by Rosie Scott
“Ya left the talons in her, love,” Maggie called, worried.
“She's already lost too much blood,” the archer replied, tugging me along in the water. “Removing them could have killed her. Here. I'll lift her up. Be careful, I used alleviate on her to bring us to the surface. She'll be a fraction of her normal weight.”
Azazel hefted me up in the water, and I felt a massive arm wrap around my body from just beneath the wounds of my shoulders.
“She weighs little more than a fly,” Maggie murmured, carrying me up the rope ladder and onto the deck. After laying me out on the hardwood, the engineer added, “Oh dear gods, her arm's nearly gone.”
“I can fix it.” Cerin's voice trembled as I heard him collapse to the deck beside me in a clatter of gear. “As long as there's flesh to build off of, she'll be fine. They didn't get through to her bone.” While he was technically right, time wasn't on his side. I'd lost so much blood that I felt my thoughts dulling and skipping over each other like my brain was giving up.
“Cerin,” Azazel insisted, his voice overpowering the noise of dripping water. I assumed he'd just climbed up from the ocean himself. “You look like you're about to pass out.”
Cerin audibly swallowed. “I feel like I'm going to. This is a deep wound, and I couldn't leech from the damned things when they were flying. I'm low on energy.”
“Uriel!” Azazel yelled over the ocean desperately. “Uriel! Anyone! We need a healer!”
HUUURRRNNNNN!
“Zephyr!” Cyrus shouted. “Where's a damn healer?”
The desperate cries of my friends echoed through my mind as I finally gave into unconsciousness.
Forty
I awoke to the knocking sound of a mortar and pestle. My hair was being brushed back from my face, and I smiled, thinking it to be Nyx. Then I remembered where I was and the recent traumatic events, and I slowly opened my eyes. I found Cerin watching over me, his pale fingers still gliding through a lock of red hair. I was in my bedroll of the sleeping quarters, and it must have been deep in the night. Soldiers were sleeping all around us, and the cabin was mostly dark save for the lanterns along the walls which cast patches of orange light over wood. Maggie slept beside us, facing me like she'd been up until finally succumbing to fatigue. Cyrus was nowhere to be found, and Azazel sat just next to my legs, grinding a mixture of herbs into a powder. Two mugs sat beside him. One was full of water, and the other was empty. A dried mushroom that had been split in half lay over a cloth he usually kept in a bundle, and a few dried leaves sat beside the fungi.
Cerin's hand rubbed lovingly on my arm as he came to realize I was awake. “How do you feel?”
“Exhausted,” I murmured before I stiffened. “And worried that if I look down, part of my arm will be gone.”
Cerin shook his head slowly. “Your arm has been mended. It took a couple of us since the life mages were so low on energy. I had to rely on the energy of the chargers. There was a bit of it kept there since none of the shields seemed to work on those things, so the energy was never taken.”
“Yeah...” I grimaced. “All that work I did on the shields was for nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” Cerin argued. “They caught a few of the harpy's spells. Just not the ones that flew inside the shield. And unless something's changed about my bloodline, I doubt the Icilic can fly.”
I chuckled softly at the jest, before looking to Azazel. The archer picked up what looked like a small, round nut, and held it over the empty mug. He pulled a karambit from his belt, and when the tip of its blade pressed against the brown flesh, the nut oozed a syrupy liquid into the container. When the juice slowed, Azazel squeezed the alchemy ingredient until it collapsed, ensuring every drop was put to use.
“What are you making?” I questioned softly, watching as he discarded the shell and poured the ground powder into the mug next. Azazel's eyes flicked up to me before they went back to his work.
“Your arm may be mended, but between the harpy's teeth, saliva, and the ocean water getting into that wound, you're fighting off a heavy infection,” Azazel murmured, pouring water from the full mug over into the other with the ingredients. Taking a long stirring stick, he tested its consistency before pouring a bit more.
“Cerin can boost my immunity,” I told him.
