He swam for a minute before he saw white wings fanned across the water, and the fair maiden, his Eilee, lying across them, her arms spread to her side as she lay limp.
He hurried to her, wrapped his arms around her, and assisted her to shore.
“Come on,” he said, spitting out water that filled his mouth. “We’re almost there.”
Her eyelids fluttered as they came to the shore.
When he felt the ground beneath his feet again, he lifted and carried her until they collapsed in the shallowest part of the water.
She lay, her wings stretched out behind her, her hair drenched, looking weak, defeated.
A patch of blood, beneath her C-section stain covered her hip and spewed into the river.
“Shaywren,” she muttered. “She had some success in our tussle.”
He looked back to the mist. He knew it was only a matter of time until the fallens dealt with the monster and came after them.
“I’m not leaving you to be murdered by the border patrol.”
He wrapped his arm around her and forced her to her feet.
She groaned. “No, I can’t! You have to go. If you don’t get out of here fast, they’ll be here, and it will all have been for nothing.”
She glanced around. “Over there,” she said, nodding to a collection of rocks. “Just hide me over there.”
He lifted her again and carried her to her desired destination, lowering her carefully, so as not to cause any more damage to the precious beauty.
She gazed at him, seeming to acknowledge the care he took. Her eyes filled with tears. “It seems,” she said, as he set her along the sandy earth, “it has come time for me to reveal my little secret.”
“Secret?”
“I know of a portal that takes us directly into Renovere. I could have forsaken this adventure and brought you to Vera even faster.”
“Then why did you make us go through all this?”
“Don’t you know?”
She looked at him, her eyes seeming to beg him to understand her reason.
“Because I wanted to have just one last adventure with my love… my ex-love. Because I wanted this, even if it was the last time, to be magical… like the days we used to spend together. That’s silly, isn’t it?”
“That’s insane.”
“How appropriate. Go. Let them take me. I don’t have a reason anymore.”
Treycore wrapped his arms around his Eilee, thinking on all the times they’d had together, on all the beauty they’d seen in their days in Heaven. He held her close, stroking his hand up and down her shoulder.
She trembled in his arms, and as he pulled her back, he saw that she was crying.
She whispered directions to the portal to the city, and told him where Vera’s lair could be found, and then with what little breath she had in her, she said, “I love you, my Trey. I always will.”
She kissed him gently on his lips and lay back. She gripped her feathers and pulled her wing around her like a blanket.
After all they’d been through, it was hard to let her go—nearly as hard as it had been the first time. It was one thing to lose a lover. It was another to lose a friend.
Treycore rose and checked over the rocks. Specks of shadows enlarged as they neared the shore.
It was time to leave.
