Soothing shade unfurled over the island, hers to command.
She stepped to Darion’s side and knelt next to him, heedless of the blood that continued to spill onto the deck around them. His father’s blood.
She glanced at Lucan’s back, then met Darion’s gaze with gentle, sympathetic eyes. “We need to get him to the palace.”
He nodded woodenly. Lifting Lucan’s weight onto his shoulder, Darion carried him to the edge of the deck and leapt back to the beach with him. Selene reappeared at his side, using the crystals to clear a path for them up the hill to the palace compound.
Gabrielle was waiting for them just inside. Her face communicated everything Darion didn’t want to acknowledge: Lucan wasn’t going to survive this.
Between the ravages on his body from Bloodlust and the grievous wounds from his fight with the Ancient, he likely had only minutes left.
Gabrielle took his slack hand in her grasp, pressing his bruised and bloodied knuckles to her lips. “Oh, no . . . Lucan, no.”
She held on as Darion carried him into a quiet chamber at Selene’s direction and carefully laid him down on a soft rug. Beneath Lucan’s torn, blood-soaked combat shirt, his skin was pale. Hisglyphswere nearly colorless. His chest was barely moving, his breaths infrequent and shallow.
With his mother weeping at his father’s side, Darion slowly stood up, his own heart grieving for both of them.
And for himself.
He couldn’t imagine what the rest of his life would look like without his father there as his example of what it meant to be a male of strength and honor. He couldn’t fathom what the Order would look like without Lucan at its helm. Most of all, he couldn’t bear the idea of losing Lucan as his father and his friend.
As for what his mother was feeling, Darion hoped he’d never know. Yet he had some inkling of it as he glanced at Selene standing beside him. She had only been his for a short while, but the thought of life without her was an emptiness he refused to consider.
Her blue eyes held him with solemnity . . . and tender devotion. “Darion, do you trust me?”
Uncertain why she was asking, he nodded.
Then she pulled one of the five crystals from her pocket, holding it in her palm.
“You can heal him?” Hope surged. “Can you restore him the same way you’re able to draw life from the crystal?”
“No,” she said, slowly shaking her head. “It will require something more than that. Something that cannot be undone.”
Gabrielle looked up now too. “Do whatever you can . . . please.”
Darion nodded. “Anything. I trust you, Selene.”
The crystal in her palm began to glow. She knelt down on the other side of Lucan, across from Gabrielle.
Darion eased down next to Selene. “Can I do anything?”
“Remove his shirt for me.”
Using his dagger, he opened the ruined black combat shirt from neck to hem. Then Selene carefully placed the glowing crystal on Lucan’s bare chest.
Darion watched in wonder and no small amount of apprehension as the glow intensified. None but an Atlantean could touch the crystals without harm. Yet the one resting on his father’s chest did no such thing.
Selene removed the others from her pockets, laying them next to her on the rug. One by one, she placed three more on Lucan’s chest. The four formed a glowing circle around his heart.
“And now the last,” she said, looking at Darion.
With the fifth crystal glowing like a small sun in her hands, she gently lowered it to the center of the four. Her hands remained after she placed it, hovering over the last crystal while its glow continued to build.
The four surrounding it burned brighter now too, until the combined light of them was too tremendous to behold. Darion brought his arm up to shield his eyes, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the miracle of what he was witnessing.
A miracle created by the extraordinary woman he loved.
Selene withdrew her hands from the center of all that light. It burned for another moment, then extinguished in a stunning flash.
