Page 18 of A Flame of the Phoenix (An Heir Comes to Rise #6)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Tarly

H is right arm had begun to suffer a tingling sensation most days. Tarly was weighted with despair that he could soon lose the ability to use a bow. His skin was often clammy and his breaths short. He knew his ailment was becoming serious and his time precious.

Tarly had his own small tent in the camp. Each night, he longed to watch over Nerida even though he knew she was safe surrounded by warriors. As much as he was somewhat impaired, he felt at ease by her side, knowing he would protect her until his very last arrow.

He couldn’t sleep with the thoughts of traveling to Lakelaria in the sunrise. Not knowing the dangers they could face. Tarly couldn’t explain how this path felt like a coward’s last desperate hope when Nerida thought Lakelarian healers could help him. He wasn’t so certain he would even last the weeks of travel across Rhyenelle and then across the Black Sea. While everyone made themselves active players toward triumphing in this war, he was offering nothing.

When he heard Nerida’s quiet voice outside his tent, for the first time he battled a will to feign sleep or cast her away. He took so long to decide that she dipped her head through the tent opening carefully and found him awake. Her small smile at seeing him sat up lit a beacon in his dark mind.

“I thought you might be asleep,” she said, welcoming herself inside. Nerida carried a small wooden bowl and some new bandages, her satchel of tonics and medicines slung over her body.

“Do you need something?” he asked.

“We skipped changing your bandages yesterday, and when we got back from collecting the wood, you were gone.”

Inside the bowl wasn’t a salve like he expected—it was leftover rabbit and some bread he’d passed up before the meat had finished cooking. He’d needed time alone to think.

“I’m fine,” he said. She didn’t deserve his cold reception, but he was finding it harder to muster any emotions as the days passed by and death gripped him tighter.

He’d washed by the stream in the woods earlier and left his wound unbandaged. He didn’t think the salves and cover-ups were doing anything anyway. Even the pain had stopped being a throbbing, constant ache. He didn’t have long left.

“Can I look?” she asked anyway.

She didn’t have to since he was shirtless despite the bitter cold, which was hardly kept away by his single lantern. He might have a fever. It came and went.

He didn’t answer, but she was bold enough to approach anyway and pull down his blanket. Tarly enjoyed the sound of her gentle voice. If kindness had a face and light had a sound, she was the picture and the feeling of both.

Nerida inspected his ghastly shoulder. The entirety of his tan skin there had turned a sickly gray, which had expanded across half his chest and down most of his arm now. He couldn’t feel her touch there, and that was another pang of desolation.

“Before we go to Lakelaria, I have something we can try,” she whispered.

Tarly looked at her then in confusion. Nerida unhooked the satchel from her body, and he saw the new vial immediately when he’d subconsciously memorized the organization of every bottle and herb she kept. He knew what it was—had seen it before—the moment she pulled it from the tie.

“Nik gave me this… We’re both hoping it can enhance my healing magick enough to give you more time or maybe even heal you.”

He blinked at the bottle of Phoenix Blood.

“He really gave that up for me?” he asked, stunned the bastard would hand over such a rare thing.

“You may bicker like children, but so do brothers.”

Tarly scoffed a humorless laugh. Nerida didn’t know their history. He was sure if Nik heard her say that, he’d claim his precious Phoenix Blood right back. It had to be by the insistence of Nerida or one of the others that he’d even thought to give it over.

When the shock of seeing the potion settled and the new prospect dawned on him, Tarly was afraid to believe it could work.

He was afraid…because he wanted to live.

Nerida had made him want what once felt impossible to desire in this cold world.

And he wanted to hate her for it. For making him fear death after the decades he’d spent making peace with it.

She uncorked the bottle. but Tarly caught her wrist before the vial reached her lips. Nerida held his eyes with question, and he didn’t know what overcame him. Next thing he knew, his hand was slipping across her jaw and his lips were crashing to hers in a single deep kiss. That was all he intended, until their mouths were moving and heat was gathering. Until the stunning angel in front of him was now straddled over him, and nothing had ever wrapped so perfectly in his arms.

