Page 45 of Fae Tithe (The Cursed Courts #1)
L ance lost count of the number of times he used his healing waters to restart Helena’s failing heart.
It would give the ghosts of a few beats, and then stop, again and again.
He forced down the despair that clawed up his closing throat.
The Merman’s magic could heal the most severe wounds, but it could not fix what was irreparably broken. It could not bring back the dead.
The High Prince’s chest rose and fell rapidly as he scanned Helena’s limp body on the bed. Her eye had swollen shut, her left arm was scarred grey, and everywhere else was littered with red-welted blisters and cuts.
Lance licked his cracked lips and swallowed. Come back to me. You must come back.
His eyes were wild as he poured his healing waters into her chest again, for the reward of a few heartbeats and the odd breath.
“Why didn’t you come get me?!” Lance’s voice cracked. “All you had to do was walk up the stairs. I would have followed you. Even to the end.”
He blinked. The ash that dusted his cheeks felt wet as something fell from his eyes.
Lance’s first tears did not fall in a gentle shower.
They came as a torrential downpour. He leant forward.
His face crumpled. He heaved sobs onto Helena’s blistered face and neck.
The Merman’s cries were so loud it shook the walls of the room and the floorboards beneath his knees.
“Please wake up. Please.”
Lance could not help but recall how Helena had managed to save him from a deadly wound all those years ago.
His own healing magic had proven useless against the magically enhanced metal on the harpoon tip.
She had saved him with nothing but common sense and wound care.
He had the power of the sea in his blood but could not save her.
It’s not enough, he sobbed. I’m not enough.
This was his bold, brilliant, and beautiful woman, lifeless on the bed. She did not shy away from Lance’s black eyes, sharp teeth, and towering figure. Where other Landfolk turned from him in fear, she had looked at him with acceptance.
The only woman he had ever loved was dead.
The family is going to be devastated if I can’t save her. He swallowed, more tears freely falling.
Helena’s fragile heartbeats ceased, and Lance pressed his hands to her chest once more, the blue glow flickering and faltering as his power drained.
Lance dug down inside himself, hands trembling as he pulled so deep from the magical well within that he did not know existed.
He nurtured her heart into more weak pumps. Helena took a single laboured breath.
“Come back to me, Len, please. I’m not me without you. None of us are,” the Merman begged, tears continuing to stream down his cheeks.
Atlas had used the very tip of his muzzle to push Helena to her aching feet.
She shuffled slowly between his two front legs, each as tall and thick as ancient tree trunks.
Helena could not quite comprehend how huge the Dragon was.
To her, he was like a moving mountain, tall, wide, and strong.
She realised that to Atlas, she must be moving slower than a snail.
They travelled sluggishly through the landscape of Muspelheim.
The pair headed towards the blue glow in the sea of swirling crimson that made up the sky.
Everything was a varying shade of red and black in the world Helena trudged through.
She focused on Lance’s beacon ahead, but movements in the distance occasionally caught her attention.
Something behemoth moved in the shadows of smoky ash.
“Atlas, what’s that?” Helena asked, peering through the hazy air.
A Surt. One of many, the Dragon replied. He turned his head in the direction Helena was looking. A big one, too.
“It can’t be bigger than you, surely,” she rasped. Her mouth was so dry. Helena felt like she had been walking for days and not a speck of water had passed her lips. Nor had she rested. She wondered if the golden thread between her and the Dragon had something to do with it. “What is a Surt?”
A Surt is a fire giant. They are the people that belong to this world. I am not the biggest being that exists in Muspelheim. When I was first trapped and sent here, in my youth, I tried to befriend one.
The Dragon unfurled his wings. They reminded Helena of a bat’s wings, but huge. The webbing between the fingers of the wings matched his obsidian scales. One hung awkwardly from its well-muscled shoulder joint, and two of the fingers had been snapped and healed at an almost-right angle.
She gasped. “What happened to you, Atlas?”
That Surt I tried to befriend attacked me. It wrenched my left wing from its shoulder joint and broke two of my fingers.
“Is there any way to fix it?” Helena asked, mouth falling open as she stared up with a mix of awe and sympathy.
Wings can be healed with the aid of another Dragon’s magic, but I am alone here. I have not flown since, the Dragon explained, refolding his wings and settling them on his back.
She snapped her mouth shut. The pity Helena felt for Atlas increased tenfold.
Not only had the Dragon been bound to this place and had his magic siphoned when he was barely an adult, but he had then been attacked and crippled when he tried to make a friend.
A single tear ran down her blistered cheek in sympathy.
“I am so sorry, Atlas. I’m really glad I didn’t ask you why we couldn’t fly to Lance’s light,” she rasped with a chuckle.
I already heard you ask in your head. Atlas rumble-laughed, shaking the ground beneath her boots.
Helena stumbled, but caught herself on a scale of one of the Dragon’s legs. “Of course you did,” she replied, pushing back upright.
We need to move faster, Atlas said. I am concerned about the Surt following us.
“I can’t,” she replied. “I don’t know how I’m moving now, if I’m honest. I haven’t eaten, slept, or drank anything in… days? I don’t know how time works here.”
The Dragon stopped and lowered his head to look at her. There is a hollow behind my horns at the back of my head where you should fit. Climb on.
Helena’s eyes raked over his scaly side. In her condition, the Dragon may as well have asked her to climb a mountain. “I can’t.”
Please, Len, he begged, a gravelly whimper coming from the back of his throat. We need to move more quickly. I can outpace them, you cannot.
“Did you just call me Len?” she asked in surprise. “That’s what my friends and family call me.”
Are we not friends? Atlas asked, shifting his head a little closer to her, so the scales at the bottom his jaw just brushed the toes of her boots.
Ash puffed into the air at his movements and Helena waved it away from her face, her claws whistling slightly where they swiped through the haze.
She felt a thrum of hope down the golden thread that tied them together.
She reminded herself that this Dragon was immature, in his mind if not in his body.
Atlas had grown up in isolation and had been alone for longer than she could truly comprehend, away from a family and all meanings of the word.
The Dragon saved her, not only because he was desperate to leave his bondage to the Fae, but because he did not want to be alone anymore. Atlas wanted a friend.
Another tear slid down her cheek, her heart wrung with pity for the lonely Dragon.
“We can be friends,” she replied. Helena jolted in surprise as a resonance of joy plucked down the thread between them from the Dragon’s end of their tie.
“I will try,” she agreed, looking up the side of the Atlas’s head.
Helena reached forward with her scarred arm.
After what felt like days of travelling with the Dragon, the pain from there had subsided, hurting less than the rest of her aching body.
She used it to pull herself up to the first foothold she could see in the interlocking scales.
Helena grunted and grimaced her way up, her blistered legs screaming as they propelled her up the side of Atlas’ head.
She collapsed, chest heaving, into the small hollow the Dragon had described.
Helena scooted her body and propped her back against one of his towering horns, weakly peering over the shorter ones that were in front of her. The blue light was still far away and, for the briefest of moments, she saw it flicker. She felt a pang of panic as it disappeared and reappeared.
Hold on, Atlas rumbled, before taking a long stride and propelling them into a quick march across the scorching land scape.