While frustrated, Alex nodded reluctantly. “Okay, fine. I’ll leave that one with you,” she said. “And since you’re deserting me, what are my chances of convincing you to fight me properly now, enough that I at least get a bruise to show we actually fought? Consider it a gift to apologise for your upcoming negligence. What do you say?”
“Only you would consider the idea of me injuring you a gift.”
“Punched with love,” Alex said solemnly, but she was unable to keep a straight face when Roka rolled his eyes.
“Here’s a compromise,” he said. “If you can disarm me in the next ten minutes, I’ll give you one match with a real sword before we call it quits for the night.”
“That’s not a compromise,” Alex argued. “You know there’s no way I’ll be able to disarm you.”
“Take it or leave it, Aeylia.”
“This is a sucky deal,” she grumbled in acceptance.
She tried her best to disarm him, but with his strength and agility so completely natural to him, all he had to do was duck and dodge and swivel away from her, keeping her at arm’s length the whole time. She didn’t come close to separating him from his sword, let alone landing a single hit on him.
With an apologetic shrug at the end of the ten minutes, he promised to dedicate more time to their sparring once he returned. He then squeezed her shoulder, knowing how unsatisfied she was, and escorted her to her room.
Disappointed and edgy with unused adrenaline, Alex knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep anytime soon. She needed to go out and clear her head, get some fresh air. Ideally, she would love to go flying with Xiraxus, but when she called to him, he warned her that a storm was coming and unless she wanted to risk ending up on the back of a roasted chicken, she would have to wait until it passed.
Sighing, Alex stepped out onto her balcony and looked off into the night. True enough, far on the horizon beyond the Golden Cliffs and distant forests she saw the tell-tale flash of lightning high up in the sky. But it was still a long way from reaching them.
Coming to a quick decision, Alex grabbed a cloak and stepped out of her room. Still attuned to her Meyarin senses from her time with Roka, she called up the Valispath, directing it until she came to a rest atop the cliffs overlooking the city.
Taking a seat on the edge of the rocky precipice, Alex pushed back her hood to feel the night breeze in her hair and brazenly dangled her legs over the side, confident for once in her ability to call up the Eternal Path again should the ledge crumble beneath her.
Looking down, she chuckled at the memory of her first experience using the Valispath, when the future Kyia deviously made Alex, Jordan, Bear and D.C. jump off the cliffs and onto the invisible Path. Alex now knew that the stunt hadn’t been necessary at all, since Kyia could have easily activated the Valispath from atop the cliffs—or even back at Raelia—and saved them all from shaving ten years off their lives from shock alone.
Feeling nostalgic, Alex wondered what her friends would be doing right now if they weren’t frozen in time; if Bear and D.C. would be busy concocting plans between classes to rescue both Jordan and herself. She knew they wouldn’t give up on either of them, that her friends would travel to the end of the world if it meant the four of them could be together again.
A sick taste entered Alex’s mouth as she thought about Jordan and the horrors he’d endured being bonded to Aven for a number of weeks before the showdown in Raelia. More than ever before, she was determined to save him from being Claimed. She just had to figure out how to convince Aven to willingly Release him.
With her thoughts drifting over her parents, her teachers—and lingering perhaps a little too long on Kaiden—Alex sat for what might have been hours, watching the moonlight bounce off the Myrox. Even when the storm clouds started rolling over, the brilliance of the city didn’t dim, so radiant was the silvery metal on its own.
When Alex felt a water droplet tickle and roll down her forehead, she knew it was time to head back to the palace, unwilling to linger further and risk having to use the Valispath in the impending electrical storm.
Carefully wiggling away from the edge, Alex made sure she was stable enough before she pushed up to her feet. As she did so, the rain started sprinkling, not quite heavy yet, but enough to be a nuisance. Since she’d been sitting there for so long, she had to take a few moments to clear her mind and tune into her Meyarin senses again, and when she did, she was just about to activate the Valispath when a noise caused her to pause.