“And he did,” Azazel replied, “but it's not enough. Life magic can only do so much. And besides, the infection was already settling in by the time we got to you.”
“But you did get to me,” I said, sensing regret from him.
Azazel did not reply. Finally satisfied with the brew's consistency, he pulled the stirring stick out and offered me the mug. “Drink this. And use dull senses on yourself beforehand. Its taste is extremely bitter.”
I did as he asked, using the illusion spell on myself since we had no one else who knew it with us. I then pulled the mug to my lips, drinking the potion. Even through the magic, I could taste a trace of bitterness that was so biting it felt like my tongue was tingling. There was too much of it to drink at once, so I paused halfway through to take a breath. When the potion was finally down, I sighed and handed the mug back to Azazel.
“Thank you.”
The archer did not respond as if distracted. He went about putting the remaining ingredients away in his own satchel and wiping his mortar and pestle clean. The two mugs sat off to the side, though he waited to clean them for now.
“Where is everyone?” I asked next.
“Oh, it's morning,” Cerin replied. “Cyrus stayed up for a while as we healed you, but he finally went to sleep once we convinced him you'd be okay. Slept a couple of hours before he went back on deck. Maggie just fell asleep an hour or so ago after staying up with us most of the night. Everyone else is asleep. Sunrise should come within the hour.”
“How did we fare overall?”
“Well, considering,” Cerin replied. “Lost a handful. You were there for the worst of it. Only lost one more after you were taken. Thankfully Azazel shot that bastard right out of the sky, or else you would have been one of them. I've never felt so helpless, Kai. I couldn't do anything to help. Had nothing I could do from that distance except use enervat, which would have killed you.”
“Then I'm glad you didn't use it,” I murmured. Cerin leaned over me, kissing my forehead. When his shadow lifted back, I found Azazel watching us with the world on his mind.
“Kai,” the archer finally spoke up. “Can I speak with you?”
An ache tugged at my gut. I hoped he was okay. The last thing I needed was for another friend to be unhappy. “Sure, Azazel. Anytime.”
Azazel glanced over at Cerin. “Alone?”
“Oh. Sorry,” Cerin offered, hurrying to stand.
Azazel frowned over at the necromancer. “It's nothing against you, Cerin. I promise.”
Cerin shook his head as he stood beside me. “I trust you, Azazel. I get the need for privacy between friends.” He nodded toward Maggie. “Want me to wake her?”
“No, she is in a deep sleep,” Azazel replied. “I can hear it. She's fine.” He nodded toward Cerin. “Thank you.”
“I'll be on deck,” Cerin promised, before making his way through the sleeping soldiers and up the stairs to the outside.
Azazel and I were left alone, but he didn't seem to want to talk. He looked conflicted while watching his hands as if thinking for the right words.
“Are you okay?” I finally asked him. When he hesitated to answer, I added, “Please don't tell me you're thinking of leaving us. I honestly don't think I could take it right now.”
Azazel finally met my eyes, his gaze soft on my own. “I'm never leaving you again, Kai. It was hard enough to do so in Quellden. I felt like a total asshole taking my anger out on you before leaving you in tears. As I waited for you to pass by into the tunnels, I thought that even if I caught you, you wouldn't have me. I've been left behind for less.”
I reached out to him, but he was too far from me. “Come here,” I finally said, and he
complied, scooting down to sit beside my shoulders as Cerin had. I reached up to rub the side of his arm warmly. “I can only imagine how it would feel to have the past that you do and have to confront it all at once. I know none of your anger was meant for me. And you've been so calm since leaving the underground. I'd like to think that being with us has helped you.”
Azazel nodded, swallowing hard before looking away to avoid my gaze. “It feels like being reborn, Kai. Life above ground is so different than what I was used to that it's jarring. Being on the surface has been therapeutic. Being with you has been therapeutic.”
I frowned. Hearing that meant so much to me, but he was still so conflicted. I continued rubbing his arm since it seemed to calm him. “Then what's wrong?”
Azazel huffed nervously. “I can be awkward when it comes to things like this, so tell me if I'm not making any sense.”