Their kiss slowed, and his hands, which had slipped under her winter cloak, traced down her spine.

“What was that for?” she asked, delightfully breathless against his mouth.

“I don’t know,” he said.

He didn’t know what was between them, only that he didn’t want it to end. He wanted to keep her, though he couldn’t. He was being selfish in letting her get close to him with his days on an uncertain countdown.

“Will you let me take this now?” she said with light amusement, still holding the Phoenix Blood.

Tarly gritted his teeth against his protest. “It can’t possibly harm you, can it?”

Nerida smiled teasingly. “Such a worrier.”

She tipped the contents into her mouth without confirmation, and his heart skipped. Before he could panic, Nerida discarded the bottle, swallowing the contents, then her mouth was on his again.

When her tongue swept against his and he tasted the metallic sweetness of the potion, Tarly gasped at the foreign burst of energy within him. Though faint, he’d never believed any magick lived within him despite Nerida once claiming he had a kernel of healing magick—what must be responsible for keeping him alive for so long after the bite. Now he thought he felt a touch of that magick. Not enough to truly use it for anything, but it brought him closer to Nerida and reminded him of his mother from her passion for healing.

Nerida broke the quick kiss abruptly and shifted off his lap to kneel beside him. He could hear the quick, hard tempo of her heart as she stared over his gray skin and his wound with hard determination.

“What does it feel like?” he asked carefully, not wanting to disturb her focus.

She inhaled deeply, and he thought her hazel eyes swirled with a new brightness.

“I feel…powerful.”

Her hand rose to his skin, and Tarly held his breath when the blue glow of her healing magick cast from her palms. He studied her focused expression, her brown skin beautifully highlighted by the magick she wielded.

He gritted his teeth, feeling her at work through his blood. It always became a vibrating intrusion under his skin. Seconds ticked by, and he didn’t feel anything different to what he’d experienced many times with her attempts to slow the spreading poison or search for a way to retract it.

The hope he’d let warm him started to chill the longer she tried, and he felt nothing.

“This isn’t right,” Nerida said in frustration.

Tarly’s eyes closed. More than his own disappointment, he hated hers.

“It’s not an ordinary wound or illness,” he said. “So you can stop pretending it can be cured like one.”

Tarly reached for his shirt and pulled it over his head.

He found her with a wounded expression that cleaved him, but he didn’t show it.

He said, “You should get rest before we set out tomorrow.”

“Can I stay?”

Gods, he wanted that more than anything, but there was one thing he could control, and that was Nerida becoming more entangled with him than she already was.

“No.”

Her brow furrowed—not hurt but adorably defiant at his rejection.

“It’s freezing.”

“You can have my lantern.”

Nerida crossed her arms. “Am I that terrible to sleep beside?”

“You do snore.”

Her mouth dropped open. “I do not!”

“It’s light most of the time.”

It was incredible how she could pull amusement from him even in his most dire moods. He didn’t mention how the sounds she made in her sleep invoked such peace it sent him into his own deep rest like he’d never experienced before. That the warmth of her body relaxed his in a way he’d never found before.

Nerida huffed, crawling over his bed mat, which could hardly fit him alone. He smiled despite his back being to her—or at least he thought he did, but his sorrow weighed down anything joyous.

“You don’t take rejection very well,” he mused.

“When it’s impractical, no, I don’t. You can’t tell me you haven’t found the nights near intolerable in this winter.”

“We have some coin for a room. I can take you?—”

“Lie down, Sully.”

He despised that name. And he wished she would never stop when he would run to the call of it in a heartbeat. For one so gentle and warm, she was damn stubborn and demanding. Tarly adored that contrast about her.

Conceding for this last night, he lay and let her shuffle in close, until their shared heat and the blanket covered them both.

“Maybe the Phoenix Blood needs a day to work,” she said somberly.

Tarly wouldn’t let his small flicker of hope reignite.

“Maybe,” he whispered.

