Page 42

Chapter 42

Karus

Pompeii stood at the kitchen sink, sleeves rolled up with his arms elbow-deep into warm, soapy water. He scrubbed at the many dishes that had piled up each day without the help of Lia .

Her kitchens had always been tidy and organized—a song and dance she alone conducted and without her…everyone needed time to adjust.

Jesslyn kneaded dough in one corner, silent tears falling down her cheeks that she ignored, taking the reins as the cook in the Fortress and directing tasks for the kitchen maids.

I rolled my own sleeves, having forgone my Baron’s vest, choosing a flowy cream dress instead that fit my growing body much better.

I stepped up to his side, plunging my own hands into the water, scrubbing at a pot that had something burnt stuck to the bottom.

“ I would tell you that you needn’t work here in the kitchens, Baron , but I doubt you’d listen.” Pompeii continued his scrubbing, adding a plate to the sink next to us filled with clean water and clean dishes. He grabbed another few plates, added them to the sink and continued to scrub.

“ If the Overseer of this Fortress is called to help in the kitchens, then one of its Barons can do the same,” I replied.

“ If Baron Revich? —”

“ Do not coddle me, Pompeii . You are one of the few I can rely on for that. I can clean a few dishes and live.”

He huffed in a laugh, and we worked quietly for a few minutes more.

“ I am sorry.” I broke the silence, something breaking in me as well.

“ I do not wish to speak of it,” he replied, adding more dirty pots to the sink.

“ There is a chance Mychael and Rell are still alive.”

He let the dishes fall back into the water, gripping the edge of the basin. He stared down at the suds, his nostrils flaring, his grip tightening.

I’d never seen him angry. I’d never seen him lose his composure, but I heard it as he swept into my thoughts where our connection lie. “ Which do you think is worse? A life cut short or a life lived inside a tree, the power you hold being siphoned from you for the rest of it.”

I flinched at the disdain in his voice clearly masking the pain of a man losing the man he loved. “ I do not know.”

“ Will Mychael age if he is alive, being used as a power source? Will you promise to find him one day when I walk with a cane and greet my lover, old and withered, my hand shaking as I take his?”

My tears dropped into the suds, but my hands kept their pace. “ I tried.”

“ You tried.” He returned his hands into the water, picking up a cup. “ Thank you for trying, Baron Karus .”

I bit back a sob. He didn’t want my apologies for not bringing his love back home. He wanted Mychael’s life to be out of the hands of the woman who had as much access to his thoughts as I did. I cleared my throat, moving forward with what I needed to know and speaking aloud again. “ Has she spoken to you?”

“ No .”

“ But she is still there?”

“ Yes .”

“ We cannot risk it.”

“ I will leave then, if I must. Alas , I cannot cut my lungs from my chest as Philius cut his hands from his wrists.”

“ We cannot risk her taking over your mind, but what if I have another idea on how we can cut that bruise from your chest?”

He finally turned to look at me then. “ I am listening.”

* * *

“ I can’t believe you convinced me to do this,” Clairannia muttered under her breath as she helped guide me to build the right shape and capacity of the lungs I formed.

Pompeii lay on a blanket of grass in a clearing in Felgren , rendered asleep by a spell. Figuerah cradled his head in her lap, agreeing to come in case we needed her help reviving him.

“ But you do believe it could work or you wouldn’t be here,” I responded, adjusting the length of the verdant lungs I grew, matching the size of the model Clairannia had woven in front of me. I pressed my hand further into Felgren’s soil, drawing the power I needed to form the perfect pair of working lungs for Pompeii . They would replace his and sever the mind connection the Blightress and I shared with him.

Clairannia shook her head. “ Magic replacing one’s toe or ear is one thing, but I have never heard of magic replacing a much-needed organ and the patient living to talk about it.”

Figuerah winked my way. “ Karus is a litany of firsts, aren’t you, love?”

