Page 63 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

Chapter Forty-Two

She’d run out of tears two hundred and ten miles into the drive.

Her eyes burned with strain as the sun rose, casting an ugly, watered-down sort of light over the forested landscape.

Every muscle in her body was tight. She had to keep her teeth clenched hard to stop them from rattling.

Everytime the modern navigation system in the SUV chimed to let her know they’d be turning soon, or merging onto a road, or that she’d strayed slightly over the line, she had to swallow a scream.

She was a terrible driver.

It didn’t seem to matter much, though. The stolen SUV came equipped with a semi-autonomous driving feature she’d accidentally activated when she clumsily tapped ‘Dragon Roost, Drummond Island’ into the glossy screen.

A pleasant voice had calmly instructed her to keep her hands on the wheel at all times in case of emergencies but that she could otherwise relax.

Like that was possible.

Alashiya couldn’t stop herself from glancing over her shoulder and into the backseat every minute or so. She had to see for herself that Taevas’s chest still rose and fell. That his eyelids still flickered. That his clawed fingers twitched.

She wanted to believe him when he said he wouldn’t die but she couldn’t. Not when she’d seen the ragged, cauterized hole in his shoulder — dangerously close to his chest and all the vital things it contained.

He’d already been weak from illness and whatever drugs he’d been pumped with. It was difficult to imagine his body, dragon-tough as it was, would be able to keep up with yet another horrible injury. Not to mention the swelling and cuts on his face and the bruises that banded his powerful rib cage.

She’d been tempted over and over and over to stop, to ask the SUV’s computer to take them to a hospital. Alashiya had stared out into the bright cone of light projected by the vehicle’s headlights and thought, He’ll die because of me.

But everytime she made the choice, she couldn’t follow through with it.

This is my fault. I didn’t listen to him before. I was selfish and scared. If I’d listened, we could’ve left days ago.

It didn’t matter to her that disregarding his instructions had also saved him.

If she’d listened that night, she wouldn’t have snuck back toward the house, stolen the SUV, and used its shiny grille to stop Monty from storming into the barn, his gun raised.

But that didn’t mean much when the whole awful thing could’ve been completely avoided in the first place.

Alashiya hadn’t stopped shaking since she managed to load Taevas into the backseat.

The tremors had died down some, but they continued to run down her arms and torso in little rivers of terror.

If she wasn’t glancing over her shoulder to make sure Taevas hadn’t died then she looked up through the tinted sun roof, her stomach curdled with the anticipation of seeing a winged shape against the stars.

Time didn’t pass in minutes but in road signs, navigation alerts, and the little sounds of pain Taevas made whenever they hit a bump.

Alashiya had lived nights of horror and grief.

She’d listened to the screams of her family as they were slaughtered until the forest took pity on her and dragged her into the darkness, where roots pierced her skin and breath was a memory.

She’d discovered her grandmother slumped over the kitchen table, her paring knife clutched in the tight grip of rigor mortis.

She’d watched the slow decline of her grandfather as he lost himself to grief and ill health, helpless to do little more than witness the creep of Grim’s shadow.

She was no stranger to loss or pain, but this… Alashiya didn’t think she’d survive it.

Taevas deserved better than a pitiful death in the back of a stolen car. He was kind and smart and wonderful. So wonderful, even when he was a huge pain in the ass. To live in a world where he didn’t exist was utterly unthinkable.

Every leaf would lose its color. Every drop of water would sour. Every sunrise would turn pale and sickly.

Whatever happened between them didn’t matter. Even if he opened his eyes and had no memory of her, she would be okay. He’d be alive.

So she locked her fingers around the wheel and didn’t think of what she’d left behind or what she’d done.

She didn’t wonder if Monty was still alive or notice that she was smeared with blood.

She drove and she drove and she prayed so loudly that it was a scream in her mind, a howl to be heard by the gods who’d never seen fit to listen to her before.

Alashiya barely registered it when she crossed the border into the Draakonriik. Even the thought of being so far away from home would’ve made her sick to her stomach before, but now she only felt the smallest spark of relief.

When the gray sky split open to release a torrent of summer rain, she didn’t notice. The other cars on the road were blurs of muted color. The landscape was a smudge in the corner of her eye.

The navigation system assured her over and over again that they were on the fastest route to Drummond Island — and that it was a restricted space, which would require identification to enter — but as the hours crawled by, Alashiya felt in her bones that they wouldn’t make it.

The hook behind her breast bone tugged softly but insistently, and the whispers of her grove were loud.

It was as if everyone was trying to speak at once, all of them with something vital to tell her, but she couldn’t make sense of the din.

Exhausted, terrified, and desperate to do as Taevas asked of her, she wished she could cover her ears until it all went away.

There were two hundred miles left when the whispers coalesced into one unified voice.

It pierced through the haze that had clouded her mind with a single word: Stop.

Alashiya jumped. Her aching fingers spasmed on the steering wheel, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d already disengaged the self-driving function and clumsily guided the vehicle off the road.

Her pulse throbbed in her ears as she sat for a moment, unable to process what she’d done or why.

Stop, the grove instructed her, clearer than they’d ever been. It sounded like her grandmother but also like her father, her aunties, her cousins, and everyone she’d never met but loved in the very foundation of her being.

It sounded like the First. The queen, Kubaba.

Her eyes burned with tears she could no longer make. “I stopped,” she croaked, yanking on the wheel like tearing it off might fix everything. “What do I do? What do I do?”

