CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Alistair screams. It’s such a raw and haunting sound that it feels as if someone is raking claws of ice down my spine.
Above us, Lyra’s legs buckle as the massive weight of the ice wall lands on her back. A roar of pain and desperation rips from her throat, and her entire body shakes as she forces herself upwards again so that we won’t get crushed underneath her.
“Lyra!” Alistair screams again, his voice breaking.
Tilting her right side downwards, she shoves up with her left shoulder and hip.
The ice wall slides to the right.
A boom echoes across the mountainside as it hits the stones. The impact makes the ice shatter, and blocks of it roll across the ground. I yank desperately against the boulders that keep my leg trapped, but it’s hopeless, so I just throw my arms over my head to protect myself against the chunks of ice that tumble down the sloping mountainside. Pain pulses through me when some of them roll right over me, burying me further, but now they’re at least small enough in size that they don’t cause any life-threatening injuries.
The moment the ice wall hits the ground, Lyra shifts into a human.
Black smoke rolls over the mountainside, obscuring my view. I push at the rubble I’m now buried under, trying to claw my way out of it. But my leg is still trapped.
“LYRA!” Alistair suddenly screams in a voice that rips the air from my lungs.
I snap my gaze back to the space where the middle of Lyra’s dragon body used to be. For a moment, all I can see is smoke. Then a strong wind blows it clear, and my heart just… stops.
Lyra is lying on her back on the stone ground. Her eyes are glassy with pain, and blood sprays into the air and drips down her chin when she tries to draw a breath.
Chunks of ice roll down the mountainside as Alistair shoves aside the blocks that were burying him. Pure terror pulses across his entire face as he staggers to his feet and runs towards Lyra.
Grabbing my leg with both hands, I once more try to yank it out from the stones that it’s wedged between, but it’s impossible. A short distance from me, a pile of rubble is moving as Orion no doubt tries to get the stone and ice chunks off him and Isera.
Alistair throws himself down on his knees next to Lyra, and he takes her hand with such heartbreaking gentleness that I almost sob. Her eyes flutter closed.
“Lyra,” Alistair yells. “Open your eyes.”
She drags in a wheezing breath and then coughs more blood onto her chin. But a soft smile blows across her lips when her orange eyes focus on Alistair.
“You… made it,” she presses out. Then she draws in a strangled breath and coughs again. “I… don’t think… I will.”
“Yes, you will! Take my magic! It will heal you.”
“Don’t know… how.”
My heart clenches. Of course. Only the Icehearts and the Commander of the Dread Legion gets a fae life slave. None of theother dragon shifters know the technique to take our magic for themselves.
Alistair whips his head towards me and screams, “Selena! How do I give her my magic to heal her?”
Both times that Draven was healed by my magic, when I wasn’t wearing an iron collar, it involved me giving it to him freely. The first time, in the pocket reality during the Great Games, I just did it without thinking. I offered my magic, he took it, and I gave it. Pure instinct in the heat of battle. No explanation behind it. If that had been the only time I did it, I would have no idea how to explain to Alistair what to do. But thankfully, the second time I healed Draven, which was in the cave after the battle above Rin’s floating isles, I actually asked him what I’m supposed to do when I give him my magic. And now, I’m incredibly grateful that I did.
After quickly recalling what Draven told me back then, I yell, “You’re supposed to open the gates to your flow of magic and release your grip on it, and then you just breathe the magic into her!”
Panic and confusion crackle across his whole face, but he leans down over Lyra and presses his lips to hers. I desperately try to pull my leg out from the rubble again, but it still doesn’t budge.
Alistair snaps his head up and locks eyes full of dread on me. “It’s not working!”
On the ground, Lyra coughs again. Blood slides down from the sides of her mouth, and her chest shakes when she tries to breathe.
“I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do!” Alistair continues screaming at me.
“That’s not… what I wanted… our first kiss… to be…” Lyra presses out, and then tries to laugh. But it just turns into a severe coughing fit that sends a cloud of blood spraying from her mouth.
“Visualize a door between your chest and your throat that you open,” I call to Alistair. “And then visualize releasing the grip on your magic like unclenching a hand.”