I smiled back, continuing to reassure my friend. “ We all heard him. He’d rather try this than have to leave the Fortress indefinitely.”

“ Maybe he could leave and practice shoving her from his mind,” Clairannia suggested in a frown, eyeing my creation as I worked on the long branches of flesh that would circulate air through his new lungs. She added, “ You’ve been able to keep her out. Why not give him a chance to do the same?”

I shook my head, waving my hand over the surface of the small tubes I’d created. “ I’ve had my whole life to keep her out. When we practiced keeping me out of his head, he failed every time. He knows the risk, Clairannia . He has made his choice, and we certainly can’t do this without you.”

She wrung her hands on her white skirts which denoted her as a medicus conduit. “ It’s not that I don’t believe you can do this, it’s what it means if you can. If this replacement of his diseased lungs with ones of your creation succeeds, then this will be a breakthrough of magic the likes of which we’ve never seen.”

“ What are you doing with the Looking Man ?” We all jumped at the sound of Moira’s high-pitched voice coming from a branch of the ash tree above us.

Figuerah recovered first, cocking her head. “ Looking Man ?”

“ Overseer ,” I mumbled, continuing my task.

She fluttering to the ground, pulling one of his eyes open wide. “ Does an Overseer not look or see?”

“ Stop that!” Clairannia chided, ushering her away from our patient.

Figuerah laughed. “ An Overseer is not called such because he sees, Moira . It is a title given to the one closest to the Baron to help in his or her duties.”

“ Well , it’s true he’s always looking, this one,” Moira said.

“ What do you mean?” I asked, biting my lower lip to hold back my laughter.

Moira shrugged, fluttering a few inches off the shaded grass. “ He speaks little, looks a lot. He seems to know everything going on in that black fortress. He seems to know all of you as well.”

I flicked my gaze to Clairannia who sighed in an agreeing shrug.

“ So , what are you doing to him?” Moira asked again.

“ I am growing him a new set of lungs to breathe,” I answered.

“ Why ?”

“ Because the lungs he has were contaminated by the Blight trees I grew in Felgren , and now he has a mental connection to both me and the Blightress , which we cannot have.”

“ Why ?”

“ Because Philius had a similar connection to her due to the Black Fever Heimlen created from the Blight , and she took over his mind, which in turn lost us Mychael and Rell .”

“ Wh —”

“ Moira .” Figuerah rubbed her face. “ Karus and Clairannia are doing something that has never been done, so watch quietly or leave.”

Moira stuck her long pointed tongue out at Figuerah who rolled her eyes, but they both stayed silent while I put the last touches together on the lungs that would fit into Pompeii’s body.

Clairannia murmured her adjustments to me and I made them, my heart racing, my lip a messy red splotch on my face as I bit at the corners again and again.

Clairannia finally gave her approval with a nod, and I shifted on my knees, taking a deep breath, the lungs hovering over my hands. I blew into the tube at the top, and with my breath, they filled, no longer a haze of green magic, but green flesh instead, pumping air of their own accord.

“ Well ,”— Figuerah let out a breath—“they seem to work. I hope.”

“ The hardest part is yet to come,” Clairannia added, unbuttoning the shirt across Pompeii’s chest, his breathing deep in his spelled slumber.

My stomach churned seeing what had been left in the wake of the disease that would have taken his life if I had not destroyed the Blight trees in Viridis with fire. It spread across the shape of his chest in a mottled black and purple, stopping at his throat.

Clairannia drew her power into a thin, sharp blade above the sternum of his chest, shimmering in bright scarlet. She had brought with us a sizable porcelain platter, intending for his current lungs to lay there while we replaced them.

“ What are you doing now?” Moira asked, tilting her head to the side. Her violet eyes grew in size as she watched Clairannia’s glowing red blade slice across the center of Pompeii’s chest. Blood pooled at the cut, but Clairannia was ready, capturing every drop in a deep bowl she had formed with her power.

