rare, but had not been as uncommon as it was now.
I looked down at my arm, at the hand that had touched the wound on Kye’s leg.
Daegan noticed me looking. “They are all talking about you, about the girl who tried to heal a wyver sting but failed. And yet, your own body rejected the poison.”
My head shot up, my gaze going to Daegan’s. He saw the qu
estion in my eyes.
Daegan sighed. “We all saw it. The veins in your arm turned purple all the way up to your elbow and then ... nothing. Lochlen bathed it, and then it just sort of vanished.”
More tears. I felt like I would cry forever.
“And yet, I couldn’t heal him,” I managed.
Neither Maeve nor Daegan said anything. Silence reigned.
Breaking the quiet, Maeve again asked, “What do we do now?”
I glared at the empty cot, and let the anger grow. I let it grow and fester.
I stood up slowly. “We fight,” I said. “For Kye.”
Daegan stood, his broad shoulders towering over me. “For Kye,” he agreed.
Maeve rose. “For Kye,” she whispered.
We all turned to exit the tent, but I stopped just inside the flap, my eyes on the cot.
“The best kind of love always hurts like hell.”
And with those words, I left.
In the shifting sands, Cadeyrn and his men buried Kye by torchlight, their backs straining with the effort of digging a hole deep enough to keep scavengers away. It would probably never be deep enough, but it meant a lot that they tarried in the desert, spending hours preparing a place for him. They dug until the sun rose, orange and large on the horizon.
Maeve, Daegan, Lochlen, Oran, and I stood over his body once it had been lowered, our eyes to the rising sun.
“From Earth to sand to spirit,” Lochlen said quietly.
The Sadeemians stood at a respectful distance, the whole camp quiet. We’d just lost a prince, our ruler. It didn’t matter what race we were, that was something they could all understand.
Daegan threw sand into the hole. “From Earth to sand to spirit.”
Maeve cried, her tears heavy as she lifted the sand in her hand and threw it. “From Earth to sand to spirit.”
They all walked away, leaving me alone at the hole with Oran sitting next to me. A kek, kek filtered down, and I watched as Ari circled in the sky, lowering until she was sitting on the edge of the grave.
“From spirit to the air,” the falcon said.
I looked at her, bending to throw my own sand into the hole.
“He flies free now,” I added.
I glanced down at the wolf before looking up at Ari. The falcon had been with me since I was a young girl, and although I still saw her as the falcon I’d always known, I also saw her differently now. She was a creature of Silveet; intelligent, strong, formidable. She lived in a world much cruder than mine, where creatures like her mated, lost loved ones, and lost their children on a daily basis.