by JD Monroe
Her body went cold, and the lights went out.
Falling.
Crashing.
When she crashed into the ground, the world exploded around her. She was in the same bleached gray landscape she had seen before. There was no pain on impact, but it sent a shock through her as the ground formed from nothingness around her, spreading rapidly like ripples through the darkness.
She turned in place slowly for a moment, looking for any sign of life. The sun blazed white-hot in the sky above, with the shimmer of a mirage on the horizon in all directions.
“Tarek, where are you?” she shouted. “Tarek!”
Her voice didn’t even echo. It was as flat and dead as the dry gray expanse.
“Just show me,” she said. “I know you’re here.” Time inched by as she waited for any sign of him. It was eerily silent here. She’d lived in Nevada for most of her life and had spent her fair share of time in the desert. Even in the seemingly empty expanse, there was noise; the occasional whistle and shush of wind, the mournful call of a distant crow, and the gritty crunch of rocks and sand underfoot.
Here there was nothing. Not even the sound of her own breathing or the thump of her heart. It was dead silent.
“Tarek!” she called again. She pictured him in her mind, and was surprised to realize that she imagined both forms interposed. She saw his tall, muscular human form, the golden skin smooth and gleaming in the harsh light. In the same space, flickering around him, was the huge dragon form, blue scales glittering like gems. They were both him, both there in her mind.
She had lost track of how many times she called his name when she heard the faintest whisper, like a breeze caressing her ear. Turning toward the source of the sound, she started walking. It could have been inches or miles that she walked before she saw the figure, thrown into silhouette by the blazing light.
A male figure knelt on the ground with his hands pressed to his face. With his body bent and shoulders hunched, he looked so small. She hurried toward him, but physics was a funny thing here. Long strides barely moved her any closer, as if the ground was pushing her back as much as she pushed forward. Gabrielle fixed her eyes on the hunched man and gritted her teeth. I will get to him, she thought. Whatever this is, you’re not keeping me away.
Like moving through deep snow, she inched toward him. All the while, there was a resistance, like water currents pushing her away, pulling her in any direction but toward him. As she approached, the whispering grew louder, though she didn’t recognize any of the words. Even without understanding the words, she understood the tone; it was angry and intimidating, occasionally shouting in her ear as if to scare her away. Though it was unsettling, she ignored it. She wasn’t going to leave him behind because of some creepy disembodied voices.
When she was close enough to see his face, she saw what had his attention. A woman in a regal white dress lay on the ground. Dark hair streamed around her face, but her eyes were wide and dim, staring sightlessly at the harsh gray sky. The white silk was stained with dirt and blood. Crimson soaked through the fabric and spread in a puddle around Tarek.
Tarek stared down at her, his lips moving silently.
“Tarek?” she asked.
He didn’t look up.
The woman looked familiar, though Gabby knew she’d never seen her.
She knelt next to the woman, putting herself on Tarek’s eye level. “Tarek, do you hear me?”
He was still staring down at her. His hands were bloody, gloved in red up to the elbow. He wore the ceremonial Adamant Guard uniform, but the silver emblem on the chest was stained in red.
Gabby hesitated, then reached out to take one of his bloodied hands. “Tarek, it’s me. I’m here to help you.”
He jerked his hands away from her, still not looking up to meet her eyes. Anguish, hot and heavy washed over her as he ignored her. Was he so far gone that he didn’t know her? Or worse…that he didn’t want her here?
“Tarek, who is she?” she asked.
“I failed her,” he said, speaking aloud for the first time since she had arrived. His voice was unusually small and timid.
“Who?”
“The princess,” he said.
Gabrielle looked down at her. The woman was not Ashariah, but the resemblance was certainly there. Her older sister, then? “Is this the princess?”
“I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to protect them. And they all fell. All of them. Except for me.”
Gabby leaned in and gently touched his arm. He shuddered away from her touch, but she reached out anyway with grim determination to touch his face. “Show me.”
With her hand touching his cheek, the vision came in rapid bursts. There was Tarek, walking in the gardens with the older princess in a pristine white dress. Then he was soaring through the sky, at the head of a formation with a small, purple-scaled dragon at its center. Still in dragon form, the princess and her retinue rested in a sunny grove. Tarek watched from the bank of a narrow stream while several others circled the sky above. The princess drank her fill and splashed water down her slender neck to cool herself. There was a clipped cry of warning from above as the ambush came.
They took to the skies, Tarek shielding the princess with his body. Gabby felt the intense heat and pressure of his fear, his determination as he flew away with her in his shielding cover. Then the fire came, melting his wing away from his body like candle wax and piercing through him like a spear. The princess screamed, and he watched in horror as the glittering purple gem fell from the sky with useless, burnt wings. Tarek flew after her, but their attackers surrounded him, slashing and tearing with tooth and claw. The last thing he saw before darkness took him was the princess losing her dragon form and shifting back into a human body. Then he woke weeks later in the same healer’s ward in which his body now lay, looking around frantically for the princess. A grim faced healer in gray linen shaking her head. And the heavy weight of guilt and shame for his failure. The queen’s rage as she mourned her daughter. And eventually, his exile, flying away from his home to a position where he could not fail so spectacularly again.
