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“No, no, I’m not. I promise you. Everything is going to be okay. We’re together again.”
She pulls away from me, an odd expression taking over her face.
“Look, there’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot since I was recaptured. I, um… I’ve been regretting the fact that I never told you how I really feel about you. But I can’t wait one more second. I love you, Zephiro. I love you so much, and I can’t believe it took me this long to say it.”
“Sierra,” I say, brushing the tears off of her cheeks. “I love you, too. You’re safe now. We’re going to get out of here and start our life together.”
She nods before both of our attention is turned to a Zvori running down the hall towards us. As he gets closer, I recognize that it’s Lorganus. He stops right in front of us, wiping the blood off of his mouth before speaking.
“They’re all dead. Every last one of them. The noble elf arrived, demanding to be brought to her.”
“The noble elf is here?” Sierra asks, trembling.
Lorganus shakes his head, opening his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.
“It’s okay, baby, he will never touch you. You’re with us now. The tribe will protect you.”
“Besides, he was here,” Lorganus explains. “Well, his body still is, but I doubt you need to worry about that.”
She looks up at me, delight slowly spreading through her features as she realizes she’s free. The elf who claimed her is dead.
At this moment, I know that all of this, the bloodshed, the injuries, all of it was worth it for her. I will always do whatever it takes for her, and now for our cub, too.
No matter the cost.
26
SIERRA
There’s so much blood.
Out of wounds encased in burns, blood pools gently around Zephiro’s torso and arms. For the elves to penetrate his hard skin, they clearly incinerated at the same time that they stabbed him, their weapons guided by a strange magic.
“Here, use some of these,” Zkovia says, approaching me with long, stretching pink vines.
I take the vines from him. They are sticky in my fingers and very unwieldy.
“How do I use these?” I ask, feeling stupid.
Zkovia gestures to a mortar and pestle, before hunching over it slowly with a small piece of the vine.
He grinds it up. It’s incredibly soft and does not look like it should be ground, but I trust Zkovia’s knowledge. I’ve heard from other people here that he’s the oldest Zvori in existence.
“Why don’t I grind while you apply pressure?” Zkovia suggests before taking the vines and moving with a dexterity unlike anything I’ve ever seen. He moves so awkwardly and with such difficulty normally that to see his nimbleness here is somewhat surprising.
“You’re going to be okay,” I whisper to Zephiro. “You promised you were going to be okay. So I need you to fight.”
We rushed away from the settlement before they could send reinforcements, knowing that the losses would be great if we stayed.
“You don’t need to worry yourself,” Zkovia says, taking a finely ground sap from out of the mortar and rubbing it over Zephiro’s wounds. “Zephiro has been through far worse than this. He just needs his rest.”
I look at the wounds, which would very clearly kill a human, in disbelief. The sap starts to take hold, and the burn marks around the wounds sizzle, beginning to vanish with a popping noise.
“I thought he was going to die,” I whisper.
Zkovia emits a raspy, hearty laugh.
“We Zvori are much more formidable than your kind. I don’t think there’s anything that could take us down without our permission.”
