The Price of Survival

by Meagan Hurst

  “We’ve been over this,” the Shade sighed. She was surprised he didn’t rise to the Dragon’s tone. While Nivaradros had also been speaking quietly, his tone had been accusing enough Z was shocked Crilyne hadn’t been accused of ending the world as well.

  “I was trying—in my own flawed way—to keep Zimliya around when I attempted to turn her into a Shade. As for the latter, Nivaradros, I have no excuse to offer for my actions. I was exhausted, magically drained, dealing with the loss of so many of the heirs, and dealing with her loss. Which I felt, Dragon, so don’t even attempt to hold your pain over mine. You don’t know what it feels like lose that connection with her. I was also attempting to accept the loss the future power and aid of five of my race, and there are so few of us remaining.

  “I had a lot on my mind. It isn’t an excuse that is acceptable, but there is no excuse that is. I regret my decision, and I am glad you did not give up on her, but I am no longer willing for you to hold that against me. If I wanted Zimliya’s death, she would have one hell of a time preventing me from succeeding. I know her well. I have known her far longer than you have. You claim the title of friend, but she has long been one in my terms. She has trusted me enough to watch her back and watch her sleep. You will not deny me the right to see her now.”

  She heard the Shade inhale sharply. “Besides,” Crilyne added quietly. “She is a constant I have missed in these many months. I do not wish to lose her again. I will do nothing, Dragon. I have come for no other purpose than simply to see her with my own eyes. As you came to me when I found her almost a mortal year ago in her house I come to you now. Let me just see her. I will not—I swear it—harm her.”

  Z closed her eyes again. When two immortals were so busy in their own conversation that they didn’t notice she was awake, while standing in the room she was lying in, she knew better than to get involved. Yet sleep was still being cruel. It pulled at the edges of her mind but fled whenever she attempted to agree with it.

  There were whole days she hated being human and needing sleep. They were the days when her mind and whatever was in charge of her health were apparently having a silent disagreement. She needed to rest—to sleep her five hours—but she couldn’t, and the conversation in the room, sadly, was interesting enough that part of her was fighting to stay awake to hear it.

  “She is different, Shade,” Nivaradros replied heavily, at long last. “She’s skittish, angry, and swinging in her motions from one extreme to another. She hugged me,” the Dragon explained before Crilyne could ask, “and then she almost killed Shevieck when he attempted to hug her. He ran into us in the halls. She’s also already undergone one attempt on her life. I just don’t want anything else upsetting her. She didn’t want to come home.”

  “And where is home?” Crilyne asked the Dragon softly.

  “Wherever she makes it, so long as it is in this world,” Nivaradros answered without hesitation. “As the Rangers are known to say, ‘home is something that is made, not given, borrowed, or imagined.’”

  “You have changed, Warlord. I am surprised you even know of that saying,” Crilyne mused. “Did she sleep well?”

  “No. She woke after about fifteen minutes and either tried to attack me, tried to get out of the bed, or swore at me for several minutes before falling back into a restless sleep and repeating the cycle. She moved constantly, and at the rate her eyes were moving behind their lids, I am surprised she is still sane. Something bothers her, and I cannot yet gain the information from her. She hides it and turns defensive if I attempt to push.”

  Z cringed at the words. She wanted to tell him, but she was human enough that she didn’t want him to laugh.

  She heard Crilyne sigh again. “Then perhaps it is best if I wait outside,” the Shade offered. “You seem to have things in hand here. While I want to see her at some point, I do not want to keep her from sleeping, or stress her out more than she already is. I will be with the Mithane. Please bring her when she has recovered enough to put up with a small crowd.”

  The Shade left then. Z sensed his departure more than she heard it, Crilyne was stealthier than a hunting predator when he wanted to be, and she let out a small breath of relief.

  “I heard that,” the Dragon remarked in a surprisingly even tone. Apparently, he at least had noticed she was no longer sleeping.