He couldn’t stop thinking of his draining time. How everyone had set out with a role toward winning this war and saving their continent, whereas he planned to go in search of his own cure. To save one miserable life that didn’t mean anything in the grander scheme of the world. His sister would be Queen of Olmstone, his father was likely dead by now, and Nerida…she was always a temporary blessing he hadn’t done anything to deserve. She’d lived a long, fulfilled life before him, and she would after him.

Tarly thought she’d drifted to sleep with how long they lay there in silence. Until she pushed herself up gently, hovering partially over him. Her soft hand cupped his cheek, and she stared at him with such large, beautiful eyes he saw the world he wanted within them.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, barely a breath of a whisper, even though she was smiling.

Nerida didn’t answer with words. Her mouth leaned to his for a careful kiss. When Tarly responded, he was surprised when her leg hooked over his middle and she straddled him. His hands molded around her hips so gloriously it was torture, with his mind yelling at him to stop this before it went too far.

He couldn’t.

Tarly had been so deprived of having someone want him that now this stunning, magnificent creature was offering herself, he’d become addicted. The taste of her overcame all his senses. The feel of her against him was so undeniably perfect that his entire being couldn’t understand how it was possible.

He groaned into her mouth, flipping them in a single fluid motion until she lay beneath him.

“Where have you been?” he asked—a question that slipped from him with pain and tragedy.

He wished they could have met sooner. That maybe in a different time, they could have been everything.

Nerida’s fingers tangled though his shoulder-length blond hair.

“Wandering…just like you.”

He kissed her deeply. Nerida was something his soul didn’t know it had been searching for until she was here. Every vacant year and every numb decade was worth a day he got to feel alive with her.

“I want you,” he rasped. “So badly I can hardly stand it.”

“Then have me.”

Tarly’s lips trailed down her neck, savoring every note and feel of her. Storing every precious impression she’d made on him since they met, so he would remember until his very last breath there was once someone who’d wanted him in the end. And more than anything before, he wanted her.

“Not tonight,” he said, though it killed him to deny her.

Nerida’s small flicker of disappointment sank him, but she accepted it without pushing.

As they settled back down and she tucked herself into him more intimately this time, he tried to subdue his raging thoughts. How unfair fate was to grant the one thing he’d longed for more than anything…when it was too late.

Tarly left his tent in the middle of the night to relieve himself, careful not to disturb Nerida. His mind was so wrecked, in turmoil, he’d hardly managed to drift off at all.

The sharp air cut across his cheeks. and he missed the warmth of her and the blankets immediately. Before he made his way around, he spied a form sitting alone against a tree, a small blue fire ablaze in front of them. He was compelled to Faythe Ashfyre, not expecting her to be out here so late and by herself.

Her hand moved across the air in front of her, and when Tarly got close enough, he saw lettering, glowing like thin strokes of fire, being drawn by the guidance of her fingers. He was completely mesmerized by such magick, and when she finished, the words came together, amazingly forming a small Firebird that took flight.

Faythe’s head lolled against the trunk as she looked up at him. She offered a small smile of wordless greeting.

“What was that?” he asked, staring after the magick until its embers had disappeared through the canopy of the trees.

“A Fyremessage.”

Tarly crouched to steal heat from her blue fire, fascinated by the concept. He asked, by way of idle conversation, “Can’t sleep?”

“I can. Nerida’s tonic is really effective.”

“Ah. So your waking thoughts are too charged for you to let them go for a while.”

Faythe’s mouth quirked a little. “Care to share yours first?”

He huffed. “I hardly have anything that would interest you.”

“I might surprise you.”

“You have the fate of the world depending on you—everything must seem trivial in comparison.”

“We’re all threads in the fate of the world,” she said thoughtfully, staring into the fire. “The one who hacks down the evil Spirit can’t do so without the warriors who pave the way.”

Tarly had to admit he hadn’t thought much of Faythe when she was a human in Orlon’s court. Knowing what he did now, all that she truly was, he felt guilty for how little he’d noticed or cared. He’d watched them mock her; talk about her like she was nothing when she wasn’t around. It was quite phenomenal, who he was sitting beside now compared to then.

