Page 27

W hen dawn broke the next day, Taiyo’s words were slurring and his vision was hazy, eyes not quite focusing on her fully. She did her best to get him to eat some of the food Callahan had given her. It hadn’t been much, and she was still hungry afterwards, but at least it should get her back to Auror. She looked up at the rising sun. Hopefully Taiyo would improve during the day.

Either way, Hellebore was going to have to ride through the night in order to reach Auror before the eclipse. His horse would just have to deal with it. The beast was already going slower carrying two of them; Hellebore had to make up for it somehow.

She managed to get Taiyo up onto the horse and herself behind him, holding him up against her as they rode. When noon approached, and Taiyo’s strength rallied just a hair and she could trust he could hold himself up in the saddle, she slid off and jogged beside the horse for as long as she could.

Her lungs were ready to burst and her legs were scratched and shredded since her nightgown had been cut to the knees to make bandages.

Every time she started to falter, about to faint from the exertion, sweat pouring down her back, she reached out, pressing her fingers against the saddle back and finding the bump of the vial. Each time it gave her enough strength to take a wretched, gasping breath and keep running.

“Sunshine,” Taiyo rasped, leaning forward the fifth time she nearly passed out. “You don’t have to do this. It doesn’t matter if I’m in Auror or not when the eclipse comes. Just stop and stay with me.”

“Don’t—break—my—concentration!” Every word came out as a gasping wheeze.

She only made it another two minutes before her legs gave out and she went crashing to the forest floor, Taiyo fumbling to stop his horse before he left her behind. She wheezed a minute before pushing herself off the ground, ignoring the scrapes she’d accrued and climbing up behind him on the horse. She took the reins from him and kicked the horse back into motion, desperately trying to catch her breath.

“I said my goodbyes when I went after you,” Taiyo murmured as she wrapped around him, and she knew he could feel her thundering heart and her whole body convulsing where she was pressed up against him, gasping for air. “Haruko knew I wasn’t likely to come back. Please, it’s alright to stop. You don’t have to keep trying. I just wanted to spend this time with you.”

“You—are. I’m—right—here,” Hellebore huffed, jutting her chin over his shoulder so she could see. “Maybe—this is—how—I—want to—spend—it.”

Hellebore kept her eyes peeled as they raced through the forest. No irises.

She stopped only to keep the horse from keeling over from dehydration. She also took advantage of the water, but they did not rest long. Not even when the sun set and Taiyo could no longer keep his eyes open. His head was leaned back, tucked into her neck, and she thanked every good gene she’d gotten to have a torso tall enough she could see over him.

He bled through his stitches.

She couldn’t stop and do anything about it.

Hellebore just focused on keeping Taiyo upright and the horse riding as fast as they could back toward Auror even in the middle of the night. She could feel his sluggish heart fighting with each beat. If she could get him back before the eclipse, if there was even just a single petal left in the garden…

The morning of the eclipse, Hellebore, one arm wrapped around Taiyo, the other steering, raced through the city gates. No one stopped her, thankfully. She didn’t know if it was because they recognized Taiyo in her arms or her. Since she looked like a banshee in her tattered shreds, she doubted they recognized her.

When Hellebore brought the horse to a screeching halt at the closed castle gates, a shout went up. “It’s the king and queen!”

Soon enough, they were opening and Hellebore brought them through right as Haruko ran out of the palace doors. Haruko’s eyes widened when they landed on Hellebore. “You came back?”

“How long until the eclipse?” Hellebore gasped as she moved to dismount.

“Thirty minutes before it begins. Taiyo, is he—”

“Are there any irises left? Any at all in the garden?” Hellebore hit the ground, but her legs buckled and she went to her knees.

“Not that I know of. There might be some in the city that were cured, but considering how unlikely it is the Moon Elves make it here—”

“Send out whoever you can to go see! And help me—” Hellebore tried to get up from her knees. Her vision was swimming. She needed air. She needed food. She needed water.

She was about to faint.

She reached up and her fingers fumbled with the saddlebag. She dug in and wrapped them around the vial, pulling it out.

She needed to save her husband.

Haruko helped Hellebore to her feet as she held the vial. Haruko looked over her shoulder and barked at the guards gawking at them. “You heard your queen! Get to it! Find us some irises!”