  She opened her eyes as his form appeared at the side of the bed. She offered him a smile, but even as it began to emerge she knew it would be more of a grimace than she wanted. “I wasn’t trying to pass it off in silence,” she told him as she yawned. She was irritated, but it was losing to the desire to sleep. The amount of calm she felt was annoying, but this time her brief minute of emotion didn’t wake her up further.

  “No, if you were trying I wouldn’t have known,” the Dragon agreed gravely before sitting down beside her on the bed. “Sleep,” he advised gently as he regarded her with relaxed green eyes. “I will let nothing disturb you.”

  “Nothing has to,” Z replied dryly. “So far I disturb myself enough on my own to make anyone else’s attempt pointless.”

  The Dragon chuckled, but he reached out and cupped her chin in a hand. “What is haunting you?” he wanted to know. “Is it my presence? The room? Arriandie? The world? What is it? It is not—as humans like to say—nothing.”

  Since he had taken away her chosen response, Z sighed. “It’s complicated,” she said instead. “Just let it go. Please, Nivaradros. I don’t feel like having another long-winded conversation already. It’s just different being here now, and I always sleep poorly when I change locations for the first day or so, unless I am unconscious. Do not attempt to make me hit that state,” she added darkly as she saw the thought cross the Dragon’s eyes.

  Seeing Nivaradros was growing as frustrated as she felt, Z sighed again. “Maybe you should go visit the Mithane and Crilyne.”

  “Perhaps, but I am not going to,” was the Dragon’s collected reply.

  The silence was brittle for several minutes before the Dragon exhaled smoke and moved cautiously. “I would prefer that you didn’t make the attempt to stab me,” he told her quietly. She was about to ask him what he meant by that, when it became clear why he had felt it wise to warn her.

  She moved—quickly—away from him when he settled on the far side of the bed. As this was a rather large bed his presence shouldn’t have been a problem, but it was and Z was determined not to attack him.

  “Whatever are you doing?” Z wanted to know as she panicked.

  “Shortening my lifespan from eternal to possibly less than five minutes,” Nivaradros answered steadily. He stayed—thankfully—where he was, on the far side of the bed, and on top of the covers.

  Her hand, however, was under a pillow and on the hilt of a dagger, but Nivaradros’s words caused her to relax a hair and she didn’t pull the dagger free.

  “Stay over there,” she demanded icily.

  “Need I remind you that I have been much closer and neither of us died?”

  “Need I remind you the circumstances that led up to those moments?” Z retorted in a tone that mimicked his. “Stay over there, Nivaradros. You are not helping me right now.”

  Except he was, and she just didn’t want to admit it. Exhaling slowly, she tried to force herself to calm down. It didn’t work, and in the end, she rolled out of the bed—grabbing the towel from earlier—and tried to make it to the door. Tried was the key word.

  The Dragon had her upper arm in a light hold by the time she had taken two steps away from the bed. His eyes were worried, and surprisingly collected. “Z,” he began as he continued to hold her arm. Her free hand was clenched into a fist, but the desire to hit the Dragon was impressively small. “Where are you going?” She didn’t answer, and the Dragon slowly released her arm.

  Nivaradros stepped back slowly and shook his head. “I am worried about you,” he admitted. “You are surprisingly docile, but you seem to be more on edge than I have ever seen you. I would like you to rest. I think
it would help, but if you cannot, then the Mithane has sent word he wishes to see you. I will also add there is clothing delivered by the Shade for you to wear. Apparently Shanii dropped off your packs to the Shade, and he brought them here.”

  The clothing was tempting, but the meeting with the Mithane—and undoubtedly his Council and the Shade—was not. Closing her eyes, Z let her mind run through as many options as she could think of before the desire to leave caused the rest of them to fade away. She just wanted to leave. The world, the races, the magic—she wanted to leave all of it behind.

  Something must have given her away. “I will send your regrets to the Mithane,” Nivaradros said after a lengthy pause. “Try to sleep, Z—Zimliya,” he added quietly. “It will help, I believe, if you stop fighting yourself. You are safe enough here.”