Bring him in.

“Bring him— I’m trying to take him home.”

Alashiya twisted around to look at Taevas.

She’d lowered the back seat to make a big enough space and thrown Adon’s robe over him in a desperate bid to keep him comfortable.

With the way he was sprawled and the robe obscuring her view, it wasn’t easy to see everything, but she knew instantly that he’d gotten worse.

Bring him in, the voices urged her. Bring him home.

A chill permeated every cell of her body. Her fingers fumbled with the latch of her seatbelt. “Taevas? Taevas, please— I’m trying—”

Her legs were numb when she threw herself out the driver’s seat. Stumbling and immediately soaked to the bone, she could barely draw a breath in through the constriction of her throat as she tore open the passenger door.

Alashiya threw herself into the backseat and crawled on her hands and knees to be beside him. Cupping his ashen face with wet, shaking hands, she frantically searched for a pulse, for a breath, anything at all.

The tiniest flutter of his long lashes was all she got. The hook in her chest pulled hard enough to hurt.

Alashiya slumped against the siding. Bile churned in her empty stomach as she stroked the sweaty hair back from his cheeks and forehead.

“I can feel you leaving me,” she choked out.

“You said you wouldn’t. You promised you’d always chase me.

You promised. You said you’d give me anything I wanted.

You said you’d— you said I’d never be alone again.

You can’t break your promises, argaman mlk. You just can’t.”

She leaned down to press her lips to his cool forehead. A distant rumble of thunder rolled over them like the tolling of a funeral bell.

Whispering into his skin, she asked, “How can I argue with you if you’re dead? How can you smother me in bed if you leave me now? How can you boss me around if you abandon me here?”

Bring him home.

Alashiya’s shoulders shook with a sob. “I can’t. He won’t make it.”

Shiya, the grove called, as sharp and immediate as a lightning bolt through her mind. Kubaba’s voice was the crack of a sturdy branch in the wind. Bring him to us.

For a moment, all she heard was the drumming of rain on the SUV’s roof and her own ragged breathing.

“We’re the stuff of life,” she whispered, repeating words spoken over generations. “We carry Blight’s gift. We guard it and give it to others.”

Alashiya’s gaze slid over to the floor of the backseat, where the bag Taevas had packed had been tossed haphazardly just before she figured out how to use the damn silly key fob to start the vehicle. The hook in her chest became an unbearable, tearing thing.

She’d seen the glint of her sewing shears in the depths of the bag when she pulled out the robe. A wild, awful sort of hope grew alongside the pain in her chest.

There was no telling that it’d work, and there was so very much wrong with what she planned to do, but Alashiya didn’t have a choice. If the ghosts of her grove were wrong, then at least she’d know she tried everything.

Swiping her eyes with her sleeve, she put all thoughts except the need to save him out of her mind and leaned over to grab the bag. Her hand didn’t shake when she closed her fingers around the cool metal of her shears. A heavy sort of calm settled over her.

As gently as she could, Alashiya rearranged his arm so his right hand lay against her thigh. It rested there, limp, his claw-tipped fingers half-curled like he reached for her even now.

“I’m sorry,” she said, voice stronger than it was before. “I’m sorry that I’m taking this choice from you. I’m sorry if you wake up tomorrow and hate me. I’m sorry that I don’t care. I can’t let you die.”

Taking the shears into her left hand, she spread the blades and pressed it into the center of her palm.

Speaking loudly now, as if he might hear her better if she raised her voice, she vowed, “I swear to carry you. I swear to honor you. I swear to provide for you. I swear to warm you when the night is cold and find you when the days are dark. I swear to love you now and in the hyphae, long after Grim has returned what her father gave us.”

She always thought she’d feel it, that she’d flinch beneath the shield of her veil as the cool blade sliced her skin. But she didn’t. She felt nothing — no pain, no fear, no hesitation. Blood pooled in her hand and ran down her wrist to stain her cuffs as she placed the blade against Taevas’s palm.

“I won’t ask you to say the words back to me,” she whispered. “Just live. That’s all I need.”

Cutting him was harder than cutting herself, but she did it. One quick, shallow cut across his palm. His skin was tougher than hers, and yet it gave way under the sharp blade of her shears.

Licking her dry lips, Alashiya sent up one last prayer before she sealed their hands together.

There was no witness to bind them tightly, ensuring their blood mixed, so she had to do it herself.

Alashiya bound them with the gold-embroidered sash of his robe, clumsily and without ceremony, as she pressed down hard, pinning his limp hand against her thigh.

There was no cheer from friends and family.

There was no levity, no relief, no thrill over what the future held.

There was only stillness. The thump of her pulse in her ears and in her hand. The nearly inaudible rasp of Taevas’s shallow, watery breaths.

A tear, pulled from somewhere deeper than the well of her grief, slid down her cheek. “Please. Please stay.”

Thunder rolled overhead again. It was loud enough to shake the SUV. Wind howled through the open passenger door and whipped heavy raindrops inside. Alashiya caught the flash of lightning through her closed eyelids.

She held herself there for so long that she lost all sense of time.

She’d never done this before, but she thought she’d know if it worked.

He’d be there, his essence woven into the hyphae and twined with her own.

But how long would that take? She’d always thought it was immediate.

Was it different for someone who wasn’t a nymph? Was he just too weak?

Did I do it wrong?