by Jane M. R.
Fire lashes upon all of us in wake of the wizard’s absence, biting into every wood and cloth surface in the room. I’m closest to the stairs. I dash up them, throwing myself into the leaves and roll around to smother the flames eating my clothes.
Burns sears my flesh in patches but they are all survivable. I look at the entrance to the hovel and two men emerge, flaming like torches.
Please leave my father down there please leave my father down there please
Both men drop and roll. Their clothes crumple off them, their skin pink and angry but they are alive.
And one is my father.
CHAPTER FIFTY
ZADICAYN
My boots nearly touch the back of my head as I land horizontally in Brine’s wardrobe.
Joseara, tight in my clutches, bursts out of the doors, sprawling across the rug.
“Damnit!” Punching my thumb onto Brine’s bloodstone, I pop and Joseara’s body drops onto the dirt beside the Fae Gate.
I nearly break my knuckles knocking ten times on the stone. It dissolves and, scooping up Joseara’s limp body, I sprint through, fear and hate and anguish giving adrenaline to my limbs.
“Nary die!” I shout as if such a thing could be stopped by mere words.
Her blood still pumping from her arm slicks the front of my blue coat; a gleaming pathway to the end of her life. My coat drinks it up.
The blood is pumping out, so her heart is still beating.
Still beating.
I clutch that pathetic hope as if I’ll die when it is no longer true.
On the other side of the Fae Gate, I fix my gaze at a specific stone center of the bridge, shout the spell, and relocate with a pop directly on it.
My boots pound the stone of the bridge, the thief’s blood leaving a pathway through the Grand Hall. I focus on a stone in the floor at the other end and relocate to it.
The gushing blood turns into a pulsing.
I try to find more points to relocate to but I’m turning so many corners and running down stairs too swiftly to get a good focus on any of them.
I reach the dome room. I relocate from the top of the stairs to the Fae Arch and lunge through.
I lay Joseara’s still body on the floor inside the Fae Realm, trembling fingers digging for a pulse in her neck.
My own beating heart distracts me and I won’t hold my breathing, unwilling to verify her death even though I look for it, a death I would have caused because I wanted to leave the vault.
But I hold my breath because if she is alive…
Focusing, I wait for a single pulse against my fingertips, my heart throbbing in my throat.
One.
One pulse.
Two.
There are two. They come too far apart to bring her back to health in the Human Realm, but naught can die in the Fae realm.
She is alive.
Leaving her on the stone floor, I run up the stairs through the Fae Realm side of the castle, shoving a war of emotions to a place that might find me later but for now I am safe from their agony for a moment longer.
Relocating when I can, I make it outside into darkness, jumping on the relocating platform to another one, and another, and another. Until I land on the one for the town I had taken Brine into.
Lorcrante’s shop is closed but I beat on the locked glass door anyway. I run to the inn and ask the tree Fae to call for her. The tree Fae does, in its language, and shuffles back into the kitchen.
I stand outside, pacing back and forth, assurance that Joseara will live failing to give me relief.
Soon, a woman comes running from the cluster of colored glass houses, holding a lantern with a glowing blue crystal and wearing a night dress.
“Zadicayn?” She is breathless, brushing white hair behind her ears. “What’s wrong?”
I explain as I lead her to the relocating platform. We reach my castle. I force myself to slow because the old woman is running to keep up with my long strides.
Lorcrante sets down her lantern and kneels beside Joseara, checking her pulse again just to make absolutely certain.
“She’s alive. If barely. Not enough blood to keep her conscious but enough to keep her alive. Three more heart beats and she would have died, I imagine.”
“Can she be nursed back to health?”
“I am not a healer, but I imagine when her blood replenishes she’ll be alright. If the Fae Realm will assist in replenishing blood. Since nothing dies or wounds in this realm, there is no need for healing.” She looks at me but I won’t connect the glance. My emotions are looking for me. “Carry her to my house. I will take care of her.”
Numbly, I gather the innocent girl who almost died because of me in my arms and travel back to town with Lorcrante.
My arms are fatigued with holding Joseara by the time we enter Lorcrante’s one room house which doesn’t seem so small with all the treasures she has filled in it. She points at the single bed in the corner, the blankets tossed aside.
“Lay her there.”
I do, worried about the blood stains but no one bleeds in the Fae Realm, either. I can’t even see it on my coat.
She pours water on the red crystals in the hearth to activate their heat. Pulling a tree bark weaved basket from under her bed next, she withdrawals a pair of scissors and cuts Joseara’s shirt until her left shoulder and arm are bare.
I’m pacing, re-hiding from my emotions chasing me like hounds on the hunt. Her blood covers me. The emotional hounds will sniff me out and eat me while I scream.
Lorcrante threads her sewing needle. Pulling her glass chair from her glass desk, she sits beside the bed with her needle and thread and spreads the wound open with two fingers.
“Ye said ye weret nary a healer.” I snap the words at her without meaning too. I don’t know how to control my voice.
“No. But I’ve mothered five sons.”
There are no doctors in the Fae Realm. No need. Skin and bones do not break here. So what does one do when you bring broken skin or bones into the Fae Realm?
