“Thank you,” I rasp.
My green aspier hisses, before coiling herself around my arm.
I push myself up. Crooked Voice lies in front of me, groaning in pain as Raiku unhooks his fangs from his arm—the poison will take its sweet time. Then my aspier slithers to the other poacher curled in a fetal position, moaning while holding his leg. Raiku hovers around his neck, and a single bite later, the moan stops, and the man goes limp.
I crouch next to Crooked Voice’s face. “Who do you work for?” More groans of agony, but no reply.
“Why did you ambush me four months ago?” I ask.
He struggles to speak. “Kill me.”
He would rather die than betray his kind; I respect the loyalty, but I don’t forgive it.
“Kill me,” he rasps again, coughing up blood.
“No,” I say. “I’m not going to kill you. You don’t deserve a quick death.” He mumbles something I don’t care to decode.
“You deserve worse,” I say as I walk away, leaving him to simmer with Raiku’s venom. He’ll die, unless someone comes for him. And even if he survives, he will never speak again, never move again, never kill anyone again.
Raiku crawls to a small bunch of purple leaves farther from us. The Purple Bittercress. I snap it up, and offer my wrist to my black aspier, but he stills, his tongue flicking, his head reaching for something east of us.
The scream comes seconds after.
My legs move before my mind processes what I’ve heard. Lyria’s voice. Then complete silence.
Raiku glides across the dirt, guiding me to her. I don’t know how fast I’m running, but my lungs burn, and pain blooms in my legs. Yet there’s no sign of my sister.
It smells like burned skin, salt and cedar, and my stomach churns half in horror half in panic. I follow the scent, pausing to let Raiku slither around my ankle. The closer I approach, the tighter my insides twist.
The trees start humming again, a somber song of death.
Not Lyria. No, not Lyria. Please.
In the crook of a large trunk, my sister kneels, her arms around her middle. She’s crying, hurt maybe, but she’s alive. I breathe out. She’s alive.
Railesza slides off me, but she stops shy of Lyria. I look down, and I can’t breathe. My body is a shell, no longer my own, and my mind races in a million directions.
Beau lies in front of her, his clothes torn and soaked in blood.
I kneel beside him, feel for a pulse, find nothing, and start pumping his chest. Railesza moves around his wounds, biting several places along his veins, and I ease on the compressions. She will save him, like she saved me.
I don’t know how long I stay there doing compressions, but eventually, Lyria’s delicate hands grab mine, lifting them from Beau. I look at her puffy, red eyes and her mud-stained face. Fresh blood cakes the side of her neck, her clothes, and the arm where her aspier sits. Her head shakes so gently as she squeezes my palms.
I try to jerk my hands away, but she holds them still. Does she not understand that I have to continue the compressions? Beau will die if I don’t.
“Sylas,” my sister croaks. Her words die on her lips, because she starts sobbing the moment her eyes fall on Beau. My chest constricts again, and breathing becomes unbearable. It’s impossible. Railesza’s healing is unparalleled; she draws magic from the Imortalis. Beau will wake up soon, and we’ll laugh about it at dinner tonight.
“Sylas.” Again, her small voice cuts through the string of hope I refuse to let go.
“No.” I shake my head. “No.”
I run my fingers across Beau’s neck, feeling for any sign of life. Nothing. Railesza switches veins three more times, trying to heal the open wounds, but it doesn’t work. There’s nothing to be healed.
The trees have moved, seemingly to give Beau one last look at the moon. But even the glow of the moon cannot hide the dulling of his bright blue eyes—eyes that will never blink at me in surprise again. I rest my hand on his clenched fists on his abdomen, and something soft brushes against my skin. Clutched in his hand is a single white flower, sprayed with red.
Then the grief I’ve so carefully tucked away for the past months swallows me whole.
Dear Olivia, I wish we were celebrating my birthday together. My magic is weird. I have to be near a dead body to hear the last words of the dead. It’s nothing like in Nan’s books. I’m scared.