As the city of Farath receded behind him, the vision seemed to cycle. Suddenly, he was flying through the air with the purple dragon behind him again. He was reliving it, over and over.
“Enough,” Gabby murmured. She took his hands. He tried to pull away again, but she held him fast. “Is this what holds you here?”
He finally raised his head to look at her. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he had been weeping for days. From one eye, a single bloody tear traced down his cheek. “I failed her. I failed all of them. I failed you.”
“You didn’t fail me,” Gabby said. She squeezed his hands. “I’m here.”
“I saw you die, just like the rest,” he said. “Never prepared. Always a second too late. It’s my curse.”
“Tarek, I didn’t die,” she said. “And whatever this was, it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t kill her. Come with me. Let go of this and come back to me. I’m waiting for you.”
He shook his head. “It’s not real.”
“I’m real,” she said. “I’m more real than any of this.” But she could practically see the guilt and shame consuming him, passing over his face like shadows. “Tarek, I don’t know everything about you, but I know about my life. You know I’m a doctor.”
He was silent.
“I work in the emergency room, which means I take care of people who are very badly injured and very sick. We lose a lot of patients. Sometimes they’re just too sick, or we made the wrong call on what was going on. Sometimes we have to take risks, like recommending surgery for someone who’s vulnerable, or giving a medication that can cause complications. Most of the time things work out, but not always. Every time a patient dies, it eats me up. I mourn them like they were my own family, just like you’re mourning for her.”
“Ivralah.”
“Ivralah,” Gabrielle said. “But when I started out, one of my mentors told me that
I had to detach. That didn’t help, because I couldn’t, and I think caring about my patients is part of what makes me good at what I do. That reminds me of you. You cared about her, just like you care about Ashariah.” Gabby shook her head. “What helped me was when another doctor told me this. He said ‘keep your nose to the grindstone. When you get a patient, you ask every question, run every test, and when you think you’ve got it, you gotta trust yourself. And a lot of the time, you win. Sometimes you don’t, and when you get it together, you go back and find out what happened, what went wrong. It usually won’t be you, but sometimes you’ll realize you could have done something better. But as long as every single day you can say I brought everything I had to the table, then you’re gonna be okay. No doctor’s perfect. And neither are you.”
“But it was my duty,” he murmured.
“So if you had died protecting her, would you feel like you’d fulfilled your duty?”
He tilted his head. “Yes.”
“Is that what you want?”
He was silent. “No. And it is my shame.”
“Tarek,” Gabby murmured. She released one hand and rested it on the side of his face. He still didn’t look up at her, but there was a gentle pressure as he leaned into her touch. “I know that you would have traded your life for hers if it was in your power. There are things in this life that happen out of our control, no matter how smart or strong or good we are.”
“But…”
“But you should be different?” Gabby said. She chuckled. “Tarek, come back to me. I know it’s crazy, and it’s all been so fast, but I love you. And I need you here. You haven’t failed me yet, and you won’t fail me in the future. I trust you.”
At the word trust, his head shot up. His warm gaze locked on hers, his mouth hanging open as if he were afraid to speak. Then his eyes closed, and she felt him slip away from her, like sand through her fingers. He disappeared, leaving her alone in that gray wasteland.
“No!” she exclaimed. Thunder rolled, and the stark landscape shattered around her. She squeezed her eyes shut as a nearly unbearable pressured surrounded her.
There was a sudden cool breeze on her face as she was slammed back into her own body. Her head spun as she returned to reality, and found herself draped across the torso of an unconscious man. She shook herself and sat up, bracing herself for balance on the edge of his bed.
Tarek’s eyelashes fluttered, and he slowly opened his eyes. The warm amber gaze was like seeing the sun after an endless streak of rain. He simply stared at her for a long while. He winced as he raised his arm. She couldn’t help herself; she reached out to help him, holding his arm with both hands as he rested his hand on the side of her face. His muscles trembled with the effort. “You do?” he said, his voice hoarse from disuse.
“I do what?”
“Trust me,” he said quietly. She nodded. “And love me?”
“I do,” she said. It wasn’t a question; it was an understanding, a fundamental truth that seemed so obvious that she wondered how it had taken so long. The sky was blue, the sun was warm, and she loved him. “I love you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
After waking, it took nearly a week of lying flat on his back in bed for the worst of his injuries to heal. The healers poured as much of their sleeping brew as they could down his throat, so the time passed in a sort of dreamy haze. It was just as well, considering the few times he was completely lucid, he could barely keep from screaming from the agony of his shattered back and chest. It would not do for Gabrielle to hear him mewling like a baby, so he slept with the image of her face to soothe him, knowing that she was always near.
On the thirteenth day after the ambush on his city, Tarek sat up straight in his bed for the first time. His whole body ached, but it was finally whole. The healers warned him that it might be months before his wings fully healed, but he had already healed much faster than expected. It was not the painfully slow process he had experienced after the death of Princess Ivralah.
