My body is worn out, my magic hewn from my very body. My breath wheezes in and out of my chest, and I am relaxed only by the deep, rhythmic breaths of Mikal and Estela. The giant infant cries, but I have nothing more to offer him.
“You first,” Vann shoots back, voice raw.
My eyelids sag, my back and ass burn against hot ground. My leg still feels broken.
“I regret not killing my father sooner,” I say.
Van lets out a shocked huff, and then wheezes.
“Your turn,” I insist.
He laughs once more. “I regret not listening to Adra… And I regret never tasting Arlet’s lips.”
Then he grunts and winces while shifting to accomodate the child.
My lips curl up at the corners, my burned skin splitting open. “You bastard. I knew it.”
He laughs. “How well you know me.”
“Well, to that I say: we aren’t dead yet.” I then choke on the smoke billowing around us.
Vann laughs. “You know better than most that battlefield confessions are hollow.”
“Sometimes.”
That is met with silence. I do not mind. My throat is too torn up to speak anymore.
It’s hard to tell how many hours we stay like that before the elves start to search through the dead. We rest, exhausted as voices call out, saying they’ve found us.
It hurts when they drag us away.
Chapter 47
Iolite
ESTELA
When I come to consciousness, there is a weight across my legs. Every part of me hurts even worse than before.
Ugly nightmares come rushing in. Ones of Mikal’s dying body, hanging above me, and I remember…Dying.
My eyelids fly open, and I find myself in the back of a wooden wagon. Mikal and Teo are sprawled out on either side of me.
“Oh gods!” I exclaim.
Mikalishere. He is filthy, but he is alive. And with me.
I pull his face close and kiss his head, despite the fact that all moisture has been leached from my mouth and lips.
“Easy,amor?1,” Teo’s grumbly voice says from behind me. I turn to see my husband holding a giant child.
Another breath pushes past my lips.
We are there, a stinking, bloody mess of limbs.
“He’s alive, and…” I press my hand to my stomach.
“The child is fine,” he murmurs. “We are all fine.”
