He presses his mouth against Lyra’s again. But then he snaps his head back up, and locks eyes with me. “It’s not working!” Fear and panic pulse across his whole face. “I don’t know how tovisualizesomething!”
“Create an image of it in your mind.”
“I don’t know how to create images in my mind!”
“Iron, then! Grab something made of iron! Then you don’t need to visualize.”
He whips his head from side to side. Chunks of stone and blocks of ice and pieces of furniture from the ice palace lay scattered all across the mountainside around us.
“Tell me where!” he screams at me.
My heart breaks when I realize that he doesn’t want to leave Lyra to search blindly himself, because he doesn’t want her to die alone if he can’t find anything.
Pushing myself up as far as I can, I sweep my gaze back and forth over the mess around us, desperately searching for something made of iron.
“I don’t… regret… anything,” Lyra gasps out. Blood bubbles pop on her lips with every word. “Only that we… didn’t meet sooner.”
“You are going to live,” Alistair growls. At her. At the universe. At the gods themselves. Deep agony is written all over his features, and tears stream down his face as he cups her cheeks. “I love you, you crazy dragon shifter. So you are going to live. Do you hear me?”
A burst of light glitters in Lyra’s eyes, and another smile touches her lips. “I… love you too… you insane fire-wielder.” She drags in a strained breath. “What a life… we would’ve had.”
“What a life wewillhave,” he insists, his voice breaking onthose final words. “The sun doesn’t die. And you, Lyra, you are the sun.”
She smiles. It’s a broken smile tainted with blood, but her eyes shine like the warmest of sunlight.
“I should have told you months ago,” Alistair says, tears still streaming down his face. “And I would have, if I hadn’t been such a coward.”
“You… were worth… the wait.” She coughs, and her gaze slides in and out of focus several times. Blood trickles down from the corner of her mouth. “And I… will wait for you… in the next life… too.”
A cry of pure agony rips from Alistair’s lungs.
“Alistair!” I scream as my gaze finally snags on something sticking up between two chunks of ice. “The pipe! Grab the pipe!”
“Stay with me,” he forces out, and presses a desperate kiss to Lyra’s forehead.
Then he shoots up from the ground and sprints over to the broken piece of an iron pipe that is wedged between two blocks of ice. Fire whooshes through the air as he melts them in a flash. The metal pipe clangs as it hits the ground.
Lyra’s chest stops moving.
“Alistair!” I scream.
Snatching up the broken pipe, he lets out a hiss as the cold iron touches his palm, but he doesn’t hesitate one second as he sprints back to Lyra and throws himself down on the ground next to her. With the iron gripped in one hand, he cups her cheek with the other.
But Lyra doesn’t open her eyes.
“Come back to me, sunshine,” he pleads.
Tears stream down his cheeks as he draws in a deep breath and then presses his lips to hers. Then he breathes out.
Lyra’s chest rises as he breathes both air and magic into her body.
And for those endless seconds, it’s as if time isn’t moving at all.
There is no mountain looming above us. No shattered ice palace lying broken on the ground all around us. No past. No future. Just this one moment in time.
Then the breath ends.
Alistair pulls back.
