“But I can help him,” came her voice.
My head snapped up as I trained my gaze on her.
“I can try,” she amended, raising her chin. She didn’t want to meet my eyes, I could discern that clearly. But she did, bravely, though it was tinged with her righteous anger.
“How?” I rasped, grasping onto a small, slippery thread of hope I didn’t dare feel.
“He’s in a lot of pain,” she told me. It felt like a blade to my own chest. “I tried to root out what’s causing him so much of it, but he’s fighting me, using me to help find relief. It feels like a dam of a river. And now that I’ve unblocked some of it, he’s desperate to find a pathway out.”
What she described…how could I have been so blind to it?
Because the proud creature wouldn’t have let you see it,I knew. For him to get to this state, to finally expose his pain…he couldn’t bear it anymore. Perhaps it had been exacerbated by how hard I’d been pushing him, with very little rest.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I want to help him,” she said, rising to her feet. Her eyes were still a little glassy, perhaps from the wine I’d seen her drink at the feast. I remembered her wide smile as she’d danced, remembered thinking that she had a special talent for making strangers like her. She’d had no problem fitting in at a feast full of them. And I had envied her for that gift as I’d watched her dance and sway in the crowd. I’d been…enthralled, though I’d never admit it.
“What do you want really?” I asked her, standing to meet her, to gaze down into those eyes so she wouldn’t misunderstand my meaning. “Because nothing is freely given.”
“Your Elthika is suffering, and you want to talk about payment?” She glared, her eyes like ice. “Get out of my way.”
I was too surprised to respond as she pushed past me. I felt the shocking heat of her shoulder against the bare skin of my chest as she nudged me back, perhaps purposefully and with intended force.
I trapped any hope I felt in a fist as I watched her approachSamryn. I could feel the magic radiate off her like a hum. The energy made my flesh prickle uncomfortably, my own power beating at my bones to be let out…but I didn’t want to dare risk her helping my Elthika.
Blue light glowed off Samryn’s scales. The hair on the back of my neck rose. Where Rivenna had bitten me, on my shoulder, hard enough to draw blood, ached as my heart pounded. The base of my spine, where my tail had once been, tingled, making my flesh itch.
The forest grew quiet. Still. Like the life had been sucked out of it.
I heard the exhale of my own breath, loud. I didn’t have to open up my own magic to know Amaia’s was a powerful thing. I hadn’t felt power like hers in a long, long time.
Samryn made the first sound, a loud cry I’d never heard before, aching and raw, just as her back bowed. An unseen wind rose in the clearing, whipping her hair around her face, but when I strode toward her side, I knew her eyes were unseeing.
“So much,” she whispered, tears beginning to drip from her eyes, tracking down her cheeks in little rivers. “I can take it. Give some to me. Let me help you.”
A guttural sound left my throat as I rounded to Samryn, looking into his eyes even as his head thrashed. His pupils were blown wide, reflecting the glow of her own magic.
I couldn’t help it. I unspooled my power. If I could take some of the pain for the both of them, maybe it would help her.
I opened the flood of my magic.
I heard her scream. I felt the flood of aching muck infuse itself into my own veins. And I felther,a pure river of heartstone energy sweeping through.
It was building. Building. The pain came. Searing. Like it was slowly eating my body from the inside out. I wanted to bellow with the suffering that Samryn was experiencing. I wanted to marvel at the pain that Amaia was taking on for him.
It seized up every part of my body, making my jaw grit tight. I couldn’t help him. But maybe I could helpher.
If only a little.
Her magic might’ve been pure, but it was also a wild thing. Untamed. Untrained. I felt it begin to falter against the mightiness of this…almost certain death.
All the while, Samryn’s groans began to quiet. I felt a strange sense of relief, felt the rise and fall of his breath in my own chest.
Amaia’s tears turned to blood.
And when I saw her sway, I broke the connection to catch her. She fell limp in my arms, her eyes closed, cheeks stained in red.
Samryn collapsed too, his mighty body rumbling the earth.