It sounded like a moan, coming from the forest.
Frowning, Alex channelled her inner B-grade-horror-movie skills and called out, “Hello? Is someone out there?”
When no answer came, she figured her imagination had been playing a trick on her, but then she heard it again, followed by what sounded like something crashing through the bushes.
Not sure whether to take off or investigate, she didn’t have time to make a decision before a dark figure stumbled out of the dense trees, collapsing in a heap barely ten feet from where she stood.
That was the moment the heavens decided to open, the rain falling down in earnest now as a crackle of thunder rumbled overhead and the storm blew in at an alarming speed. But Alex didn’t move, couldn’t move, because a flash of lightning highlighted with startling clarity exactly who the figure was.
It was Niyx.
And he was covered in blood.
Twenty-Eight
“Niyx!” Alex cried, rushing over to him and sinking to her knees at his side. “Niyx! Niyx! Look at me!”
When she rolled him over to face her, she let out a loud gasp as he moaned in agony.
Four long slashes, like claw marks, ripped through his clothes and tore into his flesh. The lines travelled across from his right hip all the way up to his left shoulder, diagonally dissecting his chest. But as gruesome as the injury was, that wasn’t what had caused Alex to gasp, nor was it the amount of silver blood spilling out.
No, what caused her to gasp was the murky brown liquid the rain was quickly washing off his body. Because she knew exactly what it was. Heedless of the risk to her own health, she reached out in order to put pressure on the wound and draw him close enough for the Valispath, but with a shout of pain, Niyx jerked violently away before she could touch him.
“Don’t,” he panted out. “Can’t… touch… me.”
“Niyx, I need to get you out of here,” Alex said, talking to him as she would a wounded animal, low and calm. “You need to let me help you.”
“Don’t… touch,” he struggled to tell her. “Sarnaph… blood.”
Alex felt a shudder go through her at his confirmation of what the murky goo washing from his wound was. Thanks to Aven’s blood in her veins, if her skin made contact with it, she would be almost as debilitated as Niyx.
“It—It’s not as bad as it seems,” she lied, reaching for his face instead and running a soothing hand across his cheek and through his dark hair. Even in the rain she could tell he was sweating feverishly, something she had never seen a Meyarin do before. He needed help, and he needed it immediately.
“I’ll be right back,” she said as an idea came to her, and she tore off into the forest. She was back by his side in a blur of movement thanks to her Meyarin speed, carrying a whole armful of laendra with her. Knowing he was beyond able to chew the flower, she summoned A’enara and sliced open a bulb, the sticky liquid within dribbling down her fingers and merging with the ever-increasing rain.
Moving it to trickle onto his wounds, she continued cutting bulbs until the laendra coated his chest like honey. She then sliced her final flower and carefully took Niyx’s head in her hands, gently lifting his face and urging him to swallow the healing liquid. Hacking and spluttering, he could barely manage a whole mouthful.
“You’re going to be fine,” Alex told him, steeling her voice to mask how much she was shaking inside.
“Won’t… work…” Niyx panted. “Just… helps… pain.”
“Don’t be
ridiculous,” she told him, stemming her rising panic at his words. “Laendra can heal anything.”
“Not… Sarnaph… blood,” Niyx said. “Nothing… can… fix.”
“Not true,” Alex said, trying to come off as confident when she felt nothing of the sort. “I have a friend who was poisoned and he’s perfectly fine now.”
But Zain had nearly died, or so he’d told Alex. It was only because of Fletcher that the Meyarin had managed to survive the arrow to his shoulder. The problem was, Alex had no idea how Fletcher had saved him.
“Look,” Alex said, hands shaking, “the Sarnaph blood’s all washed away now. I’m going to get you back to the palace—someone there will know how to help you.”
She reached under him to pull him up enough to wrap an arm around his shoulders, drawing him close and forcing herself to ignore his agonising moans.
“Can’t… save… me,” he puffed. “Going… to… die.”
