“Then we have to go get Yvan!” I insist.
“You can’t get anyone right now,” Diana firmly interjects. “You’ll be lost as soon as you step outside. Even I couldn’t find my way around in that.”
We all turn toward the window and see that the world outside is a solid, impenetrable wall of white.
* * *
The following twenty-four hours are like something from a nightmare.
Ariel lies in bed vomiting until there’s nothing left in her stomach as she writhes in pain and cries out for the drug. Diana somehow manages to keep Ariel from hurting the rest of us and from clawing at her own arms, her own face, while her body burns with fever. Wynter and I clean up the vomit and try to get Ariel to drink some water, which she only retches up, and Marina fetches fresh water and soap for us and helps as best she can with the laundry.
Then, after hours of struggling, Ariel can fight no more. She collapses into unconsciousness, her breathing shallow, her skin waxy and soaked with sweat. We each take a turn tending to Ariel while the others rest, bathing her forehead with cool water to try and keep her fever down.
* * *
On the second day, as soon as the snowstorm lets up slightly, Yvan comes to us, bringing medicine to help dampen Ariel’s craving for the drug.
He helps me prop a semiconscious Ariel up so she can take the medicine. None of us ask Yvan how he knew to come. By now, it’s unspoken but common knowledge that Yvan can talk to Naga, just like Wynter and Ariel can.
“There’s nothing more I can do for her,” Yvan tells me as he kneels by Ariel’s bedside, his hand on her sweat-soaked forehead, her unconscious body still racked with fever and chills.
“Stop pretending,” I say coarsely, sleep deprivation and desperation for Ariel making me harsh. “You were able to help Fern and Bleddyn and Olilly. And countless refugees. Now help her.” Tears sting at my eyes. He has to save her. She can’t die. She just can’t.
“Elloren,” he counters, compassion in his tone, “I’m telling you the truth. There is nothing I can do, save give her some comfort with the Ittelian tonic. She has to overcome her dependence on the nilantyr on her own. There’s no other way.”
A tear slides down my cheek, and I roughly wipe it away. “Will she survive it? Tell me she’ll survive it, Yvan.”
He places his hand, palm down, over Ariel’s heart. “I think she will.”
* * *
Later that night, I sit with Yvan out in the hallway on the stone bench, slumped down with exhaustion, but filled with a tenuous hope. Ariel is hanging on and shows signs of improvement—her heartbeat strengthening, her breathing no longer faint and labored.
I look down at myself. I haven’t bathed in two days and stink of sweat. There are hastily washed vomit stains down the front of my tunic, and I can feel my hair sticking to my head. I lean back against the stone wall behind me.
“I’m filthy,” I observe with a long sigh.
Yvan glances me over briefly.
“I’ve never had to take care of someone who was so horribly ill,” I tell him. “My brothers and my uncle had this awful stomach sickness once, but I didn’t get it, and I had to care for everyone. That was pretty bad, but this...this is much worse. It’s terrible to see her suffer like this.”
“It’ll get easier,” he assures me. “She’s through the worst now.”
I reach up to rub my forehead. “Did you know that they put Ariel in a cage when she was only two years old?” I squeeze my eyes tight to try and combat the ache in my head. “That’s why she lashes out at cages. They fed her the nilantyr to keep her from being violent. What two-year-old wouldn’t become violent, thrown into a cage?”
Yvan doesn’t say anything. He just stares at Wynter’s white bird tapestry opposite us, his face tense.
I slump down and breathe out a long, shuddering sigh, deeply troubled. I glance over at Yvan, suddenly of a mind to be honest. About everything.
“You know,” I tell him, “I didn’t speak to her for a long time...after she told you...about my dreams.” My cheeks flush as I say it, but I don’t care. Tears prick at my eyes. “I should have let it go. I shouldn’t have shut her out. I was just...so upset.”
He leans forward to consider this.
“She’s going to make it, Elloren,” he tells me, his voice low and assured. “You’ll have a chance to make amends.”
