by J M D Reid
“I know that your wife is dying! She’s scared and alone. She just wants you!” Something ugly and hurt twisted Vel’s face. His eyes beaded with tears. “She only wants you. Even now. Not me. You! So why aren’t you with her? Why are you up here crying like a Storming child?”
“Because . . .” Ary’s mouth went dry, his throat tight, squeezing off his words. “I . . . I . . . can’t watch her . . . die.” Saying the words broke something inside of him. His shoulders sagged. “I watched Srias die. I was lying beside her. I was so sick I couldn’t move. She was coughing and choking. I just wanted to hold her hand. I had this stupid idea that if I did, I’d save her. But I was so weak.” His lower lip quivered. More tears fell down his cheeks. “I had the choking plague, too. I could barely breathe. Every inhalation hurt. But I kept trying and trying to reach her. To move the few fingerwidths to her. Only it was too late.” Grief shook his entire body. He sniffed back snot. “When I grabbed Srias’s hand, she was already dead. Her hand grew cold in mine. I couldn’t save her! And I can’t save Chaylene!”
Vel seized his shoulders. “So what’s stopping you from grabbing Chaylene’s hand? From giving her that comfort? That’s all Srias wanted. This time, you’re not dying. You’re not weak. You have the strength to march down there and hold Chaylene’s hand.” Vel gave a bitter laugh. “I tried to win her from you, but she was faithful. Riasruo, I tried. I tried so hard. Even now, even as she’s dying, it’s not me that she wants by her side.” Emotion clenched his face. “She doesn’t deserve to die alone, Ary.”
“I’m scared,” Ary whispered.
“Me, too. I’ve never been more terrified in my life. But if you really love her, Ary, then you need to be with her.”
Ary swallowed. He stared at Vel for a moment. It was almost like they were friends again sitting on the edge of Vesche, fishing poles in hands. Vel’s words rattled through the exhausted fog wreathing Ary’s frazzled mind. His fists clenched. Vel’s right . . . I waited until it was too late with Ma. I can’t let Chaylene die alone. She doesn’t deserve that. I told her . . . I told her I’d follow her anywhere.
Ary stood. The fatigue seemed to melt away as he left the menagerie. Vel sobbed behind him. Ary hardly heard, his mind focused on his mission. He could be strong for her. After . . . After, he could be weak.
She deserved to be loved to the end.
He marched down the stairs into the hold. He gazed through the cramped lower hold, wan light from lanterns illuminating the dying. His wife lay trembling, her hand still reaching out for him. He reached her side.
“. . .Ary . . .” Chaylene’s lips twitched when he took her hand.
“I’m here.” He knelt beside her and kissed her knuckles. “I’m here now. I love you.”
“I . . . love . . . you . . .” she whispered. Her eyes closed. Her breath wheezed out as her body relaxed. Went still. Realization struck him. She had held on for him to say those words, to be there and hold her hand. And now . . . she surrendered. Her body shook as she struggled to draw breath.
Couldn’t.
He’d waited too long. Just like with his ma.
“NO!” Pain exploded from his lips. He crushed her hand. “Please don’t go! I can’t lose you, Chaylene!” Fire burned inside Ary, the flames of love blazed. They roared and crackled in him. He tried to give them to her, tried to share his passion with her. But there was a barrier, a wall, as thin as linen as hard as granite. “Please, Chaylene! I love you. I’m so sorry I wasn’t by your side through all of this. I was scared. I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t want to fail you like I did Srias. Please, please, don’t die, Chaylene. You have to keep breathing. Please, Riasruo, save her! DON’T LET HER DIE!”
A feverish wave of passion burned through him. His vision blurred as he swayed. The heat buffeted him with fiery winds. Chaylene’s fingers relaxed in his hands. Her face slackened. Her open eyes grew distant.
“NO! You can’t leave me. I need you, Lena. I’m so scared without you. Stay with me! Please, Riasruo! Let her stay with me!”
His soul became a bonfire. The heat suffused his body. It filled him to his limits. Sweat broke out across his skin. Tears sizzled as they ran down his cheeks. All the passion had to go somewhere. He couldn’t hold it in.
“Riasruo, please!”
He poured it into Chaylene.
