She flinched. “Stop talking in riddles, Irian.”
“This is no riddle.” He lifted his eyes once more, a faint smile on his hard, rawly masculine face. “You stripped it all away, save for one faint, lingering spark.”
Tyriel shook her head and began to back away.
Irian lowered his gaze back to hers.
“What can a clever, patient soul such as you do with a spark, Tyriel?”
She tried to back up another step, and found she couldn’t. She wasn’t paralyzed and Irian wasn’t stopping her. She just...couldn’t make herself move. Compelled by something she saw in his eyes, she waited, not even daring to breathe as he advanced on her.
“Sparks can turn into raging wildfires.”
He held out his hand.
She looked down, mesmerized by the broad, scarred palm before her.
“You have to take this step, Tyriel. I cannot do this for you,” he murmured.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she put her hand in his.
“That’s my brave, beautiful warrior.”
Chapter 20
“You’ve always been such a brave, stubborn lass, love.”
Irian whispered as he shimmered into view, retreating from her subconscious so he could take the next step.
Behind him, he heard the mutterings from her father and the Royal Consort and while he much wanted to ignore them and move forward in his quest, much depended on Tyriel and Aryn being undisturbed while he finished his work.
Rising, he turned to face Prince Lorne.
For a moment, he was taken aback, surprised by the changes in both the prince and his consort. He was unshaven and wore fighting leathers, as if prepared to go to war, the coronet marking him as a High Prince among the People gone.
Alys, like the prince, had abandoned her regal garb. She wore a simple gown and her hair was pulled back into a plain tail at her nape.
Both eyed with eyes aglow with magic.
Lorne strode forward, a dagger in his hand. When he lifted it, Irian saw the black flames dripping from it.
“When you told us you might have a way to help, you said you’d need peace and for them to be undisturbed for a time—a short time. It’s been more than three weeks, you bloody fool specter!”
Irian eyed the black flames before shifting his attention to the furious fae lord.
“Three weeks is but a blink,” he said with a shrug. “It took me far longer to find the last, lingering spark of her magic than I’d thought. Then I had to call her to me. It is not quick work, Prince Lorne.”
The prince’s lids flickered, his mouth going tight. “What spark? Her magic is gone. She...”
He lapsed into silence, catching sight of his consort from the corner of his eye as she approached the bed. For three weeks, he’d hardly left his daughter’s side. Alys had spent much of that time with him and after the first week, she’d begun to sink her healer’s energy into both Tyriel and Aryn, telling him she could circumvent their natural need for food and water this way for a brief period of time.
Each time she’d done so, she’d expended herself more and more until he sent for another healer, one of her mentors to be on hand to assist Alys, should she need it.
She’d maintained, eating gluttonously to fuel her body as the healing demanded its toll. At the same time, she used her wry humor to keep him from descending farther into his grief.
Alys was not the true love his heart still ached for, but he did have love for her, and there was none he trusted more.
So when he heard her soft gasp, he rushed to her side, even being so rude as to step through the spectral form of the enchanter rather than around him.
“Lorne...do you see?”
* * * * *
“Brother.”
Aryn knew he dreamed.
From the first time he’d held Asrel, before he even knew anything about the blade or the soul of a powerful enchanter dead for millennia who had spelled himself into the sword for reasons Aryn still didn’t know, odd dreams had plagued him.
Since learning about Irian, and the magic within Asrel, he’d learned to distinguish between his own odd dreams and the ones tied to the man who called him brother.
He sat up and looked around the chamber, turning to see Tyriel—and his own slumbering body. She was entwined in his arms, her cheek on his chest.
Was it the dream or simple wishful thinking that made it appear as though she wasn’t so fragile?
He made himself look away. He couldn’t afford to hope. The pain of losing her, accepting that he had to let her go, was bad enough, almost enough to drive him mad. If he dared hope, only to lose her...
“Aryn, my brother. Look at me.”
Tired even in his own dream, Aryn lifted his eyes to Irian.
It was a disconcerting sight, though.
Irian wasn’t the ephemeral vision he’d always been.
He looked to be a man of flesh and blood.
The enchanter crossed to Aryn. “If she fights to live, will you be her bridge?”
Aryn had no idea what Irian meant, but the only words that mattered were if she fights to live...he went to say yes, but that painful specter of hope hovered between them. Hesitating, he looked back at Tyriel.
“Answer, brother, now. I don’t have much time. For this, I cannot just take control of your body—you must be willing.”
The intensity of Irian’s voice shattered Aryn’s fears and he focused on the enchanter. “Yes. Her bridge, her lifeline, her everything. Whatever it is she needs, it’s yours. You don’t even have to ask.”
A broad smile broke over Irian’s face and for once, the shadow of sadness that forever haunted the man fell away.
“Be well, my brother.” Irian placed his hand on Aryn’s chest. “Live a long, happy life.”
And blackness fell.
Alys had moved to the other side of the bed to check on the human merc who had brought Tyriel back to Averne. Both she and the prince spoke softly, one or the other pausing to look around for the enchanter who had disappeared without warning.
When he abruptly appeared at the foot of the bed, Alys jumped, pressing a hand to her furiously racing heart. Glaring at him, she said, “Can you not give us a warning before you come and go like that?”
Irian, once more nothing but a spectral form, shrugged. “This will be the last time you see me, Lady Consort.” He held out a hand.
For three weeks, save for when Alys herself changed the bedding, the sword Aryn carried had laid in the bed next to the man. Now, answering some summons from the enchanter, it rose into the air and settled between the two sleepers.
Alys went to argue, her every healer instincts appalled.
But then the blade started to glow, burning brighter and brighter until both she and Lorne had to look away.
The brightness reached a crescendo, shattering the quiet of the room with a faint hum as Lorne and Alys flung their arms up instinctively.
Blinking away the blindness caused by the bright light, they looked at each other as sparkling motes, like a magical dusting, filled the air, centered over the two still forms on the bed. As the glittering particles sank lower and lower, Lorne held out a hand, capturing one tiny spark on his fingertip.
Power jolted up his arm and he hissed.
“What is it?” Alys asked.