Cyrene paused and hated how that made sense. “We can afford a day or two.”
“Can you?”
“What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
“It’s nothing that I know for certain. Just what I have a sense of. I think she’s also finished with whatever she’s been working on. She doesn’t confide in anyone but Merrick. He was her first creation, and if she trusts anyone, it’s him. He was traveling between Aurum and the Haeven Mountains…and there was a renewed sense of urgency.”
Cyrene’s heart faltered for a minute. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t even close to ready. She needed more time.
He must have seen the panic on her face. “That’s why we can’t waste time on me.”
“We’ll figure this out, Ahlvie. We leave no man behind.”
He was silent for a moment before he said, “I’m no man.”
She pressed her hand to his chest, where his heart was beating fast. “You are still in there, and I will not let her steal you from me. I don’t give up. And I won’t give up on you.”
39
The Bones
Ahlvie awoke at the same time that Cyrene stepped back into reality.
“That was awful,” Ahlvie groaned, rolling over and promptly throwing up on the stone floor.
She was parched and starving. “Water,” she gasped.
Dean rushed forward, bringing forward a flagon of water. “Here. Drink this.”
She gulped it down as if she had just walked three days through the Fallen Desert without a drop of water. He pushed some bread and cheese into her hands, and it wasn’t until she had eaten every last crumb that she lay back down in relief. Pulling someone else in with her was much more difficult than going in herself.
Dean brought food and water to Ahlvie but then quickly returned to her side. “What happened in there? You were under for half a day.”
Cyrene shot up with wide eyes. “What? It felt like only an hour at most.”
“Time doesn’t always work the same in the spiritual plane you once told me.”
“How is Sarielle?” she gasped, turning to her dragon.
I have been better, Sarielle said. Malysa attempted to intrude. You were under so long, and that awareness you pulled in with you, it is connected to her. She kept trying to discover its presence.
“My apologies. I did not realize that was happening. When I drew Ahlvie in, I could see the split of his existence. I could talk to the real Ahlvie and also see the darkness of Malysa’s taint on the Indres. That must have been what she was reacting to.”
I will need to replenish reserves before we do that again, Sarielle told her.
“Of course. Though I do not know if we will be doing it again. There’s no way to separate him from the Indres. They are one and the same even if they are two different spiritual entities. They are entwined.”
“So, what do we do?” Dean asked.
Cyrene shook her head. “I don’t know. If he shifts, then Malysa can access him. Even an involuntary shift will trigger it. Just having the Indres available on the spiritual plane brought her attention on us. And we can’t force him to stay in that shield forever. I don’t even know if it will prevent the shift. We’ve just been hoping.”
Dean crossed his arms and frowned at the problem. “What if we just keep him from shifting?”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“What if you’re looking at the problem from the wrong angle? Instead of trying to sever the Indres from him or get rid of Malysa’s influence, you just try to prevent the shift. If she can only see through the Indres and not Ahlvie, then preventing the mechanism to access him would keep her out, right?”
Cyrene slowly rose to her feet. She hadn’t considered that.
“It doesn’t solve the ultimate problem,” she said. “If he’s near Malysa again, she could always undo anything that we have done.”
“Temporary solution is better than no solution?” Dean offered.
“Are you sure preventing the shift is possible?” Ahlvie asked from the floor. “I mean…isn’t that still a component of who I am?”
“Yes, but it’s just the trigger point. We wouldn’t actually be cutting off the Indres within. Just stopping him from taking control,” she explained.
“Right. So, you’d still have the beast knocking at the door, but it’d be locked, so he couldn’t open it,” Dean said.
Cyrene stared at Ahlvie with a sigh. “I still…don’t really know how to do that. Plus, I’m tapped. I could sleep for three days straight, and we still have to do that last thing.” She tiptoed around her words just in case Ahlvie wasn’t quite Ahlvie. “I can work on it, but I don’t even know how the shift actually works. Where it comes from. There are so many variables.”
Dean frowned. “True. Why don’t you get some sleep, and I’ll consider the issue?”
“No, we have to do that last thing.”
Dean stepped closer to her. His eyes full of concern. “You cannot step into that city without your body rested and rejuvenated. You need to sleep, and you need to eat more. Sarielle also needs to rest. Let Halcyon and I deal with logistics for once.”
Cyrene could hardly stand at that point, so she was in no room to argue. Dean promised to watch over Ahlvie after he guided her to a pallet he had made up while she was under.
“We have to figure out what to do about him,” Cyrene whispered as she rolled onto her side.
Dean pressed a kiss into her hair. “We will.”
“Not just for me.”
“I know,” he said gravely.
“Avoca will never forgive me if I bring him to the army without a cure. And she’ll never forgive me if I had a chance to bring him back and I didn’t.”
“I know. Let me work on it. I know this is crazy to consider, but you don’t have to do everything.”
“I don’t delegate well,” she said with a small smile.
“I know that, too. Now, get some sleep.”
Cyrene slept for nearly as long as she had been under. But, after eating as much food as her dragon, she felt rejuvenated. Not a hundred percent but close.
She changed into fresh clothes and then moved into the main area of the mountain where Dean stood with Ahlvie. “Any luck?”
Dean turned toward her with a frown. “You’re up.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“I feel like I’m back in Kinkadia,” Ahlvie grumbled. “Not that I loved being Malysa’s puppet and seeing disaster through the beast’s eyes, but I don’t like being a science project either.”
Cyrene sighed. “Yeah, well, we have to figure something out.”
“I’m going to keep trying,” Dean said.
“I’m just going to run the other errand,” she said with a raised eyebrow.
Dean strode across the room and pulled her away. “You can’t go alone.”
“And we can’t leave Ahlvie here.”
“We can leave the dragons.”
“I know that Sarielle and Halcyon are more than capable, but I need you to look after him. To keep trying to figure it out. This is going to be a quick mission. In and out, and I’ll be back before you miss me.”