Page 39 of Stars Above the Never Sea (The Last Faeyte #1)

Chapter twenty-seven

Selene

I expected pain.

There is always pain.

But curiously, I feel nothing as my eyes open. Warmth envelops me, the soft blankets tucked around my body acting as a cocoon.

“Selene?” The soft voice sounds familiar, and yet not. “Can you hear me?”

I turn. A pair of scarlet eyes meet mine. Solomon raises his eyebrows. “Welcome back.”

His voice is back.

My body flinches away as he reaches for the blanket.

“I stitched your wound.” His voice is steady, but he stops. “And then pulled the stitches out, when the skin threatened to heal over it. You heal incredibly fast, but I still need to check. May I?”

Movement shifts over my stomach, and I glance down. Leo is sprawled over me, his face turned in my direction and little snores coming from his mouth.

“He was determined to watch over you.” Amusement—or it might be, if it wasn’t for the tension in his voice. “To repay the favor.”

“He owes me nothing.” But my hand raises, runs through his hair. “He was very brave.”

“As were you.” Sol folds his arms. “Your wound, Selene.”

I try to look down at my chest, peeling the blanket away. My eyes blur as I attempt to focus on the dark red line that splits my chest area in two, but he’s right. It doesn’t look like a recent injury. “How long was I asleep?”

“Less than two hours.” Sol’s brows dip, as if in confusion. “As I said. You heal quickly.”

Except I don’t. And yet the scar looks as though it was received weeks ago.

Question upon question, and nobody here can answer them. Swallowing, I tug the blanket back up and look around.

Across from me is another small bed, pressed to the wall. Riordan’s chest rises and falls.

“He took the edge of the wraith’s wing to his chest.” Sol picks up strips of linen from the bed beside me, rolling them up. “A less severe injury than yours, though slower to heal. But it shouldn’t hinder him. He’ll be up and about when he wakes up.”

I cannot answer the question in his voice. “Where’s Callan?”

He found us.

Sol doesn’t say anything. The blankets fall away as I sit up. Leo jerks awake, bleary-eyed with his hair stuck up in tufts. A piece of linen is stuck to his cheek. “I’m awake!”

I stare at Sol. Perhaps I’m learning him a little better. Because I would say he looks angry. Jaw clenched, shoulders turned in. I would, if it wasn’t for the brightness in his eyes. “Where is he?”

Sol’s shoulders bow forward. His eyes flick to Leo. “On deck. We’re getting close to Asteria. You woke at the right time.”

He doesn’t say anything else but crosses to Rio. His hand clasps his shoulder. Rio wakes in much the same way as Leo, his hair in similar disarray as he jerks upright and hisses. “Es?”

“Upstairs. Can you walk?”

Rio swings his legs out of the bed with a drawn-out groan. “At least she can’t tell me I haven’t seen a wraith anymore. Scars are sexy, right?”

Sol sighs. “Do you even realize how much you missed while you were out?”

Leo scrambles over to the bed, and Rio huffs as he climbs up, winding his arms around Rio’s neck. “I fell off the ship!”

Rio’s mouth opens. Closes again. “What? What do you mean, you fell off the ship?”

Dark red tints the top of Leo’s cheeks. “I fell, but Selene flew down and carried me back up. Then Callan saved both of us.”

Unfamiliar warmth flares in my own cheeks as Rio turns to gape at me. “I am not a display. No need to gawk.”

“Sorry.” He swallows and pushes to his feet, reaching out to ruffle Leo’s hair. “You went after him? Into that void?”

When I nod, he crosses the room. A wince flits over his expression before he leans down.

My muscles lock, all of them. “What in Hala’s name are you doing ?”

“Thanking you.” His voice is muffled in my hair as his arms wrap awkwardly around me where I’m propped up in the bed. “Because Sol definitely forgot.”

“I didn’t forget,” Sol snaps behind him. “Get off her, you oaf. She’s healing too. I can thank her without hurting her further.”

“Damn.” Rio yanks himself back. “Sorry.”

My face flushes. “It’s not that bad.”

“Enough.” Sol moves to the door. “We have to go. Selene, join us when you’re able. We’ll give you privacy. Bathroom is there. There’s a clean shirt at the end of your bed.”

Not just a shirt. Another pair of perfectly molded leather pants is neatly folded. I sink down on the bed, wondering what Esme gave up this time.

“Selene?”

My head turns to the door, where Sol lingers. He meets my gaze. “I’m sorry. For the way I behaved before. And… thank you.”

I almost smile. Probably would, if it weren’t for the panic icing over my chest at what might be happening upstairs. But Sol meets my nod with one of his own, before he vanishes, pulling the door closed behind him.

Yanking the door open with more force than I intended, I almost trip over Leo on the floor, his back pressed to the wall. He looks at me, and quickly away. His voice is small. “I don’t like this part.”

The part when they return, when Callan brings them home. And the pretium hits.

I hold out my hand, urgency snapping at my feet. “Then let us go up together.”

His hand is tight in mine as we step out onto the deck. Nobody turns to look at us. Wind whips into my face, Volatus moving faster than I’ve ever felt, enough that we both have to fight to keep our balance.

And Callan is on his knees.

His hands press against the deck, his head hanging forward. The wooden planks in front of him are spattered with dark pools of liquid. Sol kneels in one, his hands on either side of Callan’s face as he shakes him lightly.

My throat burns as I take in those dark patches. Sol’s hands are almost frantic as he pushes cloths against Callan’s face, pulling them away stained and soaked. Merrick does the same beside him, both of them working to stem bleeding that has no end.