Despite her concern, Alex was certain that wasn’t true. Niyx remained alive in the future, so she knew—she knew—he would survive this.
“You are not going to die!” she told him adamantly, giving him a small shake to bring her point home. And yet, it was then with shocking clarity that a memory came to her; the sound of Aven’s voice after he first saw her Claiming scar and heard her lie about its cause.
‘I’ve never heard of anyone surviving Sarnaph blood poisoning…’
That wasn’t all he’d said. It was his next words that had Alex trembling hard enough that Niyx groaned and tried to pull away from her jostling his injured body.
‘I’ve never heard of anyone surviving Sarnaph blood poisoning,’ Aven had said, only to finish, ‘without Menada dae Loransa being performed on them.’
Looking down at her rapidly fading friend, Alex was panting almost as hard as he was as she waged a mental war with herself. Was it possible that Niyx truly wouldn’t survive the poison… unless she helped him? Unless she shared her life force with him? Unless she Claimed him?
It was an abhorrent thought and she couldn’t believe she was even considering the idea, especially given that she had firsthand experience with the effects of the bonding. And yet, she also knew he was right. If she didn’t try to Claim him and share her energy with him… he was going to die.
Maybe if she got him back to the palace, someone else would be willing to do the ritual. Maybe she could convince them to break the law, and maybe they’d be willing to risk execution in order to save his life. But Alex knew it was a long shot. And looking at how quickly Niyx was fading in her arms, she doubted he would last until she found someone to help. His life was literally in her hands.
It was then that another memory hit her, one of him speaking to her from the darkness of his future prison cell.
‘A life for a life… I’m now absolved of my debt.’
“I can’t believe this,” Alex said, looking down at him through rain-blurred, impossibly wide eyes. “I can’t believe I’m even thinking this.”
But despite her disbelief, there was no way she was going to let her friend die, even knowing the murderer he would become. That wasn’t who he was, not yet. And if she didn’t do everything she could to save him now, then that would make her just as evil as his future self.
When Niyx released a gurgling, ragged breath that sounded disturbingly bloody to her ears, Alex knew it was now or never.
“Please don’t hate me for this,” she whispered to him as she reached for A’enara. “Or do hate me, if you must, just as long as you stay alive.”
Before she could talk herself out of it, Alex sliced the ice-like dagger in a line above the scar already on her palm. She hissed at the pain it caused and steadfastly ignored Niyx’s horror-stricken face as he took in her glaringly obvious mortal blood mixing with the rain and flowing to the earth.
“Aeylia… What… What…”
“Shh,” Alex told him. “Save your strength.” Mentally, she added, We’re both going to need it.
Having only a vague idea of what to do and no guarantee other than her knowledge of Niyx being alive in her future, Alex reached out her noticeably quaking hand and placed her bloodied palm against the torn flesh over his heart.
“What…” he tried to say, but then his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he released one final, gurgling exhale.
“Niyx?” Alex whispered, pressing down hard on his skin, their blood mixing together, dark and light. He didn’t respond, nor did he inhale; his chest remained still under her fingers. “No! Niyx!”
Knowing she was out of time, Alex didn’t think, she just acted. Screaming the Claiming words in her mind, she focused them outwardly in the same way she would call to Xiraxus.
Trae Menada sae, Niyx!
With rain soaking their bodies and lightning streaking overhead, Alex leaned in above his deathly still form. For a fraction of a second she feared it hadn’t worked; that perhaps she had to be Meyarin to pull off the ritual. But then her mind suddenly blanked, with her subconsciousness floating out of her like some kind of out-of-body experience, and she was pulled into what she instinctively knew was Niyx’s mind. Surrounded by the darkness of his swiftly fading thoughts as he moved closer and closer to death, she repeated her words with more urgency than she’d ever thought possible.
“Trae Menada sae, Niyx!” she yelled, impressing her will upon his. “I Claim you!”