Once Hellebore was on her feet, vision steadying once more, Haruko turned to her and said, “I’ll send for healers—”

“Don’t bother. If we only have thirty minutes—” Hellebore took a deep breath. “They can’t save him. But I can.”

She reached up for Taiyo, who was about to topple right off his horse. His side was soaked with blood. His stitches had come undone. Haruko immediately helped her get Taiyo off the horse as he came back to awareness. He caught Hellebore’s shoulder and murmured, “Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t. I’m not going anywhere,” Hellebore said, taking one side while Haruko took the other. “We’re going to go to the garden, can you do that?”

He nodded, eyes tightly shut as he squeezed Hellebore’s shoulder. She looked up at the sun. They didn’t have long.

If there was just a single petal left…

They went in through the back, Haruko holding open the gap in the branches for them.

Hellebore stumbled into the garden, crashing to her knees with Taiyo and landing in the ash. She called out to Haruko as she came in after them, “Look for a bloom, petals, anything that could still have magic in it!”

Hellebore was careful to leave Taiyo in a comfortable position before she tore through the remains, digging her hands into the ash. It was all black. There was nothing left there.

But there had to be something.

Haruko was on the other side of the garden, covered in soot and ash, shaking her head.

Hellebore started to get to her feet, ready to race up to her lab to tear through her notes for a miracle, but then a hand curled into her leg, pulling her back down.

Taiyo was looking up at her. He whispered, “Stop, sunshine, please, just stop.”

“The eclipse will happen in a few minutes. I’ve got to try—”

“I didn’t come after you because I thought there was a chance you could save my life. I came after you because I couldn’t bear to pass without you being the last thing my eyes see.”

Hellebore crashed to the ashy ground beside him, eyes watering. A sob fell out of her throat as he pulled her into his arms. He gently shushed her as he pressed a kiss to her cheek and ran a hand up and down her back, comforting her when he had minutes left of life.

He whispered, “What’s all this for then? You don’t need to shed any tears for me. You’ve hidden your heart so well I never stood a chance of finding it. All the better anyway. It means I can’t break it as I go to the grave.”

Hellebore looked up, mouth opening, but then she spotted a window and a little potted iris sitting in the sunlight. There was still one left in the castle.

Their wedding iris. It was still in her lab.

Hellebore ripped herself out of his arms and took off running despite her husband’s protests.

He could thank her when he lived past the eclipse.

She tore through the castle until she reached the lab, grabbing the pot and the belt sitting on the table nearby. She looped it around her waist, depositing the vial of blood in one pouch and filling the others quickly with the equipment she needed for this insane idea.

Once she had it, she tucked the iris into the crook of her arm and raced back to the garden as the sun and moon inched closer together.

Haruko had taken Hellebore’s place by Taiyo’s side, and as she ran through the ash, she heard him calling her name.

Hellebore came crashing back to his side as the moon passed in front of the sun, and Taiyo opened his eyes. His voice was weak and broken as he spotted her carrying the iris. “Hellebore, please, stop.”

“What are you doing? Is one iris enough?” Haruko asked.

She ignored them both as she knelt beside him, reaching into her pouch and pulling out the vial of his blood from before the rot. She grabbed his shirt and ripped it open before pulling out a syringe and a small incision knife.

This definitely wasn’t sanitary, but if it would save his life, that’s what she would deal with.

Hellebore plucked the bloom of the iris and shoved it into her second syringe, scribbling a quick formula in her notebook with the ash and pushing her power into it, turning the petals into a liquid, brimming with the same kind of magic that was ebbing out of Taiyo, causing the gasping breaths coming from him. She filled the other syringe with his red blood.

As soon as the moon started to creep over the sun, Hellebore injected him with the iris’ serum. The iris’ magic took effect and his heart kept beating even as his connection to the sun weakened.

Now it was time for Hellebore’s real work.

She scribbled a new formula on her arm and started the work of purifying Taiyo’s blood. She took the syringe of blood and injected it into his arm. It was a slow process, with only a small fraction of pure blood for her to reference. As she focused on separating the rot from his blood, using the magic of the iris to keep the magic flowing through him, she cut the remaining stitches and used the wound as an exit for her to pull the rot out of him.

Black rot slowly came out, not just blood, and Hellebore breathed a little easier.

She could do this. She could save him.

At least… that’s what she thought until she noticed she wasn’t purifying his blood faster than the rot was contaminating it again.

