Alwyn stumbled back and collapsed into the dirt. The pain was fading, though everything was still red with fire. He didn’t know what had happened to the horses, or the orc guards who had been stationed along the path, but it didn’t matter now. His mission was finally done. It might have been the messiest kill he’d ever made, but it wasdone.
But his thoughts were not with Tessarion as he closed his eyes. He thought of Krujha, hoping he could escape—but then the image of the cottage by the waterfall filled his vision, the fire still so fresh in his memory, and for a moment, it felt as if he were closer than ever to finally making out the faces of the elves in his dreams. He had never hoped so desperately that they were real.
“Please be you,” he croaked, his eyes burning. He could feel his tears evaporating before they could fall. “Mama, please be you.”
All he could hear were his own gasping breaths and the roar of the flames that still surrounded him. Everything was going dark.
“Alwyn!”
The shout piercing into his awareness was familiar.
“Krujha?” He wasn’t sure if he spoke the name aloud, or only thought it.
“Alwyn!” The roar came again, closer now. His eyes opened, and through the red haze Alwyn could see two orcs racing up the hill on horseback. He didn’t recognize one, but the other he would have known even in complete darkness. Krujha leapt off his horse, wrenching his heavy cloak off his shoulders.
“Don’t,” he cried, weakly trying to shuffle away. “Let me burn. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’m not leaving you!” Krujha shouted. He stumbled into the inferno, smothering Alwyn with the thick cloak and the weight of his own body. The smell of burning fur immediately singed Alwyn’s nose. Fresh pain exploded through all of Alwyn’s senses; he heard himself wailing before he was even aware of it. “I have you. Remember how you shielded yourself, your magic, making it small? You have to do it now, Alwyn, you have to try and stop this!”
“I can’t,” he whimpered. “I can’t.”
“You have to,” Krujha urged, his strong arms squeezing agonizingly around him. “Don’t make me watch you die, spitfire. We’re so close. Please, please don’t do this to me now.”
Alwyn closed his eyes. He could feel the tiny spark of magic inside Krujha—that spark inside all living things he had been trained to hone in on like a sixth sense. He reached for it now, not to drive his magic through it to kill, but clinging to it like a lifeline, something that would siphon the runaway magic away from him.
And, somehow, itdid. Like a river flowing naturally toward the sea, he urged his magic into Krujha’s empty well, away from the sigil that was still drawing upon his power. And all at once, the flames surrounding them died, their source extinguished.
It didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t like anything he had ever been trained in. But the fire was gone, his magic with it, and Krujha wasalive.
“There you go. I knew you could do it,” Krujha panted, finally pulling away from him, visibly trembling. Alwyn was too weak to do anything but lie in his arms. His eyes were wild and terrified. “You’re okay now. You’re okay.”
Alwyn only nodded, darkness overtaking his vision again. Everything would be okay now. Krujha was alive.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Krujha
For an instant, all was silent and still.
Had he made it in time? Krujha still wasn’t entirely sure. He and Brugo had only just gotten their horses out of the camp when the hilltop in the distance exploded in flame, as if it had become a volcano. It was a miracle that they had made it up the slope without incident; there were a few orc guards along the way, but in the chaos no one stopped them.
He still didn’t know exactly what had happened, why Alwyn was there—but his intuition had been right. It had been madness for him to rush into the inferno surrounding the elf, yet he had done it anyway. If he could just get to Alwyn, he knew somehow that he could stop whatever was happening to the assassin, could stop the fire from consuming him entirely.
He didn’t quite understand what Alwyn had done, either, but when the flames had died all at once, he could feel the magic flowing through him, too—as if Alwyn had used him as some kind of conduit, a floodgate to turn off the rush of power that was burning the very air around them. For one terrifying instant, his body felt as though it were blazing from within, but then thesensation vanished as quickly as it had come, and then Alwyn had gone entirely limp. He didn’t understand it, but he didn’t have time to dwell.
The burnt bodies of Zesh and Yarug lay a little ways away. Some small, distant part of him felt a pang of disappointment—for all his preparation for this moment, he couldn’t be the one to kill Zesh himself. But he had far more pressing concerns now.
“We’ve got to get back down to the camp,” Brugo said from behind him, shaking him from his thoughts. “I need to get to the elves.”
“Go,” Krujha rasped, clutching Alwyn to him as he stood on shaky legs. The elf’s eyes were open, but unfocused, and he was still slack in his arms. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Brugo’s eyes lingered on Alwyn’s unmoving form, his expression grim; but after a beat, he turned and scrambled back onto his horse.
Krujha could barely stand to carry Alwyn, with how raw and blistered his skin looked. For a moment, he stood beside his horse, unsure of how to get the elf on it without hurting him any further. His wounds were grievous. He needed to get him to a healer as soon as he could, but he didn’t want to make his injuries even worse by mishandling him.
The fire seemed to have come from Alwyn himself, so his burns were a far cry from the charred remains of the two orcs, but clearly he had not been immune to the heat. His fair skin was red and blistered, weeping in several spots. His eyebrows and eyelashes had been burned off entirely, and his mousy brown hair was singed in multiple places, as were his tattered clothes.
“Come on, Krujha,” Brugo called, his horse cantering onto the path back down the hill. “We don’t have time!”