The fire raged against the cold barrier, thin as paper but growing thicker with every heartbeat. He dumped all his heat against it, fed it vital fuel. The flames burned hotter. The barrier smoked and crisped, blackening at the corners. It withered beneath his passion. The fire consumed it, reducing it to ash and surging into her body. His love burned through her veins. Her body spasmed. She sucked in a deep breath as her hammock swung. She exhaled in a gargling wheeze.
Her gray eyes shot open.
“Ary!” she gasped, gaze focusing on him.
The pallor in her face faded. Ary trembled, shaking, witnessing the swelling lessen in her throat. He squeezed hard and fed the fire he’d ignited in her. He poured more and more fuel, whale oil to feed the wick of her life. A shiver ran through him. Goose pimples broke out across his arms. Winter’s chill gripped him.
He did not relent.
She breathed in over and over, her eyes wide. The hoarse rasp vanished. No congestion remained. No swelling squeezed her throat at all. Her hand clutched his as he spread the heat through her, controlling it.
Joy exploded through his heart. I’m really not cursed.
A smile crossed Chaylene’s lips. “You healed me.”
“I did,” he said, unable to stop his grin spreading across his cheeks. “Theisseg blessed me.”
Her arms snaked around his neck. She pulled him close and kissed him, her lips hot with his healing fires.
Part Three
Blessed
I tell you all this, my gentle daughter, so that you can be prepared to rule once I pass. Someone must know the truth of my actions. Must understand the depths of my decision. It must never be forgotten. So I pen this book with all the knowledge I have gained through hardship and loss, because one day, my daughter, all that I have wrought may fall into ruin.
—Preamble, The Book of Iiwroa
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Theisseg blessed me.”
Ary’s words hardly registered to Vel as he witnessed Chaylene moving. He’d just stepped into the hold after regaining control of his emotions, his cheeks still tight with dried tears, and found her healed. He gaped as she kissed Ary with such passion, arms locked about his neck. For once, neither jealousy nor disgusted afflicted Vel as he witnessed their affection. Joy bubbled through him.
She lived!
“Chaylene?” Vel gasped.
Chaylene broke the kiss, a big smile on her clear face. The swelling had vanished around her neck. And while her face was wan and weak, she had a healthy vibrancy glowing about her. Vel shook his head at the miraculous recovery.
I didn’t kill her. He gripped a support beam. Thank you, Riasruo, for shining your feathered mercy upon her.
“Sh-she’s well,” Vel said.
Ary’s head whipped around. A look was on his face, emotions stretched between awe and shock. He looked almost like that boy Vel he used to play with, bursting with all that eagerness to ditch school and race through grass fields.
“Vel—” Ary started to say when an audible rumble came from Chaylene’s stomach, the empty, gnawing growl of a belly deprived too long from food. It reached Vel’s ears over the wheezing breaths of the those ill.
Ary glanced at the others, his expression darkening. An equally starving snarl came from Ary’s belly. His free hand rubbed at his right wrist, pushing up his shirt sleeve to expose skin dotted with goose pimples. Vel noticed a longing in Ary’s eyes as he gazed at the sick.
Then his gaze snapped up to Vel. “She needs food, Vel,” Ary said. “Can you go get it?”
Vel realized Ary was trying to get rid of him. Ary turned back to Chaylene. Vel understood. He wasn’t wanted here.
Chaylene had recovered, and Ary wanted to speak to her without him hanging around.
“For both us, Vel,” Chaylene said, her voice soft but strong.
Their dismissal didn’t sting Vel. He didn’t see how anything could deflect the warm joy billowing through him. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Vel raced back upstairs to the upper hold and the galley. The fish stew bubbled on the stove. Aychene had taken over the galley. She couldn’t handle going below deck and dealing with the sick. So she’d declared, “I’ll keep the ship fed.”
Aychene bolted up from the galley floor. “What’s going on?” she asked, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Did someone die?”
“Chaylene’s recovered!” Vel beamed at her as he ladled two bowls of stew.
“Riasruo’s merciful light,” she muttered. “I thought she looked real bad this afternoon.”
Vel nodded. “I was sure she was about to die and now she seems fine. I . . .” His words trailed off, his forehead furrowing. How did she recover so fast? She was barely breathing when we carried Sriechen’s body. How could she get better in a quarter hour?
