Page 56

“I will try. How much will it—” Velethuil broke off, his whole body jerking, head snapping back and his eyes rolling in his head as he struggled to breathe. “What are you doing?”

“The damage done to you was extensive, but I can fix it.” She let her head fall backward, mimicking his position, and their breath began to sync, their chests rising and falling at the same time. “Do not move.”

As I watched, their bodies twitched in jerking, horrible motions, each breath dragging through their lips, each gasp echoing. Something roared in my ears, a massive voice like a thundering heartbeat.

Heal him . The voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. It vibrated in my bones; it bubbled in my blood. If I were to drop dead, it would come from the air left in my lungs.

Heal him. Heal him. Heal him.

I couldn’t help closing my eyes, trying to breathe around the noise that took up all the sound in the room. Something answered in my chest, echoing the pulsing words.

Tallu squeezed my shoulder again, his concern audible when he said my name. I looked up, nearly lost in his russet eyes. He consumed me, and the voice disappeared for a moment as I stared at him.

“Are you all right?” He kept his voice low, but I could hear the worry in it, the thread of anxiety as he searched my face. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” I smiled even as the inside of my head echoed with the words Give him back his magic. “I think that fight with Kacha’s men took more out of me than I thought.”

“You should see the doctor.” Tallu raised his hand, rubbing his thumb over my cheek, and I felt it like music on my bones, and I wanted to know if he still felt the way he did when we had first made love.

Did he still think he didn’t deserve me, or did his hands on me mean that he cared for me as much as I cared for him?

Give him back his power. My heart beat in time with the words now. I thrummed with it and was certain that Tallu could feel it through his fingertips, like the message was a whisper passed around a circle in a winter’s game.

Miksha’s head was thrown back, and blood leaked from Velethuil’s ears and nose, his eyes wide and unseeing as he stared at the ceiling.

He gasped, suddenly, so sharply that the air around us moved as though a whirlwind had whipped it into motion.

Miksha sighed, her hands dropping down, her head lolling forward.

“It’s done,” she sighed. “It’s done.”

Velethuil came to his senses slowly, a moment of breath, a pause, a hesitant shake of his head. He raised his fingers and wiped the blood from his ears and nose, smearing it all over his skin. For a second, covered in blood and near dead, he looked similar to Lerolian.

Lerolian crouched low, his hand hovering above Miksha’s head. “She did it. She was the best of us. Now, she is the only one of us, so there is no one to compare her to.”

“Did it work?” Tallu asked.

Velethuil raised his hand, and a whirling pocket of air formed around his fingers. It guttered out almost immediately, fizzling into nothingness. He blinked, and then his tears mixed with the smeared blood, and all of his gracious courtliness was gone.

“It worked.” He coughed and rubbed at his face again, wiping blood, tears, and snot across his skin like a child before he took the edge of his jacket and dabbed ineffectively at the mess. “It will take some time for me to remember the skills, though.”

“You have just a week,” Tallu said. “You leave at the one-month celebration. And we have one more for you to heal.”

“She is too tired.” Liku stepped between his wife and Tallu, then bowed almost as an afterthought. “Your Imperial Majesty.”

“You cannot ask this of her, not after she traveled this whole way and already did one powerful magic tonight.” Lerolian glared, arms crossed. “Don’t you dare?—”

“It is the prince, isn’t it?” Miksha asked. “Even in the forest, we heard of the attack against him. Move, Liku. If this is the cost of freedom, I will pay.”

“Miksha…” But just as when she had healed Tallu, her husband seemed to have no ability to protest her decisions.

“Come here.” She gestured to the spot next to her. Velethuil tried to rise but stumbled, landing back where he’d started, holding his head between his hands. He groaned.

I stood, and Tallu put his hand on my back, guiding me across the room. Without the pressure of his hand, I wasn’t sure I would have made it. I swallowed hard again, sitting on the cushions next to her. She trembled when she raised her hand, her eyes turning red as she considered me.

Tallu stood behind me, protecting me as Liku protected Miksha. I could close my eyes with him here. I could let myself be vulnerable.

“I can try,” Miksha said.

Her eyes drew me in, and I could hear the voice again as though it was voiced in a chamber inside my own heart. Show me what they did .

For long heartbeats, she stared at me, and I felt my breathing sync with hers, my heartbeat following hers as I tried to feel what she was doing, hear it in the same way I’d heard what she’d done to Velethuil.

