Page 27 of Shadow Wings
The wind battered my limp limbs, and my roar became a bellow of pain. My heart stopped, skipping as I looked at my hands. My Phaetynhands.
“Tyrrik,” I screamed, my voice disappearing into the rushingair.
A splitting roar filled the air. I plummeted toward the rocks below, sensing Tyrrik’s energy blasting toward me as he dove alongside and then catapulted belowme.
I shrieked as my body slammed into solid stone. My vision spotted black again, and the pulse of agony made my head spin. The breath whooshed from my lungs, and I retched. A fraction of a second later, I blinked in the darkness. Another fraction later, I understood. I was in Tyrrik’s claws. I hadn’t hit stone . . . he’d caught me. I sagged into the flesh of his palm just as he crashed into the ground. He’d been too close to the ground to stop his trajectory.Holypancakes.
He screeched beneath me, fire shooting from his Drae mouth into the sky, wings caught between his body and the rocks. One second, I was in his black scaly palm, and the next, I was lying on top of Lord Tyrrik. He gasped, and I scurried off, my mind blank withshock.
“I’m s-sorry,” I said, teeth chattering as I backed away from Tyrrik’s prostrate form. “I’m so,so. . .”
No. No, no, no. I blinked, trying to clear my tunneled vision. I stared at Tyrrik; my chest hollowed out, and a buzzing filled my ears, numbing my lips and rooting me to the spot. I sucked in a breath, but the air disappeared, and I couldn’t catch mybreath.
We’d landed a few hundred meters from a lush forest, with golden filaments of energy shrouding the woods, except between us and the trees sat a thick barrier of jutting, stone spikes. Tyrrik lay impaled on a spike on the very edge of thebarrier.
I rushed to his side and dropped to my knees as I stared at the jagged piece of rock protruding from above his right breast. I swallowed the sob working its way up my throat and hovered, my hands trembling above the injury. “What have Idone?”
Tyrrik gasped again, the wet sucking sound enough to shake me from mystupor.
“Bloody, bloody . . . Tyrrik, what do I do? What . . . ?” My mind refused to catch up. How had this happened? Rocks shouldn’t be . . . they shouldn’t go through a Drae’s chest like that. We were invincible. “Do I pull it out? Do I pull youoff?”
His eyes were glassy and unfocused as he continued to gasp with ragged soggy breaths.Stars above. He was drowning in his own blood. The thought of him dying like this, dying at all, threatened to tip me over theedge.
“I’m so sorry, Tyrrik.” I ran my hand over his face, brushing his lips with my fingertips. I circled so I stood at his head and scooped my hands under the back of hisshoulders.
The shard of stone was not even two feet tall. I could do this.I can’t believe I’m about to dothis.
I took a deep breath, and with another whispered apology, I heaved with all my strength. The sickening sound of blood and tearing flesh was all I could hear, and Iwhimpered.
The blood in his mouth gargled as he wailed. The muscles in his neck tightened, his eyes flooded black, and a moment later, his body went limp. His eyes rolled back in his head, showing onlywhite.
My heart clenched, and I dug my fingers into him as my palms grew slick with sweat. Tears streamed unchecked from my eyes, dripping onto Tyrrik’s paleface.
I shuffled to the side and lowered him to the ground. Scooting to his side, I chanted, “Please don’t die; please don’tdie.”
Blood, the color of onyx, gushed from his wound, staining the rockyground.
11
Irestedmy hands on his scarred chest, and focusing on my fingertips, I called forth the warmth of my Phaetyn power. I closed my eyes, startled when I recognized the green glow near the blue energy of my Drae. I’d seen this vibrant color when I’d gone through the Drae transformation. I gathered the familiar force and directed the power through my hands and into Tyrrik’s body, wishing desperately for the blood to congeal and clot. I hiccupped and let my tears fall into his wound, willing his bronze skin to knit together and be whole once more and for the gaping hole in his chest to be gone. I poured my strength into the wound, willing it toheal.
I opened myeyes.
The wound had barelychanged.
Tyrrik’s head lolled to the side as his wet breathing became shallow, and my small understanding of anatomy told me that his lung had to have beenpunctured.
How could I heal that? What did his lungs look like on the inside? I had noidea.
“Don’t you dare die, Tyrrik. I’m the only one who gets to kill you.” The jumble of my emotions for the Drae was irrelevant. I had to savehim.
The jagged gash continued to ooze, my Phaetyn-wishing doingnothing.
The memory of our conversation in his room came back to me, followed by our moment in the prison when I’d kissed him. I leaned over him. His eyes were closed, the pallor of his skin a frightening shade of gray. His shallow breath only faint gasps as he clung to life. As I drew closer, the rest of the world fellaway.
I brushed his dark hair from his cool brow, streaking his blood across his forehead. My tears dripped on his whiskered cheeks, his pale lips. His dying breath still smelled like the nectar he gave me. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead to his, the temperature of his skin warming beneath me. I let his breath, his skin, hispresencefill me. And then, I pressed my lips tohis.
His lips held the chill of morning air, and despite being soft, they were unmoving beneathmine.