Page 103 of Ash and Feather

With reluctance, I relinquished my burden. As he was carried away, a few of the soldiers lingered, watching me. They bowed hastily before they finally turned and hurried away, several of them calling for the attention of healers as they went.

I felt oddly unbalanced without my brother’s weight in my arms. I started to follow him in a daze, but a sudden power overtook me after only a few steps, paralyzing my limbs and rooting me to the spot.

“Dravyn.” Mairu’s voice snapped like a whip, another force wrapping around me, holding me back. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I shot her a cursory glance before shrugging off her power and returning to my walk. “The king must live.” He was almost out of sight. “I have to make sure—”

“Never mind the king,” Mai hissed, jogging after me. “He’s in the hands of his subjects, now, and I’m sure every healer in the kingdom will be rushing to his side before the night is over with. You need to get back to the divine realm and deal with your own problems. That wound on your shoulder looks horrific.”

I ignored her and kept walking.

She sent another wave of magic over me, stronger this time. It sank its claws fully into my legs, and then it was pulling, trying to drag me back rather than just holding me still.

I responded with a flare of my own magic, heat exploding backward and swallowing her up until she lost her focus—and with it, her hold on me.

She stumbled, cursing my name.

But that was the extent of our battle.

Valas dropped to her side an instant later, tucking his wings away, grabbing her arm and holding her back as she started to take aim at me once more.

He needn’t have interfered; I was already done. The burst of magic had required too much of me. The sharp, needling pain in my wounded shoulder was now a hundred times worse. I didn’t want to try summoning more magic.

I didn’t even want tomove.

So I merely watched.

And as my brother disappeared from sight, my thoughts expanded back to the bigger picture.

The whole bloody, massively fucked up picture.

I tentatively touched my wound. More daggers of white-hot pain stabbed through me. As they subsided, I couldn’t help noticing I felt even weaker than before. Like I couldn’t have summoned more magic even if I’d wanted to. It was as if every pulse of pain and every too-quick beat of my heart further activated the arrow’s poison. And that poison was eating up my magic. Draining it.

Draining it.

Whatever they’d used against me…had they used it against Karys, too?

Was that why I couldn’t sense her energy?

I didn’t think I could feel any more sick than I already did, but the thought of Karys in the hands of our enemies, without even her magic to protect herself...

I never should have let her out of my sight.

I’d failed to protect her, just like I’d failed—

“We need to get you back to Nerithyl,” Mai insisted once more, cutting into my thoughts as she reached my side, her eyes narrowing on my injury. “Armaros needs to look at that. Hopefully the Healing God can—”

“No. We aren’t going back without Karys.” I started walking again. I didn’t even know where I was going. Moving might have been hell, but the thought of going back to the middle-heavens without her beside me was worse.

The Serpent Goddess followed once more. It obviously pained her to speak the words she wanted to—neededto—but after a pause she quietly managed to say: “You can’t save her right now. Not in the state you’re in.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re a fucking liar is what you are.”

I would have argued, but for the sharp pain that shot through my injury at that exact moment, stealing my breath. It was soon spreading across my entire back—like someone was using my shoulder blades to sharpen their knives, scraping right down to the godsdamn bone.

The urge to drop to my knees overcame me. I somehow fought it off. But the dizzying pressure that had settled over me persisted.

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