  “And if I told you I wanted to leave for good?” Z asked as her throat tightened.

  “I would ask why,” Nivaradros replied without even the slightest of pauses. “You are lying to yourself if you believe you were never happy here.”

  He left before she could reply, and Z hated herself immediately when she realized she had just successfully chased the Dragon from the room. It was a first, and it made her feel like a monster. Grabbing the delicately created glass vase that was too close for her to resist, Z threw it and the water and flowers it carried at the furthest wall. The noise it made was soothing, and the shards of glass that covered the floor calmed her as well.

  The Dragon did not return to the room. Relieved, Z looked for something else to throw before catching herself. How long had it been since she had thrown things? Items that were not weapons, and thrown not to protect someone, but just because she wanted to throw something. It had to have been since before she had become a Ranger. She hadn’t thrown anything that wasn’t a weapon since then. Sinking to the floor against the nearest wall in anger that was quickly giving way to a detached numb state, Z closed her eyes and let her head hit the wall continuously. It had been a mistake to come back. She shouldn’t have even considered it.

  When the door finally opened hours later, it wasn’t to display a Dragon. Crilyne stood in the outline of the frame for a minute while he surveyed the remains of the vase, and the fact she was still hitting her head against the wall, before he entered the room.

  “Nivaradros thought I might know how to approach this better,” the Shade told her as she met his eyes for a second. “I’m not entirely sure he is correct, but as he wasn’t willing to let me see you earlier, I certainly wasn’t going to give him doubts.”

  The Shade approached her with caution, and then knelt beside her after a careful pause. “You’re not handling Tenia’s demise very well,” he observed critically. “Surely you realized your return would mean facing the actions that occurred before your departure, and that your allies would once more count on you in ways you’ve always tried to avoid. I brought you your clothes,” he added in a lighter tone as he handed her the bundle of black she hadn’t noticed he had been carrying.

  When she didn’t speak, Crilyne sighed and moved to sit on the ground beside her. “Nivaradros is highly concerned. He fears this mood of yours will result in your death. I am fairly certain by the end of the day anyone who has any healing power whatsoever will want to strangle him. The Mithane is currently attempting to help Nivaradros on his search, but the Mithane is a busy Alantaion and he will not be able to contain the Dragon for long. Tenia was not your fault, Zimliya.”

  “I destroyed it,” she answered woodenly. “If I had tried harder—”

  “You have never dwelled on the past before. Let me explain this bluntly: Tenia was doomed. It should have—by all accounts—fallen five or so millenniums ago. It didn’t, and it happened to fall when you were around to prevent the rest of the world from following it. I count that as a success, but that is not the only problem here, Zimliya. I believe I will address one of the others now. The Dragon has already been offered a spot on the Council of his race. He turned it down.”

  The words sounded wrong. “Crilyne, he has sought a position on the Council since he was banned from it,” she said without thinking. But some of the tightness surrounded her heart faded with his words. Had that truly been bothering her? It would have meant the loss of Nivaradros as the ally he was now, and she would have had to dance through Dragon protocol to borrow him. She was certain that wasn’t what had truly worried her, but she couldn’t pin down what was her fear was, and she dismissed it soon after.

  “He has,” Crilyne agreed. “But, Zimliya? He knows if he accepts that position the Dragons will try to control you. He will not let that happen. He may be willing to accept a position on the Council after your death—because now that the offer has been made, it cannot be retracted—but I have my doubts even then. He is too changed, now, to easily fit in with the rest of his race. Veilantras manages it because she was never any different from what she is now, but Nivaradros? He is not the Dragon he was. Oh, he will still be dangerous, but I do not think he will ever return to fighting for the insignificant reasons he once did.”

  “He seeks power,” Z commented sullenly.

  “He is a Dragon. If he didn’t I would be very, very suspicious, and doubtful of his sanity.” Crilyne’s lips twitched into a half smile. “But I did not come to speak to you of Nivaradros’s ambitions,” the Shade remarked softly. “I came to speak to you about you and what you feel you are seeking, missing, or fleeing. Zimliya, what is it?”

