He swallowed with effort, staring straight up again. His wings obscured the sky, but he didn’t seem to care, staring through them, through the storm, and the clouds straight into his past.
“She died instantly, and I felt her death as if it were my own,” he said in a voice so hollow, I barely recognized it. “Do you know what’s the worst, most terrifying sensation in the world, Elaine? It’s the sudden absence of all emotions. Valeni’s pain, her need for me, her terror… They were all gone at once, cut off from my mind, just like her life was cut in an instant. But her death saved my life. It gave me a moment of clarity that I used to pull my knife out and stab the dragon in its head as its teeth sank into my thigh.” He paused for a moment, then said as if to himself,“So many times in the past decade I have wished I were a little slower to react that day.”
“No. No, Timur, please don’t say that…” I shook my head, but he seemed lost in the past too far to hear me.
“I lay there for days,” he continued, “until some thugs from Ashgate found me and dragged me here. While they debated how to make money off my immobile body, I recovered enough to get up and walk away.”
“You…walked?”
He nodded. “I learned about the shadow tunnel and the location of the magical beacon, then used it to travel to Kalmena. By that time, white scales had already appeared around the dragon’s bite on my leg. Soon, they spread down to my knee, then solidified into bones below. Pain impaired my ability to walk, to think, but most importantly to fight. Then I was told I no longer had a place in the queen’s army.” He sighed heavily at that. “The army had been the only home I knew and my only family ever since a group of queen’s warriors found me as a hungry orphan boy trying to steal food on a market in Kalmena. They took me to their camp and raised me until I was old enough to become a warrior myself. Once I was dismissed, I had no idea where to go and what to do with myself. Feeling bitter and maybe petty too, I never revealed the location of Ashgate to anyone. After ten years of searching for a cure and sinking deeper and deeper into hopelessness, I realized nothing could stop this. No matter what I did, new scales appeared faster and faster, bones took over my flesh. It’s just a matter of time until my mind is taken too. So I stopped searching. I left Kalmena and came back here. It feels fitting to spend the rest of my life in Ashgate, the place where it all should’ve ended ten years ago.”
“But what if it did?” I challenged. “What if the last ten years of your life never happened? How would it have been better?”
“I would’ve died an honorable death as a warrior of the royal army. But instead?—”
“Instead you met me,” I said, gazing deep into his eyes. “Instead, we became friends. Instead, you’ve made my life in Ashgate bearable when it could’ve been a nightmare. Instead, you lived, and you helped me survive too.” I ran a hand through the long, silky strands of his bi-colored hair. “I know you have every reason to loathe your fate. I will never minimize your suffering or what you had to go through in the past ten years. But I’m glad you live despite it all, and I’m so, so grateful for you. Because I can’t imagine my life without you now.”
He stroked the side of my face, ran his claws through my hair, then cupped the back of my neck, and hugged me to him so tightly, no one would ever pry me away from him now.
“You’re a miracle, Elaine,” he murmured reverently, kissing my temple. “Mymiracle. The most magical wonder of my life.”
His body tensed under me, his abdominal muscles rippled as he sat up, taking me with him. He didn’t even wince with the movement, and I hoped that meant his pain was gone.
“Let’s get you out of this storm, my sweet.” His wings dropped, exposing us to the afternoon sun.
We lay on the beach for hours. The storm had eased meanwhile. The sand clouds had settled, and the shadows of the beach dwellers slicked around the flimsy beach contraptions, assessing the damage after the storm.
Our little house sat completely destroyed. Our things inside it were half buried under a thick layer of sand and debris.
Timur squinted in the light, promptly jerking up a wing to shade his face. The cut in the delicate white membrane was on the mend already, leaving only a thin line of a scar that would dissolve soon under the effects of the shadow fae’s magic.
“I didn’t know you had wings,” I marveled, running my fingers along one of the thin white bone-like spikes that had the membrane stretched between them.
Timur gave the wing a curious glance, as if seeing it for the first time himself.
“I didn’t know either,” he said. “The wings are new.”
His voice remained calm, but I sensed the ominous meaning in his words. The wings were another part of the dragon taking over the man in Timur’s body. How long did we have until the man I knew would disappear completely?
Sensing my fear through the tendril, he searched my eyes with concern, and I shoved the dark thoughts away.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us.” I gestured at our destroyed shelter, desperate to find a distraction from the heavy swell of dread that threatened to suffocate me.
Timur gave an assessing look at the ruins, then at the shadows moving around the beach.
“No,” he said resolutely. “There is no fixing it, no need to fix it either. It’s time I found a more secure place to keep my most precious treasure.”
Hugging me to his chest, he spread his wings. With a soft cry of shock and delight, I wound my arms around his neck as he lifted us both over the beach.
His wings could take us where his chair never could. And Timur flew higher and higher, taking a course toward the Wall, to its very top with the best caves in the city.
Fifteen
Elaine
Timur flew through a wide opening in the top level of the Wall. The ceiling was so high here, his wings moved with no impediment. He could’ve easily flown over the heads of the two shadow fae who tried to block our way, but he stopped, hovering in front of them while holding me in his arms.
“I’m here to see Ray,” Timur said.