All of us sat in silence watching Clairannia pull back skin, breaking the bones of his ribs in disturbing cracks to access the horror of what had lain quiet in Pompeii’s chest for months. His breath still came, unhindered by his torso being flayed open. The inky black flesh he held within his body smelled of decay, just like the trees I had grown in Viridis .

Moira covered her mouth, turning to the side to retch onto the forest floor. Her body’s reaction to the popping bits of lung that burst in succession ended with her passed out on the ground. Figuerah was not far behind and had to turn her head, squeezing her eyes shut, her nostrils flaring to breathe any fresh air she could.

I wanted to hurl all the contents in my own stomach, but bit down on my cheek instead.

I could do this for Pompeii . I got him here. I could get him out.

Clairannia looked on in fascination, her rich brown eyes wide, her mouth slightly open as she leaned down to inspect the diseased lungs. “ He would not have survived this in the end,” she stated easily.

I could guess that even without all the medicus experience she had. He may have been cured enough to live, but these lungs would have become useless before too long.

She continued her work, some of which I saw, some of which I could not stomach, turning my head away at the pull of black flesh that fell onto the tray in a heavy wet slap I would not soon forget.

My stomach roiled, my effort spent trying to breathe fresh air rather than dampen my disgust. I knew that Revich would soon be able to feel what I felt, if he was not on his way here from Viridis already.

“ Get ready, Karus ,” Clairannia said to me. “ I need one side at a time. Starting with the lung on his left.”

I did as she instructed, maneuvering what would become his left lung into place as she used her power to fuse the flesh to flesh, seamlessly providing a seal. His left lung expanded with his diseased right lung still intact.

Clairannia wiped her forehead. “ One down, one to go, Figuerah . Just hold on.”

Figuerah nodded, letting out a breath in a puff of air, breathing back in a fresh gulp.

We followed the same steps, replacing his right lung with the one I had grown with my power. Clairannia sat back for a moment, her hands covered in his blood, the rest of it pooled in her magic bowl, her power sending a line of it to trickle back into his exposed veins.

His breathing was steady, the same deep sleep keeping him from witnessing any of what we had done.

“ I think it worked.” Clairannia’s smile was wide across her small mouth. “ Time will tell, but I think you did it.”

“ We did it,” I corrected.

She made quick work replacing all the blood spilled from his body, closing his chest and murmuring words of healing over his bruise. She had tried it before to no avail, the black marring of his skin indicating that he had been inflicted with a disease directly from the Blight . But now, the color of his golden-hued chest returned, the bruise subsiding at her words.

“ Figuerah ,” I muttered, watching Clairannia in awe. “ Look .”

She did, one eye open, her head jutted back as if she didn’t dare see any parts of Pompeii that resided inside of him.

She gave a huff of a laugh. “ Well , Clairannia ,” she started, “looks like those medicus books will have to be amended.”

* * *

“ I’ve seen your insides.”

“ Moira ,” Clairannia snapped, listening to Pompeii as he took another deep breath for her.

I held the tray of my Overseer’s rotted lungs in one hand, just waiting for Clairannia to give me permission to burn them. I held it by my palm, letting the platter balance in my hand, ready to upturn my stomach the moment I could.

Clairannia held her ear to Pompeii’s chest as he inhaled. “ Does it feel any different when you take a deep breath?”

“ Yes ,” he responded, a shaking smile spreading across his mouth. “ Yes , I don’t ever remember breathing this deeply.” He looked at me, his chin rising. “ Thank you, Baron Karus .” He turned to Clairannia , her hand pressing lightly on his chest. “ And thank you, Conduit Clairannia .”

Moira jabbed a thumb at Figuerah . “ She held your head the whole time.”

A deep laugh came from his chest, which Clairannia smiled about, and he turned, thanking Figuerah as well.

“ Can I ?” I asked, raising a fist to my mouth.