I nod stiffly, tears sliding down my face.
“And you’re not the only one who has vivid dreams,” he says, almost in a whisper. “You just have the unfortunate habit of talking in your sleep.” He turns to look at me, his eyes searing. “I’ve dreamt about you.”
Warmth jettisons through me, quickly followed by despair. “We shouldn’t talk of these things,” I whisper. “It only makes it all worse.”
“I’m sorry.” His jaw tightens and he looks away. “Of course, you’re right.”
We’re both silent for a moment.
“Yvan,” I venture, “what did Naga say about Ariel and the nilantyr?”
He eyes me evasively, his lips pressing into a tight line.
“You must have found out what happened from Naga,” I gently persist. “There’s no other way you could have known. You went to check on Naga during the snowstorm, didn’t you? To make sure she was all right.”
“Yes,” he admits tightly.
“What did she say?”
Again, silence.
“I know you can talk to her,” I press. “Just like I know you’re abnormally strong...and fast. And that you can heal people and scale mountains like gravity doesn’t exist. You can be honest with me, Yvan. What did she tell you?”
His whole body tenses, both his eyes and his fire reflecting the strong emotions and conflicting thoughts raging inside him. Finally, he takes a deep breath and looks straight at me.
“Naga said...that the nilantyr would destroy Ariel. So, she decided to destroy it first. She said it’s stolen Ariel’s strength, that it’s rendered her wings useless and robbed her of her fire. She said that soon, it would also rob Ariel of her very soul, and that she’d be like the broken dragons who started out fierce and beautiful but have been destroyed.” Yvan pauses, taking a haggard breath. “She said the Gardnerians started Ariel down the path of destruction, but if she keeps taking the poison, it will be the same as digging her own grave. And then they’d win. She said that Ariel gave her back her own wings, and that this was her only chance to give Ariel back hers, as well.”
A pained look crosses his face. “And then she left.”
Shock spears through me. “She left?”
Yvan nods. “She can hunt now that she has her fire back. She’ll be able to fly soon, and cold isn’t an issue for dragonkind. So, she left.”
“Oh, Yvan...”
“She’ll be back,” he assures me. “She’ll never know whether she can fly again if she doesn’t go off and test her wings. But she told me she’d be back to help us.”
I consider all this for a long moment as Yvan searches my face. “Naga was wrong to force Ariel off the nilantyr so quickly,” I finally say with grave certainty. “She could have died.”
Yvan nods. “It’s different for dragons. I think she underestimated how weak the human side of Ariel is.”
“Naga’s right about everything she said, though,” I grimly concede. “The nilantyr was slowly destroying Ariel. I’ve watched her grow weaker and weaker over the past months. She can’t even cast fire anymore. And her wings...they’ve grown thinner, frailer.”
I pause for a moment as shame washes over me. “At first, when she’d take the nilantyr, it was almost a relief. She’d stop cursing at me. When she took it, she just didn’t care about anything, and she wasn’t so viciously angry all the time. But after finding out what she’s been through... I feel like she has good reason to be angry. She should be angry.�
� Outrage wells inside me. “The Gardnerians had no right to force this poison on her. And they had no right to try and take away her anger.”
Yvan’s intense gaze, which used to unnerve me so, does the opposite now. In it, I can see he understands in a fierce, true way. And it feels good to be understood, especially about this.
I ponder how he can talk to Naga as I also consider how absurdly handsome his face is. I’ve scoured books about the Fae, trying to find out what he might be, and my exhausted mind remembers a detail—Lasair Fae are supposed to be wildly good-looking, their faces perfectly symmetrical.
Like his.
“Who’s Fae in your family, Yvan?” I ask.
He remains still, holding back the answer. “You can tell me,” I encourage him more gently this time.
For a moment, the only sound is the icy wind rattling the windowpanes. Yvan takes a deep breath and, to my incredible surprise, answers me. “My mother.”