Vel’s thoughts churned through his aching mind as he hurried back down into the lower hold almost in a daze, clutching two bowls of stew. Vel was positive Chaylene had hovered at the cusp of death, clinging to life. And now . . . Did Ary somehow heal her? Vel blinked at that thought. It was impossible. Ary can’t heal anyone. It has to be a miracle, but . . .
“Theisseg blessed me.” Those words Ary spoke sharpened into focus in Vel’s mind.
He froze, stew dripping from the ladle into the second bowl. His forehead furrowed. He mouthed the words, his thoughts reeling. He couldn’t have heard Ary correctly. Why would he say that to Chaylene?
I must have misheard him, Vel thought. Who would want Theisseg’s Blessing besides Stormriders and . . .?
Stormtouched . . .
“Vel?” Aychene said. She touched his arm.
He gave a start. Stew splattered across her stained blouse, soaking into the grimy white.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Y-yeah, just . . . haven’t slept in . . .” Vel couldn’t remember. He shook his head. Ary couldn’t be Stormtouched. The investigator had only found Chone. From the gossip Vel heard, Ary had fought in the thick of the fray. Dozens would have witnessed him being . . .
A chill ran down his spine as he stumbled out of the galley with the two bowls. Ary had stood on the tower when they were kids. Alone, exposed to the Cyclone. Ary was missing for hours before he stumbled back home. After the Cyclone attacked Vesche, Ary’s crazy ma had accused him of being tainted. “Theisseg cursed him,” Ionie would always shriek. “That’s why my little Srias and my husband are dead.”
She was right, Vel realized. He was touched. And he thinks it’s a Blessing because . . .
“. . .heal the others . . .” Chaylene’s whispered voice snapped Vel out of his daze. He blinked, realizing he was in the lower hold. Chaylene and Ary’s heads snapped apart, glancing at him like he’d startled a pair of lovers exchanging kisses.
Should I have given them more time? Vel wondered.
Chaylene grinned at him. “Thank you, Vel.”
“Sure,” Vel said, crossing to them and handing her the bowl. Her voice isn’t even hoarse. Did Ary . . . heal her? With . . . Theisseg’s Blessings?
“Yes, thank you,” Ary said, something genuine in his voice. “For the . . . thank you.”
Vel nodded and swallowed past the tightness in his throat.
Ary sat down on the end of Chaylene’s hammock as he took the bowls from Vel, shifting one over to Chaylene. Ary gazed out at the other sick as he devoured the stew with mighty bites, a considering look in his eyes.
Is he going to heal the others? thought Vel. He felt tossed like a ball of kelp in a tempest, thrown to and fro. He’d heard rumors that Theisseg gave out her own Blessings. How else could heathen Agerzaks gallop across the sky, or the Stormriders animate thunderclouds into mounts?
Why shouldn’t they be able heal?
A certainty fell upon Vel. A week ago, before he’d accidentally infected Chaylene, he’d have turned Ary in at the merest hint of Theisseg’s touch. But now . . .
Ary had saved Chaylene.
I’ll keep your secret, Ary, Vel promised as he withdrew from the hold and give Ary the privacy to use Theisseg’s Blessing.
*
Hope surged through Ary. It pounded through his veins as he rose from Chaylene’s hammock, his stomach full of the warm stew, a resolve animating his limbs. His wife, though sweat-stained and disheveled, lived. He had healed her. Theisseg, not Riasruo, had gifted him the Blessing to cure his wife.
He’d saved one life, but he could do more.
The heat swelled in him, feeding off the stew filling his belly. Wheezing breaths and barking coughs echoed through the Dauntless’s hold. He had more fire to share. He would save them all. No more would die. He wouldn’t pitch another shipmate into the Storm’s mercy. He surveyed the dying and spotted a large bulk two rows away, arm fallen limp off his hammock, face mutilated by a Stormrider’s sabre.
Guts.
Ary marched to his friend. He passed Lieutenant-Captain Chemy’s trembling hammock and piteous gasps to reach the big marine. Ary knelt by Guts’s side. The big marine’s overripe throat had swallowed some of his jawline. Ary didn’t say a word. He just clutched his friend’s dangling hand. He manipulated his heat and poured it into Guts’s body. He felt no barrier at all like with Chaylene. His Blessing flowed into his friend. As it did, he became aware of the disease ravaging through the marine’s system. He felt the sickness nesting in various glands and organs.