Clairannia nodded. “ Burn them. They’re dead now anyway.” She took one last look at the seal of skin running across the width of Pompeii’s chest before pulling his shirt closed and letting him button it. “ Your lives and magic are linked.” Her gaze caught mine as she scrubbed blood from her hands. “ You have more than one life in your hands now, Karus .”

I locked eyes with Pompeii . The angle of kohl across his lids was smeared on one side. It brought a sense of imperfection to his usual perfect golden skin and immaculate mustache and beard. I attempted to force my way into his mind, searching for that connection the Blightress and I had shared. Met with silence, I smiled wearily.

His chin rose and he swallowed, repeating, “ Thank you, Baron Karus .”

I brought my lips together and bit down, my heart broken for this man who did so much for us. My heart broken for his lover, a young channeler who may never see her sister again, and an ancient cook who had sacrificed her own life to save ours.

I twisted away, unable to speak, taking with me the remnants of flesh displayed in fresh blood upon a porcelain painted platter.

* * *

It felt good to burn.

I felt the pressure of a woman’s voice beginning her speech of something I did not want to hear, and I pushed it away, forcing her dark presence back into her corner.

I allowed myself to enjoy the sight of the Blight , bonded with human flesh, burning on a pyre of my making.

The pops and crackling of whatever underlying atrocity his lungs had been formed into lifted through the air at the small stream fed from the tower of black rocks leading to the charred maple tree. Only now, the new life of regrowth wound its way over the blackened bark, confirming that it was not dead, but in the midst of rebirth.

“ That was quite a feat.”

I jumped, taken out of my trance of watching the flame lick over black flesh. Adaynth leaned against a rock, his arms folded across his chest in the exact image I had first seen of him all those months ago.

“ I did not invite you here,” I stated, folding my own arms across my belly, adding, “and I am not dreaming.”

“ You spent all your effort forcing Visalia away from your mind just now, so I thought it prudent to take advantage and try to talk some sense into you.”

I scoffed. “ You could leave me instead. You’re good at that.”

His jaw slid to the side and his eyes narrowed in what I recognized as malice. “ This is my last attempt to convince you of anything. The longer you are quiet, the sooner I can leave.”

I bent to the clear stream, running my hands through the cool water and rinsing them of any remnants of Pompeii’s blood. “ I shall be silent as the grave then.”

He lifted one leg over the other in a casual grace. “ Your plan to spend twenty years building an army of magic wielders to subdue the Blightress will not work.”

I continued to rinse, keeping to my agreement of refraining to speak.

“ She will not wait that long to strike, and the next time she comes, she will not fail.”

I nodded, rising to face him.

He watched me in strained silence.

I shrugged. “ Is that it?”

“ I was hoping you’d agree with me.”

“ And if I do, what solutions do you bring? What should we be doing instead?”

He gritted his teeth and spoke through them. “ I do not know.”

I huffed a laugh, stepping closer. “ What a resource we have then. A centuries old Baron who comes as a harbinger of doom with no ideas to replace the ones we have.” I nodded my head to him in mock respect. “ Thank you for your concern, Baron Adaynth . I look forward to your silence in my thoughts and dreams here on out.”

His anger burst forward as he closed the gap between us, confirming what I suspected. His body shifted in an unnatural sheen because he was no more than a hazy figure born of my Baron power. “ Revich will not survive it.”

The hair on my neck rose. “ Explain .”

He pointed a finger at my chest. “ If you are taken again, if he loses you one more time, he will fall to madness.”

“ He won’t,” I started, “ I won’t leave ag?—”

“ You will!” His words lifted in the breeze, sent across the trees of Felgren as if in assurance that what he said would come to pass. “ Once she has you again, she will not let you leave. She will not let your daughter leave. She will wait as long as it takes for your own madness to overcome your senses, and you will fall beside her just as broken as she has become.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he wasn’t done.