I look down, to where Leo is staring at his feet. “I’ll be back, Leo. Stay here, just… just for a moment.”

Perhaps the wraith caused more damage than I thought.

Because I cannot seem to breathe .

Callan struggles to focus on my face when I fall to my knees beside Sol, his own breathing a wet, thick rasp that sounds like it’s stuck to the sides of his throat like tar as he coughs. Blood spills from his mouth. It joins the rest covering him.

It’s everywhere. Even the whites of his eyes are filled with it, and blood-red tears slip down his face as his slow breathing locks. Stops.

Sol’s scolding sounds closer to a sob. “Breathe, you ass. Don’t give up yet. Matthias is on the dock, remember?”

Bronze irises, tinged with crimson, blink slowly.

“How do we stop it?” I don’t look away. My hand somehow finds his, squeezing his fingers. There’s no strength in Callan’s whisper-soft grip. My voice rises, panic and grief lacing across my chest until I wonder if my scar hasn’t split right back open. “Sol. How do we stop this?”

“You can’t.” His voice is anguished, even as he carefully wipes away the blood that trickles from his mouth. “It’s the pretium. This is not something we can stop, Selene. It’s the will of the gods.”

My own tears spill over. “That can’t be right—"

“Matthias is skilled,” Sol rasps. “He found a way to at least replace the blood loss, if we can only get Callan back in time. It saved his life before. But this…it has never been like this. This is the worst.”

Esme kneels on my other side. “You’re so close to home, Cal. And you’re far too stubborn to give up now.” Endless grief sits within her words as she reaches forward, a cloth in her hands that she uses to wipe away the blood that spills from his eyes, scarlet tracking down golden cheeks.

When he slumps, it’s my arms that catch him. His breathing shudders against my neck.

I can feel his heartbeat. So close that it could be next to my own inside my chest. They beat out of sync, Callan’s heart beating once for every two of mine.

This is not right.

Merrick stands, and I turn to him in desperation. But he’s not watching Callan.

He’s watching me.

“He’s not going to make it,” Rio murmurs from behind me. His voice cracks. “He needs to—to guide Volatus in. Bring it to land.”

Callan jerks. Coughs. Liquid soaks my hair, my neck. Metal and lifeblood.

I nudge him up until I can see his face. My fingers brush his cheek as I close my eyes and seek the maegis out.

It hovers, as if waiting. Can you help him?

It doesn’t work as it should. Maybe, just maybe—

It’s becoming easier, to corral it, to gather it up. What can I do?

I can feel the intention. The refusal. The maegis cannot help. Or will not.

Anger sparks as they withdraw. No.

Help him. You will help him.

It tries to escape as I reach for it. I grip it tightly, not even knowing what I’m asking for but seeking it anyway.

This is not how his story ends.

Callan Edgeborn did not let me go that day, did not follow me to the dock and watch me fall, did not find me again, only to die with my arms around him and his blood soaking my skin.

It will take something from me, something integral. His heartbeat hastens, almost matching mine.

I have lost enough .

Enough for a dozen lifetimes. And so have those around me. I can feel their grief, feel their pain – their helplessness, forced to sit and watch and able to do nothing as Callan drowns in his own blood.

No more.

Something sparks in my memories. A shadowed, solitary figure, swaying.

My lips part on a gasp of realization. Merrick.

Merrick’s fate does not end this way. The shadows showed me, flickering and shifting as they wove his story into the air between us. Fate does not lie, and there is no escaping it.

Which means that there is something that can be done. There has to be, or Merrick would not be standing here. If Callan dies, Volatus falls.

Hands try to separate us, gentle but insistent. My hands tighten. They will not take him from me. “ No .”

All of them are talking at once, the noise buzzing around us as I focus on Callan’s face. His eyes are barely open now, but the faintest glimmer of bronze fixes on my face as his chest rises and falls.

My fingers tremble as they land on his cheek. His head turns, just a little, pressing into my hand.

My own heartbeat grows louder. My palm begins to glow with familiar light against his cheek, illuminating it. The glow spreads from my hand, lighting up his skin like the maegis he casts so easily for the people around him.

Callan’s breathing shifts, changes, from rasping, tortured battles to steadier, quiet inhales. And then it stops.

Between one breath to the next, he stops breathing.

Not him. You cannot have him.

“What—”

“Do not interfere.” Merrick’s voice rings out. “Give her space.”

The sound of my heart grows stronger. Faster, like the wings of a hummingbird in flight. But Callan’s heart grows weaker, the space between beats lengthening until I can no longer hear them at all. Until the only sound is my own heart, twice as strong as it was before.

As though it no longer belongs solely to me.

The light emanating from my palms flares brightly, illuminating us both and making me close my eyes from the force, before it fades.

When my vision clears, when I blink the floating lights away, Callan’s skin is no longer the ashen gray of someone close to death—but burnished, warm gold.

Volatus creaks. Dips, the sound of crates crashing echoing around us. Shouts ring out, but my arms only tighten.

“Callan.” His name belongs on my lips. “Callan!”

He chokes on air, the veins that trace down his neck vivid as his back bows in my arms. I keep hold of him, relief and shock warring in my throat as his eyes fly open.

No blood-soaked irises are in his wild stare. Only deep, swirling, glowing bronze, and the ship steadies as we stare at each other. Bronze, and something else.

A jagged streak of black runs through each iris, illuminated with… stars .

“Holy gods,” Sol whispers beside me. “What did you do?”