He consumed the vermin.
His jaw clenched. His teeth ground together as he worked. The swelling in Guts’s throat lessened. His jawline appeared. Color flushed his cheeks. His wheezing eased. Ary slowed his healing.
“That’s it,” Ary said. “Just breathe, Guts. Suck in that air. You’re going to be fine.”
Guts answered with a crushing grip.
Chaylene, wrapped up in her blanket, appeared at Ary’s shoulder. She set a heavy bucket down, sloshing with water, and knelt beside him. She dipped a washcloth into the water and brought it dripping to Guts’s cracked lips. Crystal splashed into his mouth.
“He’ll be thirsty,” Chaylene said. “It dries you out.”
“Thanks.” Ary itched to apologize again. He’d waited so long to heal her. To be with her. “How are you feeling?”
“Still starving,” she said and gave him a wan smile. “I still can’t believe you can heal others. She gave you this.”
Ary glanced around the hold. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
Chaylene nodded her head in agreement as she wrung out more water to moisten Guts’s lips. He let out a groan. His hammock shifted. His breathing sounded normal, the swelling in his throat half-gone. Ary sensed the poison retreating in him, Guts’s own natural fire burning stronger now, boosted by Ary’s.
He released his friend’s hand and stood. He rubbed at his goose-pimpled arms. A chill descended upon the hold. Winter marched ever closer. He glanced around, wondering who he should heal next.
Corporal Huson lay two hammocks down. The tall woman looked so thin, her blanket draped over her bony figure. She whimpered and trembled. Though her eyes were open, they looked glossy and unseeing. He took the two steps to her, seized her hand, and healed.
It was so unlike using Riasruo’s Lightning. This didn’t harm. Theisseg, the Dark Goddess, Blessed her followers with life instead of death. It had to mean something. Iiwroa betrayed Theisseg. She must have covered up the truth, Ary thought. About what Riasruo is. The Church must be lying to everyone, claiming Riasruo loves us.
She doesn’t love me. Theisseg touched me, and that’s enough to condemn my life. Flashes of the assassin’s smoky form as he fought Chaylene flickered in his mind. The life of my wife!
Corporal Huson whimpered in pain, her
voice less throaty. “Too . . . hard . . .”
“What?” Ary asked.
“My hand . . .” The corporal’s eyes met Ary’s, focused now. “Too hard . . . Crushing . . .”
Ary released her hand. The heat stopped flowing as his cheeks flushed. “Sorry. I was . . . I was thinking about something.”
“You’re . . . intense . . . Sergeant.” A brief smile flitted across her lips. “Good . . . thing . . . in a . . . leader . . . Maybe not so good . . . in a nurse.”
“Probably not,” Chaylene said. She dipped her rag into the water then brought it to the corporal’s lips. “How are you?”
“Feel better,” Corporal Huson. Then she opened her mouth wider. Gentle rain fell upon her lips and tongue. She closed her eyes and let out a sigh when Chaylene had finished. “Thank you. Permission . . . to sleep . . . Sergeant?”
“Granted, Corporal,” Ary answered with all seriousness, fighting off a smile. “You’re ordered to get all the rest you can. Need you fit for duty.”
“Yes . . . Sergeant.”
The sight of the smirk on Chaylene’s lips tipped the battle into his smile’s favor. It spread across his mouth. He could do this. He could give his heat to his crew. He would save them. No more would perish. He looked around, debating who should be next. Who would the curtain cover next?
The lieutenant-captain sounded horrible.
Decision made, he rushed to the woman’s hammock. His wife lived. So did Guts and Corporal Huson. He flexed his hand as his vitality gathered there. He brimmed with it. Enough to drive back the cursed poison afflicting his shipmates.
I’ll save them all, he thought as he grabbed the lieutenant-captain’s hand. He gripped it tight, letting the heat flow out of him, propelled by his . . .
The heat didn’t flow. It crashed into a barrier stronger than the one he’d felt within Chaylene.
He gripped a cool hand.
Ary squeezed the officer’s hand tighter, confusion gusting away his confidence. He’d felt this before. Srias’s hand. “No,” Ary gasped, reeling from shock. “No, no, you can’t be dead.” He peered at the woman. “You were alive a quarter hour ago. I heard you breathing, Lieutenant-Captain.”
