Page 95 of Shadows and Flames
I had to pry Tom’s hands off of the Vyrkos, once he reached the line of almost taking too much, and it was my strengthcombined with the Vyrkos’s that kept Tom from fighting both of us to drain Fenix dry.
Fenix and Tana both pulled back while I remained close, touching and ensuring my brother was still here. Still alive. He breathed shallowly, still sweating, but he was no longer writhing. “What is it?”
Tana inspected Fenix’s wrist, needlessly healing it with a flash of her power before it could do so on its own. She gave him a quick, friendly embrace and thanked him, to which he denied needing thanks. When she turned to me, her expression had calmed. But it was not happy. “That, I am not sure of. I…whatever ails him is still in there, but I’ve staunched its growth. For now.”
“For now?” I asked, touch on his pulse to remind myself it still beat.
“For now,” Tana confirmed.
I wordlessly shut us in our room. We’d barely spoken to one another as we crossed back into our realm. Aside from simple directions, noises of agreement or dissent, I’d been unable to get my thoughts to solidify.
Each time I blinked, even for that brief moment, I saw it. My queen standing in the line of the beast. The muted dregs of her power swirling around her, ready to fight, yes.
But the resignation on her face. The long, significant glance she gave me, as if committing my face to memory. As if saying goodbye.
The peace she had asked for, I could not help remembering the glimpse of it, then. When she gave herself over to die.
I fell onto the foot of the bed, not tracking how I’d gotten there. Though there were walls between us, I could hear Tana’s quiet steps. The soft pulls of my brother drinking from the Vyrkos who volunteered himself as source.
This was the third time they attempted this. The tandem healing and feeding, but the relief would only last for a few moments, hours at most. Though mortals were ideal, Fenix’s blood should have been sufficient nutrition.
My brother’s body should have been healing itself. And yet, the sickness came creeping back without fail. He could barely walk on his own.
With Mamá, Leandro, and Papá, each heartbreak came with a sudden explosion. The type to leech all air, all light. No matter how much experience I gleaned from the last, the pain of it never abated. The fall after the carpet was ripped violently beneath my feet.
And yet. Losing another brother, slowly, gruesomely. Loving someone whose despair was also decaying them from the inside out. This was a pain I’d never known. The trials of another world could not compare to this.
My hands were shaking.
“El…I…” she tried. Even that sounded like defeat.
A faint glow of light brightened my view of floorboards, my scuffed, muddy boots. Water swam in my vision as Meline’s feet stopped before mine.
“El,please.”
Please, what? What could I do anymore? What did she want from me? What did I need to promise her so that she would stay?
There was no reason for her to sacrifice herself on that bridge. No reason for her to offer herself as a diversion. And by her withdrawn glances when we returned to our world, she knew.
Meline’s knees thudded to the floor. Something else landed beside her, and then her bare fingers were pulling on mine. Reaching for me.
The contact ushered forth more tears, and I watched them pool onto our skin and seep between where she touched me.
“Elián,” her voice cracked, “you’re scaring me.”
To my ears connected to my fracturing heart, her words sounded like an accusation, and Zoko’s Fire used it as the kindling it was so begging for. Anything but this pain. “Youscaredme.” Through my fangs, it sounded sharper than my heated sword.
Her flinch further fanned the flames attempting so much to weld the pieces of my soul back together. To prevent further damage until I was one mass of welded parts. “Youpromised no running. No leaving. But you lied.”
Meline’s nails tightened into my flesh, a reflex to my own version of spitted venom. But the pain was good. Physical was far better than what was intangible.
“I—I’m not running?—”
“Nâ! You were not going to fight. You were going to use saving us as an excuse to end yourself.No. More. Lying.”
I raised my gaze, now, but her mirrored sorrow made me regret it as soon as our gazes met. The despair was not just mine, it was hers, but she refused to make itours.
I had tried so hard totalk, to communicate, and all this time, she would not do the same with me. Not with whatever weighed on her so.
