Mal released the tendril of cloud with effort and the rain slowed; water was not easy for him to control.
He staggered over the mud to fall at the base of Scarlet’s tree. He leaned against the trunk of her tree.
“Scarlet,” he begged. “Scarlet, you have to fight, you can’t give up. I’m nothing without you, I’m no one. I may as well let the wyrm drown the world if I lose you because there will be nothing left for me here. Dammit, Scarlet, you stubborn pain in my ass, if you don’t shake this off, I’ll... I’ll...”
Mal ran out of words, something that hadn’t happened in recent memory, and he pressed his face into her bark and felt tears prick behind his eyes.
At first he thought that the song he heard was the ache of his own heart. Then he realized it was a voice, and he looked up to find the mermaid, Saina, standing with her legs planted, singing, and there was an unexpected tickle of magic as her voice soared.
Chapter 24
Scarlet was floating.
Pain was a concept she had never understood. She sympathized with it, saw what it did to humans and shifters, but it had always been an abstract; it was a thing that happened to other people, not to her.
Now, she was all pain. Pain and poison and darkness. She could feel the salt in her veins, biting into her power, sucking it away.
She wasn’t floating, she was sinking, sinking through the earth as she had when Mal had taken her into the depths of the island.
But this time, she was alone and adrift, without Mal’s wings folded protectively around her, and she wasn’t sure which way was up.
All around her was laughter and a whisper like silk against silk.
Mal? she tried to call. He was so far away.
And someone else answered.
Ah... the tree.
There was a malevolence with her: a terrible, powerful presence that had always been safely below, safely slumbering.
Scarlet could not see, but she could sense great eyes on her, half-lidded. You were one of the ones who could stop me, a silvery voice whispered. The tree and the song. Together with the stone dragon, you could have kept me in my prison, rebuilt my cage around me.
The song? Scarlet felt like her mind was moving sluggishly, like she was on the verge of understanding something just out of her capability. Everything hurt.
She could hear... singing.
Of course! He meant Saina.
Saina was trying to sing the salt from her... but Scarlet knew it was too late, the damage was too deep and it had already hurt her tree too badly. Even if Saina could draw every crystal from her veins, her tree was dying; Scarlet’s power was already drained.
She could feel the wyrm grin and suddenly recognized its plan.
You did this on purpose! You’re trying to get her to exhaust herself saving me! It had neutralized the two of them in one simple move.
Behind her, there was another set of eyes opening in the darkness.
I don’t take chances, the feathered wyrm chuckled from its second head.
This was our third try, the first head admitted. She resisted the first attempt.
The second snapped, You pushed too far, too fast, promised too much.
The broken mind should have done her job the second time. The first one whined.
It’s been undone, somehow. I think the broken mind went back, but we don’t know when, the second speculated.
The first head growled. It’s too bright between the broken mind and the stag. We can’t always see there.