Then, as if a hand had covered my mouth and fingers pinched my nose, I couldn’t breathe anymore, I couldn’t feel the air coming in, I couldn’t— I couldn’t?—

There is nothing left.

“No.” Miksha’s voice came from very far away, and I gasped, inhaling a desperate gulp of air that filled all the way to the bottom of my lungs. I felt hands on my face, but they were too small, too hesitant to be Tallu’s.

He always touched me with wonder. To him, I was precious, his fingers certain even when he couldn’t find the words.

“Were you able to fix the damage?” Tallu asked, closer than I’d expected. He’d crouched next to me, his hand pressing down on my upper back, his fingers spread wide as though he could reassure me with that touch alone.

“No.” Miksha shook her head. She released my face, her hands dropping. Her face fell. “I’m sorry, Prince Airón. What they’ve done to you… There’s no fixing it. Velethuil’s damage was clean, intentional. I do not think they meant for you to survive what they did.”

“They made that clear with the swords. I suppose they should have just used that to finish me off, but maybe Commander Fimo wanted to prove that he could best me with his lightning.” I tried to smile but found everything in my body frozen.

I hadn’t realized how much I’d been depending on the idea that she’d be able to fix what happened, that she’d be able to use her magic to undo what Kacha had done to me.

What I had let Kacha do to me. Because I had believed Tallu could protect me. Because I’d believed we were unstoppable together.

My vision turned hazy around the edges, my breath coming too fast, my skin flushing from the rapid beating of my heart.

I didn’t need what I had lost, truly. Animal speak was a powerful tool, but it wasn’t all I was.

I wasn’t Irad?o with her spies or my sister with her unending patience and kindness for foxes.

Something pressed me, turning me physically, and then Tallu was in front of me. He took up my entire vision, his eyes the only clear thing I could see.

“Airón.” His eyes were pinched, his mouth pulled down, regret pulling his expression painfully tight. “Airón, I cannot— I am—Apologies are not enough. I have no words for what I have done to you.”

“You did nothing,” I said, hearing my own voice at a very great distance. “ You did nothing.”

Because he hadn’t. It had been me, fool that I was.

“Is there nothing you can do for him?” Tallu’s voice was sharp and hard, the voice of a man who razed nations.

“The person who did this might as well have scrambled his brain like an egg. It is enough that the prince is still able to function . He’s lucky.

Beyond lucky. The One Dragon must have blessed him herself.

” Miksha sounded defensive. She and her husband were trapped here, at the mercy of an emperor whose father had killed nations for less offense.

“Tallu.” I reached up, grabbing hold of his arm. “I do not need to talk to animals to do what needs to be done.”

Still, Miksha’s voice echoed in my head, and I remembered the spiral, the dragon at the center, the voice apologizing, but the purpose…. What had the dragon said? I couldn’t remember clearly, and it ached like a wound I hadn’t cleaned before wrapping.

Lines formed beside Tallu’s mouth, a frown of unhappiness that echoed in my chest. He raised a hand, pushing his brown curls off his forehead.

“Airón and I need to return. Do not attempt to leave this place. Should any of you be seen wandering the palace, you will be killed on sight.” Tallu gave them a look that I recognized as his I am the emperor, and you will listen to me look.

Since when did I know that it actually hid his own feelings of helplessness? That expression masked his own uncertainty in a plan that might work but also might put everyone we had just promised safety in danger.

Velethuil bowed low, his fists touching each other. “Your Imperial Majesty is generous.”

I heard the consummate politician he had become in those words. They said that a talented air mage could hear a lie on the very air that you breathed. With his powers returned, what did Velethuil hear when he listened to Tallu?

“There is food and water. Everything an emperor would need if his nation rose against him.” Tallu gestured to the side of the room where stacks of boxes were labeled with different sorts of foods. Enormous cisterns of water were neatly covered by oilcloth. “We will be back in the evening.”

Liku bowed, his fingers forming a triangle. Miksha managed a nod, and Velethuil eyed us both once more before bowing and then sitting down on the cold stone.

Tallu offered over his hand, and I took it. His flesh was shockingly warm, and I knew too well that meant I was too cold, my extremities shocked by the slightest hint of human warmth. I felt a thread of tightness in my chest that was only due to the chill, not the way his skin pressed against mine.