My breath catches in my throat, my heartbeat quickening. We’re both quiet for a long moment, the silence momentous.
“So, your mother’s family...”
His green eyes blaze. “Killed by the Gardnerians during the Realm War. All of them.”
Oh, merciful Ancient One. Not just his father. They killed his mother’s people, too. Shame and sorrow rise in me like a relentless tide.
No wonder his mother despises me so.
“Thank you for telling me,” I say, my voice breaking as the reasons for the walls between us are thrown into even sharper relief. “Your secrets are safe with me. I hope you know that.”
Yvan’s hand slides over mine, and his touch sends a gently rippling trail of sparks up my arm. I pull in a shuddering breath and thread my fingers through his. He sits back and stares at the wall opposite us, watching the fire from the lanterns dance over Wynter’s tapestry.
“What would you do if everything was simpler?” I ask him. “If we were both Kelts, and the world wasn’t on the brink of war?”
He gives a melancholy smile at the idea. “I’d be a physician like my father.” He shrugs. “I’d study...and sleep a lot more than I do right now.”
I nod with understanding at this. We’re both surviving on very little sleep.
His expression grows serious as he considers my hand in his, his tone becoming ardent. “And...you and I... We could be together.”
Our eyes find each other, and I’m seized by an overwhelming longing for him that I can see plainly reflected in the way he’s looking at me.
My heart twists. Why does it have to be so impossible?
Defiance flares up in me, and I rest my head on his warm shoulder, our hands still clasped tightly together. His head leans onto mine, his cheek warm on my hair.
“What did you do for fun when you were growing up?” I ask him, wanting to find a way back to safer ground.
The question seems to take him off guard, but not unpleasantly so. “For fun?”
“I just wonder if there was ever a time in your life when things weren’t so...difficult.”
He takes a deep breath, considering the question. “I was an only child, so my childhood was mostly quiet. My mother and I kept to ourselves. I read a lot, helped her in the garden and with the animals.” He pauses, growing pensive. “I do like to cook.”
“You do?” I ask, surprised.
“My mother’s a very good cook. She taught me.”
It seems so prosaic, it’s almost funny—Yvan, with all his supernatural powers, liking to cook. And it’s surprising. He’s rarely cooking in the kitchen, doing the more strenuous work instead, like hauling wood for the stoves.
“I’ll have to cook for you sometime,” he offers, smiling.
I smile back at him, lit up. “I’d like that.”
“Fernyllia’s pretty strict about people playing around in her kitchen, but maybe we can sneak in there some evening.”
I laugh at the thought, at the idea of doing something just for fun. It’s been so long. We’re all so busy with schoolwork and kitchen labor and doing what we can to aid the Resistance.
“I like to dance, too,” he tells me.
“Really?” I try to picture serious Yvan whirling around a dance floor and smile with delight at the improbable thought.
“Another thing my mother taught me,” he says. “Lasair dances. The dances of her people.”
Her people. The Lasair Fae. He’s been closed off for so long, it’s a revelation to have him finally speaking so openly about being part Fire Fae.
“What are Lasair dances like?” I wonder, imagining a group of beautiful people, all with vivid green eyes and brilliant red hair, dressed in scarlet clothing and dancing inside a ring of flames.
“They’re complicated,” he says. “With a lot of steps. Fae dances are difficult to learn, but once you’ve mastered them, they’re...fun.”
“Are they like the Gardnerian dances?”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head and a slight smile. “Your people are a bit...stiff.”
I mock frown at him. He’s one to talk, so incredibly reserved all the time. But it’s true, I have to admit—the Gardnerians do take the prize for stiffness, along with cruelty perhaps.
“Do you think I could learn to dance like that?” I ask, hesitant.
He looks me over, as if seeing something new, something pleasing, then squeezes my hand affectionately. “I could teach you. We’d have to go somewhere very secluded, with a large, open space.” His eyes light with mischief. “Perhaps the circular barn.”