“ And Revich will not survive it.” He raked his fingers through his brown hair, some of his longer locks falling into his face. His hazel eyes pierced me with unearned hatred, and I knew he believed what he said. “ I was there with him those months in that tunnel waiting for you to return. For whatever reason, for whatever nonsensical hold you have on him, his sanity hangs by a thread. If you or Saelyn are taken or harmed, the man you know will not survive it.”

My chin trembled, but I bit down, refusing to cry, refusing to let him see how much his premonition affected me. I sniffed in a deep breath and replied quietly, “ You care for him.”

“ Yes .”

“ Why ?” I shot back immediately. “ Why Revich ? Why care for him? Of all the Barons ’ minds you have occupied, you have not intervened. What makes Rev so different to you?”

His mouth slackened and I didn’t miss his glance down to my growth band, now with seven moons embroidered across the emerald silk. He blinked at me for a few moments, and I waited. “ He is not like the others. His thoughts are not occupied with power or the legacy he leaves. He thinks of you. Your child. Your channelers. The people of this isle who could use more magic in their lives to make them easier lives to live. I admire that in him.”

“ He is more worthy of this power than any Baron who has ever lived,” I spat.

“ Of that, we are in agreement, Baron Karus .”

I nodded. “ I will speak to him. We will listen to other ideas moving forward, but there is little we can do with Saelyn’s birth approaching quickly. We are combing through Viridis for possible solutions, but have found nothing. After Saelyn arrives, Revich will reconvene with the other leaders on the isle for solutions and gather more channelers to bring here.” I stepped back to the stream, washing the delicately painted platter and rinsing the embers of ash—all that was left of Pompeii’s Black Lung .

“ I tried, Karus .”

His words, so similar as mine to Pompeii hours ago, frightened me. “ You tried what , Adaynth ?”

“ To give you what you asked for that day you took half of the power of Baron .”

“ I asked you for the power to keep Revich happy, and safe, and loved.”

“ And I tried to give it to you.”

I pressed the platter to my chest. “ What did you do?” I whispered.

“ You may never know, but you should know that I tried.”

“ I am done with your cryptic fucking answers,” I seethed. “ Tell me what you did!”

He began to fade, the Baron whose role in our lives could not be ignored. “ I cannot. The path forward is set. I cannot change it. Do not let her take you, Karus of Felgren . Do what you must. Revich will do the same.”

The wind swept him away, and the platter snapped under the force of my grip. My hands sliced open from the break, bleeding down the length of my arms and dripping a dark stain of red across my womb.

* * *

I did what I could to clean myself up. I healed the wounds of my hand and attempted to pull the blood stains from my dress. If I had paid more attention to certain halls of Viridis , I would have known the spell to change the color of my dress completely or the spell to remove blood from linen.

Lia would have known.

Instead , I walked silently back to the clearing in a stained dress with a broken platter I hadn’t thought to mend.

Rev was there, as I knew he would be, laughing with my friends and pulling at long stems of grass to chew on the sweet ends.

I leaned against a nearby tree to watch. Pompeii was pulling up wide pieces of grass and blowing into them across his thumbs. A shrill whistle blew into the breeze and Moira laughed delightedly, immediately asking him to do it again.

“ I haven’t been able to do that in years!” Pompeii laughed delightedly, picking another piece and handing it to Revich to try. He pulled the blade taut and blew, a dull sound winding out.

I could have stood there for hours admiring the people I loved as they sat in moments of carefree happiness that were too few and far between as of late.

Rev glanced between the trees, likely feeling me there. His smile could have knocked me down in its beauty. He jumped up from the ground, jogging to me to lift and twirl in the air. I let the platter crash to the forest floor, burying my face into his neck as he whispered at my ear, “ You clever little weaver of lungs, you. How on earth did you do it?”

I smiled into his neck. “ I pulled from Felgren . Those lungs come directly from this forest. Is he doing well?”

Rev pulled my head back to look at me in his swirling gaze of blue. “ Better than well. He can breathe easier than he has in years.” He took my hands and brought them to his lips, finally noticing the stain across my dress. “ Is this blood?”