“I can heal that,” I burst out.
“Can you?”
Can I? I can’t even calm myself, and she sees it. I stand over Joseara, her breathing much too shallow. Three heart beats away from death. The cut is clean; white bone winking from deep within. The artery running through the arm pit and down the left arm is completely severed.
I think what I would need to do: relocate the artery back together with every fiber of muscle, each blood vessel and nerve. Then there is figuring out a spell to replenish all the lost blood – how much blood does an eighteen-year-old female weighing one hundred thirty pounds need? Was there brain damage from loss of blood? How does one fix brain damage –
“ – leaving.”
“What?” I blink, disconnecting from thoughts surging into a whirlwind of panic.
Lorcrante’s smile is only forged to soften the blow of what she repeats. “You realize Joseara is never leaving, right?”
I’m running out of hiding spots. My emotional hounds will find me and rip into me like teeth.
I heard incorrectly. Of course I’m not the one responsible for bringing this girl into a world not her own without her permission and forcing her to stay in it. “Forgive me… sayest one more time?”
“Zadicayn… she is so close to death. If she spends one more heart beat outside this realm she will die.”
“Certainly, because of the blood loss. But her body shall replenish that in time.” I hoped, anyway. I had never known anyone so severely drained of blood to enter the Fae Realm to know for sure.
“But how can you make sure you reconnect the vessels that were torn? If they are not connected properly, and she leaves the Fae Realm, she could suffer internal bleeding –”
I flee the house, pushing open the glass door with almost enough force to shatter it, my emotions barking at my heels, drooling for the lust to kill me.
I crawled out of the vault. I crawled out of it on a selfish whim to be free,
to have friends, to eventually have a family.
To be accepted into society.
To not be alone anymore.
Selfish. I left the vault and Corden only lived because someone let him. I left the vault and Joseara is one heartbeat away from death. I left the vault, tempting three men to chase me but were eaten by a Faewraith when one of them grabbed my amulet. I leave the vault and Brine almost died by the Faewraith summoned by my amulet when I joined with it the first time.
I leave the vault and now people will die because of my inability to live forever.
I sprint until I am out of breath. I slow to a staggered limp. The hounds of my emotions howl as they overcome their prey.
I crash to my knees as the hounds of anger, rage, sorry, loneliness, and guilt gnash into me, ripping chunks out of my soul, tears drowning my vision as thick as Joseara’s blood on my clothes.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
BRINELLA
Ten minutes in the presence of my mother is unbearable. Three days in the city daunts me to eerie silence.
No expense is spared in the decorations for my wedding. Two extra carriages are commissioned to carry it all home.
The groom’s father always paid for the wedding expenses, though since Aklen Whaerin is not present, he expects a receipt for everything. His only guidance about our purchases were to have the wedding colors green and silver. I don’t care. I could have no wedding colors and feel as indifferent.
Finally home, I fly upstairs to await the glorious liberation of my dress. But Varseena stalls in the entry, chatting with my mother about things that couldn’t be chatted with the entire time they were in the train together.
I close the door behind me, considering knifing the dress off me if Varseena isn’t here in three minutes. But I pause.
My wardrobe is open.
No matter. Zadicayn must have visited Corden and Joseara. I just didn’t think he’d be so careless as to make it so obvious in his relocation into my room. But I get a little agitated when I see my shoes scattered across the floor, as well as a dress having fallen off its hanger. As I’m formulating my complaint to Zadicayn for being so careless, I spy a dark stain on the rug.
It is pooled just outside the wardrobe. I crouch down and touch it but it is dry and crusted. I spit on my finger and rub the wet tip into the carpet, bringing my finger up to my eyes again.
It is a liquid red.
Wine?
I wet my finger again and get a better sample. It’s thicker than wine. Then what in the world –
It isn’t wine.
It’s blood.
I scream.
I clamp my jaws shut as soon as the sound leaves my mouth and somehow find amid the ruins of my crumbling self-control to pull Durain’s bone handled knife out of my vanity drawer and hash into the rug around the stain with shaking hands, imagining Varseena opening the door at every moment.
The knife slips and gouges the dark wood base of the wardrobe. I flip the chunk of carpet over. The blood had not soaked through. The carpet is double sided so after years of use it could be flipped for a fresh, clean look. I positioned the chunk as best I can so the pattern on this side would match up. I shove my scattered shoes and dress into the closet and close the door just as Varseena comes in.
She busies right by me, whistling, as if the last wizard is not severely wounded somewhere, alone and hurting. The Faewraith had not arrived so he isn’t dead. Yet.
It takes a strength I did not have a month ago to hold my composure as Varseena begins to untie me.
Why was he bleeding?
My corset comes loose.
Was he fleeing the castle or fleeing too the castle?
Varseena pulls a brown dress out of the wardrobe to ready me for dinner.
“I’ll not be leaving my room the rest of tonight,” I say. “I’ll wear my nightgown. You can tell my father to lock me in.”
