But so profound was this change in me – not towards death, but towards life – that I became able to open my eyes. I was still blinded – this time by bright white light instead of black smoke.
No. It was not blindness. It was the Vrika.
Its great body arched above me. Blood gushed from its tail, raining down on my face, my chest. Blood from the place the borog had bitten it.
I did not allow myself to dare to hope. I only lay there, silent and unmoving, still not quite able to breathe as the Vrika healed me with that most potent source of its fresh blood.
I did not deserve this. Many men died without the Vrika’s intervention.
Gahn Seerak being one of them.
Why me?
I did not answer you. I did not follow you.
Breath filled my lungs, and it only hurt in the way an old bruise might, my flesh tender and tight but ultimately alive. Tilting my chin, I let my gaze cascade down my body. I glowed as the Vrika did, completely coated in its blood.
This was more than Vrika’s blood in a jar could accomplish. No healer would have been able to save me. Only the Vrika, the Vrika that I had not heeded, was capable of it.
But it did not answer the question of why.
With the worst parts of my ravaged body now healed, the Vrika moved away, giving me a startlingly clear view of the sky. We were so high up. Impossibly so, it seemed, no other peak as tall as this one.
The Vrika’s peak.
I was in its nest.
And when something smooth and cool bumped my side, I suddenly knew why the Vrika had saved me.
“No,” I rasped, turning my head to see the Vrika’s egg beside me. The egg that, once broken, would bind me to my mate forever. The Vrika watched me with endless eyes from behind its egg. Without me even touching it, the egg cracked.
“No,” I said again, with as much force as I could muster. “No, Vrika.”
If this was why it had saved me, it should have just let me die.
The top of the egg fell away. As if the mate vision was a living thing that needed to be born whether I was ready or not.
Inside the egg was a face.
I tried to wrench my newly-healed eyes away. Tried not to see.
But hers had never been a face that I could look away from.
Green sight stars were the last thing I saw before my healed – but terribly weakened body – collapsed into total oblivion.
22
NASRIN
Ifrowned, trying to curl into sleep as someone grasped my shoulder through the warm blankets and shook it.
“What is it, Thaleo?” I grumbled.
“That’s a strange way to say Tilly.”
My eyes shot open. Dawn was stealing in with cool grey fingers.
“What is it?” I tried to clear the fog of grogginess that had gripped me upon waking since my head injury. But I knew this was unusual. No one had bothered waking me up early while I’d been recovering.