In an instant she was yanked from the darkness and back into her own mind as a burning sensation ripped across her torso. The feeling was so intense that she cried out in pain and hunched over his body, unable to hold her weight against the agony shooting through her nerve endings.
A scream tore from her throat as inch by inch, she felt her flesh being slashed open, from her right hip to her left shoulder. Her free hand moved to press against her stomach, but all she felt were her rain-soaked clothes. She reached under the material, certain she would discover the gaping edges of shredded flesh, but there was nothing there—no wound at all, just phantom pain. Meanwhile, Niyx’s real claw marks began to pulsate with a soft, shimmering glow—a glow that was mirrored on Alex’s unmarred skin in four distinct diagonal slashes.
Heaving ragged breaths as strength drained from her body at an alarming rate, the pain Alex felt was excruciating enough to make her wonder what would happen to her future if she died in the past. Unlike with Niyx, she had no guarantee that she would survive to see another day in her real time. For all she knew, she was never going to make it back home. And if that happened, she wasn’t the only one whose life would be forfeit.
Alex! came Xiraxus’s cry, his voice more panicked than ever. Alex, what did you do?
Xira, she called, and even her mental voice sounded weak against the absolute agony rippling through her. Xira, I’m so sorry!
She somehow summoned the strength to send him the memory of her actions. In return, he bellowed out a deep, anxious roar.
But that was all she was able to hear from him because a burning like nothing she’d ever felt before scorched across the flesh of her torso, ripping another scream through her vocal chords. The glow of the claw marks intensified to a nearly blinding flash, blending with the lightning now beginning to streak around them.
The last thing Alex saw before she succumbed to unconsciousness was the glow disappearing as Niyx’s wounds began to seal. His body convulsed beneath hers, his chest rose with a great, shuddering gasp, and then Alex knew no more.
Alex! Wake up! Wake up—wake up—WAKE UP!
Bolting upright, Alex’s heart thudded in her chest as she came to her senses. Xira! What happened? How did I—Is Niyx—Where—What—
Her head was throbbing and she struggled to string a complete thought together. All she could tell was that she was back in her room at the palace. The storm was raging over the city, much fiercer now than when she’d been up on the Golden Cliffs, and her clothes were still sopping, soaking through to her bed.
What were you thinking, Alex? Are you crazy? Xira de
manded.
That’s still up for debate, she returned, casting her eyes around the room until they came to rest on the motionless body slumped against the wall beside her unlit fireplace, knees raised, head pillowed between crossed arms.
Alex’s pulse stuttered as she quickly told Xiraxus, Listen, I can’t talk right now. I’ll check in again later.
You better, the draekon threatened, because storm or not, I’ll fly down there and make you talk if you don’t. And with that warning, his presence left her mind.
Alex slid off the bed, rising on wobbly legs, and moved towards the figure huddled near the fireplace.
“Don’t come any closer.”
The words came out as harshly as the crack of a whip in the silence of the room.
“Niyx,” Alex pleaded, halting mid-step.
His head came up and he stared straight at her, his eyes like blazing purple fire. Alex had never seen him look so ravaged, like he had no idea what to think, what to feel, what to say or do. Gone was the confident, cocky Niyx she’d come to be so fond of. In his place was someone clearly waging an inner battle.
“You saved my life,” he said, his voice brittle. “That’s the only reason—” He broke off, swallowed and tried again. “It’s the only reason I brought you back here and haven’t told anyone what you did. What you are.”
Alex fisted her hand around her new scar, knowing that her flesh was as healed as it had previously been, but also aware that Niyx hadn’t failed to see the red of her blood, even as close to death as he had been.
“Niyx—” she whispered, but he cut her off.
“There’s nothing you can say that would make any of this okay.”
Alex agreed with him. But she also didn’t. She chose to ignore her mortality for the moment and simply said, “I couldn’t let you die.”
“So you Claimed me?” he demanded, rising to his feet, his clawed shirt hanging in tatters. “Are you insane? Now we’re both going to die! They’ll execute us for what you’ve done—you do realise that, don’t you?”