Varseena puts the dress away. And because she knows I’m going to leave the house as soon as she leaves the room, the macramist dusts everything with a surface, straightened every painting, fluffed my pillows, and told me about her own wedding.
Only when I am certain Zadicayn is dead now, she leaves. At least my father senses my urgency. He comes promptly by afterward and locks me in.
OOO
I relocate with a pop. Outside air breaths down the neck of my night dress. I look down. Blood is splattered beneath my slippers. Too much. Anxiety ripping through me, I knock ten times and sprint through the open tunnel. Blood trails along the tunnel to the other side. Across the bridge. Into the Grand Hall.
Every agonizing moment I expected to find his body slumped in a lifeless heap. I won’t know how to handle his death. It’s shredding me apart just thinking he might be dead. I’m dizzy with fear and I stumble even as I continue to run, following the constant path of blood through the corridors. What if I find him dead? Do I just leave him? Carry his body into town for a burial? Will I have to bury him here?
These unanswered questions cramp upon my stomach. The only certain answer I have is I will absolutely lose it if I find him dead.
“Please God. Please God. Please.”
The blood takes me down the stairs to the Dome Room. The arch enters my view and I stop. Zadicayn’s back leans just inside the arch on the Fae Realm side, slumped against the wall, legs spread out before him. Eyes closed.
Dead.
I can’t bear this. I can’t. I’ll die right here because going back means a feast for the Faewraith. My energy sucked out of me, I fall into a heap on the floor, curling into a ball and hug my knees. My sobbing comes out in a mixture between animalistic gnashing and the broken heart of a little girl.
“Brine?”
I flinch out of my fetal position, clearing the blur out of my eyes to look at him. He’s shifting around.
“Zadicayn!”
Drowning in relief, I run through the arch to get to him. As soon as I pass under the arms of the white pillars, he vanishes and I’m staring at the stone wall.
I step back out of the arch. He reappears.
“I am in the Fae Realm,” he says, as if lifting his tongue is too much effort. Dark bags under his eyes witness sleepless nights. Food refuse litter him on both sides.
“You’re alive!” I need to touch him to make sure. This ache in my heart won’t stop. The shock still summons my tears. “Come escort me into the Fae Realm with you.”
“Nay.”
That single word is a punch in my gut. “Why?” He shakes his head. I want to keep demanding but other questions rise to the surface for now. “Is that your blood in my room? Are you okay? Why are you sitting in the Fae Realm?”
He closes his gold eyes, his breathing shallow as if life had finally numbed him. “Tis Joseara’s blood.”
“What happened? Is she okay?”
“She tis alive if that tis what ye meaneth by ‘okay’.”
“What happened?”
He won’t look at me. His adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. He whispers something but I can’t hear it.
“What?”
He digs shaking fingers into his black hair and lowers his head. I need to touch him to make him better. That always makes him better.
“I can nary see thee anymore.”
“What? Why?”
This time he looks straight at me. His gold eyes have never been so painful to look into. “Because people almost died. Because of me. Because I left the vault. Corden only lives because his attacker hath mercy on him. Joseara only lived because I got her to the Fae Realm before she completely bled out.” He takes a deep breath, as if that is the first one he had taken since I saw him last. “Society tis nary ready for me. Because of me, I inspire men to commit evil upon other people.”
“Stop saying those things! They are not true. You don’t inspire men to become evil. They are evil because… because they are evil!” I’m not good at this. Had never had the chance to try.
“But truth tis,” his eerie calm unset
tles me, “Joseara wouldst nary be confined to the Fae Realm if it wast nary for me gallivanting about society like a selfish fonkin who thought it would be a’right.”
My desire to touch him to cure his hurt has me pacing restlessly to dispel the energy. “Why is Joseara confined to the Fae Realm?”
“She shall die if she leaves.”
“Why? Escort me into the Fae Realm with you.”
“Nay.”
“Do it!”
“Ye shall die too if I associate with ye.”
“Have more faith in me than that.”
“Tis nary my lack of faith in ye. Tis in meself.”
“Let me in!”
“Nay.”
“I want to see Joseara.” I’ll throw that at him mercilessly until he concedes. “She considers me a friend and I am the reason she stayed in Valemorren.” I recall back to that conversation in my bedroom. I wipe a tear off my cheek. “Don’t make her regret that.”
This causes him pause. He curls his knees into him and he bows his head. I will stand here and scream at him until he lets me in. He can’t deny me seeing the girl I was friends with first.
“A’right. But only to see Joseara. Then I shall bring ye back out.”
He stands, his shoulders hunched as if he bears the weight of every human life he feels obligated to carry. He steps through the arch toward me and dried blood becomes visible on him, doused across the left half of his long blue coat and down his left leg like red dye. I pale.
“Yea. Almost bled out because of me.”
“No.” My voice and breath are gone. “She lives because of you.”
I let him take my arm and he pulls me through the arch. I was going to embrace him to finish settling my relief that he is alive, but the blood on him – though invisible in the Fae Realm – has made me queasy.
His heels tap the stone with every step as we walk, as if too weary to lift his feet any higher. I want to ask when he slept last but that would only add to the list of burdens I see he cannot lift.