He said, “Considering what you’ve seen and been through, I think you deserve to take the leading credit.”

Faythe’s golden eyes were brilliant with the blue flame marching in them. He couldn’t help but feel inspired, as if he were in the presence of something higher than he could comprehend, yet still so mortal, humble, at the same time.

“I don’t want any of that,” she said honestly, quietly. “I want peace like anyone else. I’ve made and will continue to make selfish choices like anyone else.”

Tarly admired her honesty since it would be easy for her to gloat in all the power she had, and he thought she should take glory, considering all who’d looked down on her before she had any of it.

“You care deeply for Nerida,” Faythe said unexpectedly.

Tarly swallowed hard at the mention, resisting the urge to glance back at the tent he wouldn’t even see from here. “A mistake,” he said. “All things considered.”

“There might be a cure for the dark fae bite.”

“I think Nerida is the best healer I could have by chance run into. Not even she can feel a resolution.”

“That’s why you’re going to Lakelaria.”

Tarly didn’t answer—couldn’t even muster a lie.

Faythe said, “You had a mate, didn’t you?”

She must already know the answer, but she asked anyway, as if she’d been mulling over the concept prior to this.

“She rejected the bond after faking her death for decades to escape me.” He huffed a sarcastic laugh. “It’s quite epic when you think about it. How terrible I must have been for her to have taken such measures.”

Faythe deliberated for seconds that crawled over his skin. He didn’t know why her judgment weighed on him. Or why he stayed, near desperate for her to say something.

“Your father lost his mate and turned to Marvellas in his grief,” she said, pondering over the facts.

“I don’t know what one has to do with the other.”

Faythe’s eyes held him a moment longer before they flickered, and she smiled. Tarly was beginning to feel uneasy in her company.

“I’m glad she has you.”

“I don’t really offer her much. She might actually tell you how I didn’t need to step into her path at all. She could have taken care of herself.”

“I like to believe there a reason for every path crossed.”

“Yeah, well, mine is coming up a little short.”

“If you didn’t have hope, you’d already be dead some way or another. Don’t forget that.”

Tarly appreciated the sentiment.

“I’m sorry about Reylan,” he said, feeling ridiculous the moment he did. They were weightless words with what she was suffering.

“I’m going to get him back. That’s the hope that keeps me alive.”

“Your human friends…do you really think they’re working for Marvellas now?”

“Yes…and no. I believe Marlowe sees things and leads by what she thinks will help, even if it’s gaining for the enemy right now. She can’t tell me everything, and I know that. But it’s hard to accept sometimes.”

There were some things beyond Tarly’s comprehension, but he wanted to learn all he could. There was so much he wanted to know before he was gone.

“You don’t want to go to Lakelaria, do you?” she asked.

Tarly wished he could keep his mouth shut, but there was something about Faythe that made him talk as if she might offer some answers, even if not so direct.

“I don’t want to spend what little time I might have on myself. I want to help shift some movement in this war. If I’m on borrowed time, I’d like it to count for something since my life before now has been nothing worth remembering.”

“That’s understandable,” Faythe said. “But for what it’s worth, I think you’ve impacted more than you know already.”

“I wasn’t implying I need validation.”

“I’m not supplying you with that. I only mean, if you don’t see the hearts you lie in, you don’t deserve to be in them.”

Her sight flicked behind him, and he caught her meaning.

Faythe said, “You and I might be another crossing of paths neither of us expected tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

Faythe inhaled a long breath, tipping her head back. She engrossed herself in the flames, but she was lost to her own mind. “I’ve never been fond of chess—I much prefer cards—but it’s all I can see. A board of moves and countermoves. So many pieces to play, and winning cannot be without sacrifice.”

“What are you saying?”

He had a growing sense of unexplainable determination, and when Faythe spoke, he finally knew what he had to do.

“That you can either stay the king, hiding behind every other piece, or take the guise of a pawn and step into the real danger of the board.”