  “I didn’t have to be anyone there,” Z told the Shade angrily. “I could have been a beggar on the street if I had wanted to. Here? Here, Crilyne, I am in a position of power. A position I never wanted—a position I was put in at nine!”

  “What were you there?” Crilyne asked.

  “A form of a guard, but not really. Oh, you wouldn’t understand unless I explained it in depth, and I am not going to. But, yes, I was still seeing some sort of action on occasion, though the worst of it wasn’t something they considered normal. And it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t here. No one was asking me to make the final call, to fix the treaty, to arrange the treaty, to referee a dispute that was either centuries—or millenniums old—or to end it. I had no responsibilities, Crilyne, and I liked that. I was happy with everything there.”

  “You returned,” the Shade said in a neutral tone.

  “Yes, damn it, because I am an idiot. I missed Nivaradros. I missed the Mithane. Hells, I even missed you, and that takes some effort given how we left things off. I missed the Rangers,” she continued, “and the ability to speak with them whenever I wanted to. Oh, I could have spoken with them were I was, but I didn’t think it was safe, and after a while the distance was nicer.” Her eyes closed. “I came back because I felt I had to,” she whispered, “and now I wonder if I can make it.”

  “You’re burnt out, as the humans say,” Crilyne mused thoughtfully. “I wish I could help, but this is your battle.” There was a brief pause before she felt Crilyne’s hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes at the contact but didn’t react further. “I will either amuse or annoy you with this, but I feel you should really lean towards the Dragon on this one. He’s not about to let anything—and I mean anything—harm you. We place you in power because you are a Ranger—the definition of one—and we know the power you hold you respect at a level we could not. We trust you.

  “Power is safe in the hands of very, very few who hold it. You are the safest we could ever ask to have it.” He held her eyes. “Please stay,” he added softly, clearly seeing the desire to flee she assumed was in her eyes. “Midestol is preparing for war—now or in the future I cannot say—and you know all of us cannot stand for more than five minutes on the same patch of ground without you. We stand together only because of you.”

  Z smiled slightly and inclined her head in agreement. “I’m going to have to argue the time frame though. The immortals can barely make it to two,” she countered, but she began to relax again. “What if I fail?” she whispered.

  “T
hen you fail. At this point you have accomplished more than any one of the rest of us ever could,” Crilyne pointed out. “Start looking at your successes before trying to blame things that have nothing to do with you upon yourself. It is a very annoying human habit.”

  “I’m human,” Z replied coolly.

  “So you are. Try not to rub it in,” the Shade teased. “Zimliya?” he pressed when she remained silent for ten minutes.

  “I will speak with the Dragon,” she sighed.

  “And then?”

  “I am going to bed,” she snapped. “After that, I don’t care.”

  “Testy, are we?” Crilyne murmured. “Alright. I will let the Mithane know you will see him tomorrow.” The Shade stood slowly, and she heard him head to the door. “Zimliya?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know if this will make things better or worse, but I spoke to Midestol while you were gone,” the Shade said slowly.

  “You. Did. What?!” She closed her eyes as fear swirled within her.

  He ignored the question and the outrage in her tone. “I asked him about his daughter, and his granddaughter. He was upset by the questions I asked, but he did answer them.” She didn’t reply, and the Shade took her silence as permission to continue. “I asked him, Zimliya, if he knew the name you had been given.”

  She forgot how to breathe. She would have never expected Crilyne to approach the Dark Mage with such a question. “What did he say?” she whispered in horror. Her eyes were still closed.

  “Your name, Zimliya, is Ksiria,” the Shade told her gently. “Which means—”

  “Fire,” Z interrupted softly with a smile. “It means fire in the formal version of Tenia’s original language.” Her smile was bitter, but faintly amused. “Which is what Zimliya means,” she whispered, “in the Ranger’s language.”