With one of healers patiently guiding him, he walked a slow, limping circuit of the healers’ pavilion. His torso was still wrapped in thick white bandages, and the cloying smell of healing ointments overpowered his sense of smell. His legs were shaky as he walked, as much from injury as from disuse for nearly a fortnight. There were another half dozen Kadirai visiting the pavilion at the moment. Two were dressed, allowing the healers to check on their progress. The other four still lay in bed, resting as they recovered.
He was ready to see Gabrielle. She would be pleased to see him up and about, and it would do him more good than she could realize to simply feel her arms around him.
As Tarek and his escort finished their route and turned back toward his cot, a familiar silhouette crossed the threshold, accompanied by a hushed murmur.
The queen’s long shadow stretched across the smooth gray stone, preceding her entrance into the pavilion. “Su’ud redahn,” the healers and nurses murmured as she crossed. The queen nodded to them in turn, but her gaze fell on Tarek, making it clear who she had come for.
Her lips curved into a smile. “It is good to see you out of that bed,” she said. She was dressed plainly, in a dark gray robe and her plainest crown.
“If it pleases you, he should lie back down,” the healer said.
“Of course,” Halmerah said. She waited patiently for the healer to help him sit and lean against a fluffy pillow. Once he was settled, she sat on the wooden stool by the bed. Though her expression was neutral, tension pulled at her pale blue eyes. “How are you feeling?”
“As if I fell from the skies,” he said drily.
Halmerah simply smiled. “I am pleased that you are recovering. Verihn tells me that you should be able to fly again.”
He nodded silently. “How do you fare? If I may speak plainly, you look troubled.”
Her smile faltered. “An unknown enemy attacked my city and my Gate. They nearly killed my daughter. If I were not troubled, I would not be worthy of the crown.” She bowed her head. “I have sought guidance from the Skymother, but my thoughts are much too muddled. Councilor Eszen has been holed up in his office for days, but so far he can only determine that the white dragons are unnatural. They are not born Kadirai, which I could have told him upon first glimpse.” She waved her hand. “I wanted to speak to you about other matters.”
“Of course.”
“Your…friend,” Halmerah said. She used the word far-serahl, which was a bosom companion, a friend of the heart that was more than a platonic relationship. Had Gabrielle told her about them? “Lady Gabrielle.”
Just the mention of her made his heart beat faster. “What of her?”
“You are very fond of her,” the queen said, a statement more than a question. “She is a woman of honor and courage. Would you agree?”
He tilted his head. This was not a turn of conversation he would have expected from the queen. All at once, it felt as if he was drawn into a delicate dance of diplomacy. With his hands neatly folded on the blanket covering his legs, he nodded and said, “I would agree, yes.”
“Very well,” she said, nodding solemnly. “Do you love her?”
The air rushed out of his lungs. His mouth opened and closed silently as he tried to decide what he would say to his queen. His hesitation came from not knowing how to respond; the answer to her question had come so quickly he didn’t even have to think about it. “Yes,” he said. “I know it is not accepted, but—”
“I did not ask about that. I only wished to confirm what I suspected.” She sighed and leaned forward. “I came for another reason, Tarek-ahn. Though I feel your answer to my question has already confirmed what I suspected.”
“What do you wish to ask?”
“Do you wish to return to Adamantine Rise? To stay?”
His jaw dropped. “Why?”
“Why? You belong here.”
“But you sent me away,” he said. “I am happy to serve, but I did not think you wanted me here any longer.”
>
Her eyes creased as she stared at him in disbelief. “Why would you think such a thing?”
The guilt that washed over him was not as strong as it had once been, not since Gabrielle had drawn him out of the darkness and back into her light. But it was still there, a phantom pain from an old scar that ached when the winds changed. “You sent me to the Gate. As far from this place as one could go. Because I failed you.”
Before he could react, the queen leaned over and pressed her hands to either side of his head, drawing him forward to press her warm lips to his forehead. “Tarek-ahn,” she murmured, using the affectionate term for him. “I sent you away because you seemed so haunted here. You healed slowly, and I knew you would hurt yourself trying to prove that you were whole again. I thought overseeing the Gate would give you time to rest and heal. I did not realize it would cause you such pain.”
Something swelled within his chest. He could not raise his eyes to meet her gaze. “Then you have forgiven me?”
She drew away from him, staring into his eyes as her thumb stroked his cheek. “There was nothing to forgive. I saw you lying in this very place, a breath away from death. There was nothing more I could have asked of you.”
The intense pressure in his chest broke suddenly, and a sense of hot relief washed through him, all of his muscles going loose. He managed to keep the tears from springing to his eyes, but his throat clenched from the overwhelming emotion.
“Ashariah would be very pleased if you returned to protect her,” she said. She tilted her head. “And of course, I would be pleased for you to return here.”
In his wildest dreams, he could not have predicted that the queen would have requested his return, granting him in one fell swoop the two things he wanted most. At least, that he had wanted until circumstance brought him into Gabrielle’s path.