“Okay.”
“You've been through so much lately. After the Battle of Highland Pass, I was shocked you could continue on at all. Your resilience is astonishing to me. We lost Jakan, then Anto, then Nyx, and it wasn't until you broke down on our way back from Welkin that I realized you held all of that negativity inside you. You didn't seem to want to talk much about everything in Welkin, and you told me you loved me then. I didn't say it back. Not because I didn't feel it, but because all of these things are new to me, and I didn't want to risk saying anything that would give people more reason to talk. And then Nyx left us the next morning. It reminds me of when I was left behind in the underground, Kai. I tried so hard to be useful to the others. I wanted to befriend them. Then they all left me.” Azazel paused, looking back at me with a furrowed brow. “And I would never wish that feeling on anyone, so I'm angry with myself for not telling you in Welkin that I do love you. After you went through so much and were let down by Nyx, I only added to that negativity. I finally know what it feels like to have such a connection with someone, but I was too much of a coward to tell you that. You could have died yesterday thinking I'd rejected you.”
Azazel's arm trembled with held back emotion as I rubbed it. My own eyes were teary as his honest words floated through my head. “Azazel, I never felt like you rejected me. I simply thought to say it would make you uncomfortable. The fact that you're still here at all after everything that's happened makes me extremely happy.”
“But you thought I'd want to leave earlier,” Azazel protested.
“People who love me have left before,” I told him. “Nyx and Silas.”
“I'm not going to be like them,” he promised. He took a moment to reach out to the arm that had been mutilated, turning it over softly as if to double-check that the healing had been done properly. I smiled as he did so, since caring for me was second nature to him. “That's another reason I wanted to tell you all this,” he finally said, glancing back over to me. “Everything you've been through, I have experience with. Friendly fire, being left behind, feelings of helplessness. I told you that being with you on the surface has been therapeutic for me. Let being with me be therapeutic for you. Whenever you need to talk, I'm here. You are the best friend I've ever had.” His hand squeezed my arm lovingly. “Let me be yours.”
I swallowed hard, a lump tearing through my esophagus. The hand that rubbed his arm took it, pulling him toward me in a desperate hug. There was no awkwardness left between us now. Azazel held me close to him, and I let myself cry with relief just beside his sensitive ear. His support meant the world to me. With Nyx gone and the future uncertain, the talk with Azazel had been just what I needed.
I kissed him on the cheek before replying, “You are.”
*
My hand held seven cards, and I'd already memorized what they were. I glanced over the cards to Azazel, who also had seven. He took a moment to move their order around, before twisting his lips to the side, thinking.
“Is that your secret?” I teased him, taking a moment to grab a mug of ale that sat beside me on the floor of the sleeping quarters. I smiled at Azazel as I drank from it. Cerin sat between us, watching us play. He'd long ago decided it was more fun to watch Azazel and I than join in since we were both so good at it.
“What?” The archer replied, his black eyes meeting mine from over his hand.
“You move your cards around every time you grab a new one,” I commented. “Is that why you win so often?”
“I move my cards around because I like things to be organized,” Azazel replied, putting one periwinkle finger on the card furthest left to him. “Lowest value.” He pulled the finger to the other side. “Highest value. I win so often,” he went on, laying his hand down on the floor between us and proving his victory, “because you are brash.”
“And that was the last game they ever played,” I lamented playfully, throwing my cards to the floor between us.
Azazel chuckled. “You are my equal, Kai. You won the last round.” He started to pick up the cards to put them back in their respective box.
“Yes, but I didn't win this one. I like winning every time.”
Cerin laughed. “Don't we all?”
“Kai?” Cyrus's voice called down the steps from the deck. “We are approaching Dagmar. You told me to fetch you.”
“I'll be right up!” I yelled back, beginning to stand.
“Wait just a sec before ya clean all that up, love,” Maggie told Azazel. “I'd like to have a turn.”
“Good luck,” I offered her, before leaving my friends to hurry to the deck.