“ Yes . From my hands. I tried to get it out.” I pulled at the fabric.

“ Pompeii’s blood?”

“ No , it was mine.”

He turned my hands over, looking for wounds. “ Why were your hands bleeding?” His eyes dropped to the broken platter fallen to the ground nearby.

“ I accidentally broke the platter and cut myself.”

His eyes met mine, still holding my hands up to his face. “ He spoke to you, didn’t he?”

“ How did you know?”

“ I’ve come to understand Adaynth better these past few months. I can think of two ancient beings in this world who could make you as angry as I felt you were not long ago. What did he say?”

I glanced to the conduits and Overseer as they gathered themselves to head back to the Fortress , Moira hovering in Figuerah’s shadow. “ He told me what he told you. Waiting will not work. She will come and take me, and you will not survive it.”

He stared down at the grass behind me with a pain I hated to see crossing his mouth. “ We have resources. We have Viridis , even in its repairs. We will spend all of our time there, searching for something that might help us and practicing.”

“ Practicing ?” I asked.

“ Shields and portals.” He drifted a hand over our growing child. “ At some point, you will be able to enter a Baron portal again and make some of your own. Pompeii was able to bring some books on shielding out of Viridis while I waited for you to leave the portal. I want you to read them. I want you to be practicing every spare moment you have.”

“ Every spare moment?” I rose my brows.

“ If we—” He sighed in a heavy pause, bringing my knuckles back up to his mouth to trail with kisses. “ If we can shield this forest, we might be able to keep the Blightress out of it.”

“ Truly ?”

“ I believe it can be done. You’ll start tonight. I want you pulling on all three sources of your power to perfect your shielding ability.”

I stepped back from his touch, a haze of green light engulfing my body, sheer but strong. “ We’ll practice now.”

He smirked, holding a hand up to the wall of power and pressing hard. “ Good , Karus .” His smile grew across his face and his eyes lit in a promise I knew was coming.

I lifted my chin, backing up to a tree. “ Just try to get through, Baron Revich .”

He tilted his head, his eyes flashing in the challenge as he slowly stepped forward, his body on the other side of the power I held. “ Are you practicing or teasing, Baron Karus ?”

I closed my eyes, breathing deep, allowing myself to send my love for him down our tether. I would not spend my days in constant worry. I would not forsake the time we had. Each day I woke up next to him was one of joy and happiness that he was near. Opening my eyes, I grinned, letting him feel all I could feel. “ I love you, Rev .”

He shook his head, pressing on the shield with his power, melding my walls of Felgren green with his deep blue into a swirling teal I’d seen before. “ No ,” he started. His hand fell through, and I widened the shield to bring him in, too. He cupped the back of my neck, his thumbs running along the base of my jaw. “ No , you don’t get to say it like that if I can’t touch you.”

“ I love you,” I said again.

He huffed, shaking his head. “ I would say you cannot know what those words do to me, but you do.” He brought my hand to lay flat over his chest. “ You breathe, I breathe.”

I nodded, fighting back the tears. “ You live, I live.”

He bent down slightly to reach my lips with his, and I closed my eyes, fueling the shield around us with more than the power of Felgren , or Baron , or Blightress .

I fueled it with my love for him.

And it grew.

It grew as he lifted my chin, as he ran his hands along my cheeks, slowly sliding them down to my neck, never breaking our kiss, never letting go.

Tears streamed down my face because I could not hold them back. I didn’t want to.

I cried for loving him. I cried for what we would have and what we’d already missed together, what fight we still had left to endure, but that we would endure together.

My power shifted from the soft haze of soul-bound love into something burning. Something hot and destructive, insistent and raging in an endless flame that consumed us both there in that forest. Our clothes were soon discarded, our bodies soon joined as the crackling shield of green flame lit in a cage of my making, enclosing two Barons , two lovers, two lives bound as one.