And if she stopped, he would die.

“Hellebore! Is it working?”

Haruko clenched the ashy ground as she watched.

Hellebore took a deep breath. “Do you remember what happened when you and your healers tried to give Taiyo a transfusion?”

She’d read about it in his records, Haruko giving almost enough blood that it would kill her in the hopes the healers would be able to give him a transfusion large enough to save him.

“Yes. All it did was spread to the transfused blood. I couldn’t give him enough to save him. Our magic is unique to us, my blood with my magic couldn’t reverse what had overtaken his.”

“Yes, your blood. However, blood without magic would be able to.”

“You can’t mean yours! You’re a completely different species! His body will still reject it.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m an alchemist with control over the chemical makeup and can transmute it into something that his body will accept.” Hellebore was already using her free hand to write the formulas.

“But that doesn’t solve the problem of it spreading. This could kill you! You could just end up taking on the rot yourself.”

“I’m aware. Haruko, reach into my belt, please.”

Haruko didn’t need to be told twice. She dug through Hellebore’s belt, finding the transfusion materials. With a few instructions from Hellebore, Haruko had it ready, slipping the first needle into Taiyo’s arm. She turned to Hellebore and asked, “Are you certain? You’ll really risk this to save my brother?”

“Yes.”

Haruko slipped the second needle into Hellebore’s arm. Her red blood filled the first tube. His black blood filled the second. She activated the formulas.

Hellebore pushed her blood into Taiyo as she pulled his corrupted blood into her veins, simultaneously purifying the blood still in him from the rot. She adjusted the chemical makeup of her blood as it entered Taiyo’s veins until it resembled his and his clean blood accepted it to replenish his. She also had to keep pulling the separated rot out of Taiyo before it tried to re-corrupt his blood.

It was a miracle she was managing any of this, much less those three crucial things at the same time. But as it was…

It meant she had no ability to do anything about the rot corrupting her blood.

The eclipse took over an hour to reach totality, and when it did, Hellebore still hadn’t been able to purge all the rot. She closed her eyes as the world went dark. All that mattered to her was the thrumming sun magic in Taiyo that kept his heart beating and the blood she was cleansing so it would continue to beat.

Taiyo’s eyes blinked open as the totality began to pass and the sun and moon began to part. Hellebore’s heart started to slow, struggling to keep her blood pumping as she simultaneously poured hers into Taiyo and took his thick, poisonous blood into her, eating away at her life.

“Hell—” He blinked, rasping as more and more of the rot left him, either by being dragged out from the wound on his side or into Hellebore’s blood. “Hellebore, what…”

Haruko was at his side, hands on his shoulders, keeping him down. “It’s alright, Taiyo. Everything is going to be fine.”

“What is she doing?”

Thanks to the transfusion, Hellebore had made excellent progress. Making her blood match the blood from the vial she’d injected in him and using it to replace his corrupted blood was far faster than just cleansing his. She could feel the strength of his magic coming back, filling his blood again as the next hour passed and the sun slowly returned. She gasped as the sun magic in Taiyo’s corrupted blood in her began to burn even as it clogged her heart.

“No. No! Haruko, let go—stop her! She’s killing herself!”

But it was too late. She’d cleaned the rot from his heart.

By destroying her own.

The needle ripped out of her arm, and her hands fell as red blood began to pour out of the incision on Taiyo’s side while black blood poured out of the spot where the needle had been on her arm. She was gasping and choking as her heart began to slow to the tempo of the sluggish beat she had memorized as Taiyo’s.

Arms wrapped around her as she was gathered into his lap. Taiyo’s face filled her vision while the two celestial bodies parted above them. His hand cupped her cheek and she looked up at him to see tears welling up in his eyes as his voice came out rough and desperate. “Why did you do that? What could ever possess you to do this? How could you do this to me? How could you force me to live after you’re gone?”

She reached up and put her hand over his heart, its beat now steady and sure and strong.

She whispered, “There. My heart. It’s right there.”

His eyes widened but then she slid her other hand to the back of his neck, pulling him down so she could press one last final kiss to his lips. When she pulled back, she could feel blood coming up her throat. “Take good care of it for me.”

“No. Don’t you dare—”

“Your Highness, we found one!”

Hellebore’s eyes rolled in the back of her skull, and her little human heart wasn’t strong enough to keep pumping the sludge of her blood a moment longer.