The skies above our navy were a muted, foggy gray. It had been a fortnight since our battle with the harpies, and the frigid cold of Dark Star was clashing with the warmer weather of New Moon. Storms had been more common in the past few days, and the skies warned they were soon going to release their rains. For now, however, there was only a slight, chilly breeze that whistled through my long hair, picking up the body heat of my neck and whisking it off. I reached back and pulled up the thick hood of my royal green cloak to stay warm.
“Look at you, looking all badass,” Cyrus said as I came to stand beside him at the bow.
I laughed at the unexpected comment and peered out at him from beneath the flap of my hood. “Is that how I look?”
Cyrus lifted a finger up to my hood, tugging at it. “I always thought hoods made people look intimidating. And I like intimidating people. Particularly if they're on my side.” He smiled at me.
“That's why you like Azazel so much,” I mused.
Cyrus chuckled. “That's part of it, sure. He's good-looking and talented.”
I glanced over at him with an amused smile. “Sounds like someone is quite taken with him.”
The Sentinel lifted up his eyebrows. “Maybe, but I keep it to myself. I like to remain professional.”
“That might be best,” I said softly. “Azazel is the victim of a culture he has not yet healed from, and even if he does come to terms with it, I don't know his personal preferences.”
Cyrus nodded. “Nyx told me about that a long time ago.”
I frowned. “Nyx?”
Cyrus grimaced with embarrassment. “Yes, she used her wiles on me one night on our way to Narangar. I'm not entirely proud of it, but I'd had a little too much ale. Chatted my ear off afterward. Told me all sorts of things about the underground.” When he caught me shaking my head in humor, he offered, “I don't discriminate.”
“Clearly.” I paused before I laughed. “No wonder you're so curious about the Alderi, Cy. You want to bed them all.”
The Sentinel chuckled. “I have a thing for cool-colored skin, maybe.”
“You're a water mage, after all,” I joked as if that would explain it.
Cyrus pointed one long arm over to the northeast, where the coast of Chairel split into an inlet. On the northern side of the split there were grasslands, and on the southern side were a handful of mountains that were tiny in comparison to the Golden Peaks. I knew that the inlet led to a river that fed the Hydrin Forest between here and Sera. My eyes looked over the land, t
rying to put the view of it in my memories for safe-keeping. This had once been familiar to Theron, and if it was destroyed after our attack of Glacia, I always wanted to remember it like this.
“Dagmar sits just on the other side of those small mountains,” Cyrus told me. “It's a small town, as you know. I told the men to pull our ship as close to the coast as they can so you can see it as we pass. You said one of your former Renegades was from here?”
“Theron Boa,” I replied. “He was from French but survived its destruction. He lived in Dagmar for a while before he went on a quest for vengeance against the orcs who took French over.”
Cyrus nodded. “French was a humble village. Productive, too.”
I looked over at him. “What do you know about French? Usually, people don't know what I'm talking about when I mention it.”
The Sentinel smiled, happy to offer me what he knew. “I was never there, myself, but I knew people who traded with them. French was a human village. They were all poor there and resentful of Sera since they lived so close to the city and could never afford its magical services. Even though Eteri and Chairel were at war at the time, they sent a little boat out from Dagmar to Makani a few centuries ago. I don't know the whole story, but the humans there were desperate for healers since none of them could afford to hire one from Sera. They offered to trade in exchange for a healer. A Vhiri healer was sent to French, and the people there started to export lumber from the Hydrin Forest to Makani.”
“And Eteri did all this under Chairel's nose,” I commented.
“Yes,” Cyrus replied. “But it was of benefit to us. Tilda is as racist against the humans like anyone else, but you know how Eteri has no forests.”
“Did Eteri trade with them until the town was destroyed?”
“No. A caravan of wood from French to Dagmar was discovered by Maylin Sera's men back in the mid-300s. They slaughtered our healers and sunk our trading vessel in Dagmar's harbor. I believe they even heavily fined both towns, but that's just hearsay.”