I consider this, the deserted barn so often a way station for fleeing refugees, its floor littered with pages that Yvan angrily tore from The Book of the Ancients.
“We could dance on the pages of The Book,” I suggest with a wry smile. “A fitting gesture of defiance.”
Yvan laughs at this. “It’s an appealing idea, actually.”
“I’d probably step on your feet more than I would on The Book.”
Amusement sparks in Yvan’s eyes. “I stepped on my mother’s feet a fair bit when she was teaching me.”
I look at my sock-clad feet and pick them up off the floor slightly before setting them down again. “Yvan,” I wonder, “if you’re Fae, why doesn’t iron ever bother you?”
“It does.”
“But I’ve watched you in the kitchen. You handle it all the time.”
He narrows his eyes at me, amused. “How long have you been watching me?”
I swallow self-consciously. “A while.”
“It’s irritating, that’s all,” he says with a small shrug. “If I touch it for a long time, I break out into a rash. But I’m only a quarter Fae, Elloren. My father comes from Keltic stock, and my maternal grandmother was a Kelt, as well.”
“So, your mother’s father...”
“He was full-blooded Fae, yes.”
“Has your mother taught you a lot about her people?”
He nods. “Their history, stories, customs...their language.”
Intrigued surprise lights in me. “You can speak a whole other language?”
“I don’t speak it often. It’s too dangerous to speak any Fae dialect these days.”
“Would you say something to me in it?” I ask shyly.
Yvan smiles at me, a sultry edge to his grin that sends warmth sliding up my spine. “What do you want me to say?” he asks, his voice a silken thrum.
“Anything. I just want to hear what it sounds like.”
He stares at me thoughtfully, then starts speaking. I’m instantly entranced, the words of the Lasair tongue fluid and full of elegant sounds. It sounds like I imagine the Fae dance would be like, incredibly complicated but beautiful when mastered.
“What did you say?” I ask, mesmerized by him.
“I said...your eyes are lovely.”
“O
h,” I whisper, my cheeks flushing.
Yvan’s face takes a turn for the serious, and he lets out a long breath. He leans in toward me, his thumb gently tracing the back of mine. “We’re not doing a very good job of staying away from each other, are we?”
“No,” I agree, letting my head fall back onto his shoulder.
A tendril of his heat reaches out for me, and my breath tightens as the slender flame curls around my fire lines, a warm, decadent thrill flickering through me.
“What’s it like?” he asks me. “To have affinity lines?”
I force out an even breath. “It’s...like branching trees inside of me. If I concentrate on an affinity, I can feel that branching line. And I can pull on the power flowing through it.” I glance up at him, wondering what it would be like to pull on his fire while kissing him. “Your fire,” I ask him, flustered, “is it like a Mage line?”
“It’s not a line,” he says, an edge of bitterness curling his full lips. “It’s everywhere in me.”
Holy Ancient One.
I feel a sudden desire to send my fire magic straight out to him. To feel what’s inside him. A low warmth blooms in my center, and I struggle to hold it in check.
“You’ve five affinity lines?” he asks, curious.
“I have strong earth lines and fire lines,” I tell him. “I’m starting to have a sense of small air lines and water lines, too, but I can’t sense my light lines. Most Mages can’t—Light Mages are very rare.” I look to him, hesitant. “Can you sense my lines?”
“Only your fire lines,” he says.
“We’re similar in that,” I muse. “We both have a strong affinity for fire.”
“I know,” he says, his thumb gently stroking the back of my hand, a delicious heat trailing his touch.
“Strange, isn’t it?” I say, wanting him to trail that touch all over me.
His chin moves against my hair as he nods in agreement. I can feel the edge of his mouth lift into a smile.
I never want to move. I want to stay here with my hand in his and my head on his shoulder forever.
“Your brothers,” he says. “They told me that you wanted to make violins, before you decided to become an apothecary.”
The Iron Flower Page 25