AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He kneeled down beside her so he could drink in her confession. He needed to hear it from her. But she just needed him close. Within arm’s reach. “I regret everything,” Kyoshi said, trembling. “I regret what I did to you so much.”
“Good.” Yun nodded solemnly. “That’s good to hear. What else are you sorry for, Kyoshi? Maybe you should apologize for what you said to me earlier. Telling me I should just forget what happened. That was a terrible thing for you to say.”
“I’m sorry for saying you had to live with your pain.” Kyoshi put her palm to his chest in a gesture of comfort. “Because you won’t.”
The cold she sent through his body formed a tunnel of ice between his ribs. It happened so fast, and with so much force, the moisture in the air behind him turned to frost. His back sprouted vaporous wings of crystal that disappeared just as quickly.
With his heart and lungs frozen solid, Yun fell to the side.
Kyoshi took the hand with which she’d killed one of the two people she’d loved and placed it against the wound of the other. Water. She needed more water. Her tears of light weren’t enough.
“Please,” she said into the past.
There. In the distance. She could feel a response. She could hear the voices helping her, guiding her where to look. Kuruk no longer blocked her path. The Water Avatar opened the door and showed her the way.
The broken ground in front of her rumbled and cracked. A tiny trickle of water leaked out, from the well that supplied the mansion. It was the same water she’d hauled up by the bucket during her servant days.
She nearly laughed at perhaps the most underwhelming use of the Avatar State in history. She’d once pulled earth from the seabed through the depths of the ocean. But this was better, in her mind. Healing was better than destruction. The water coated her hand and began to glow.
She had to reduce her power as much as she could, in order not to damage Rangi further. But there was no more fear in Kyoshi’s heart. She would be her own miracle this time.
Kyoshi watched Rangi’s eyes flutter open. The Firebender looked around the plain wooden room, the broad wooden chest with its myriad little drawers, the charts of energy paths on the walls. She struggled to her elbows atop her bed. “How did I get into the infirmary?” she wheezed.
It was one of the few sections of the mansion still standing. “I brought you here after stabilizing you,” Kyoshi said. “I’ve been working on you since.”
“Yeah,” Kirima snapped. “Leaving us to suffer the whole time.” She waved at her leg and then Wong’s, immobilized in the splints. They sat in chairs against the opposite wall. “You didn’t even give us anything for the pain!”
“Jinpa needed the medicine more!” Kyoshi yelled. The monk lay in the other bed, swaddled in bandages. He’d been dosed with herbal concoctions to dull the agony of his shoulder and gone slightly loopy as a result. He was busy drawing patterns in the air with his good arm and quietly singing tavern songs that a monk shouldn’t have known. Perhaps Kyoshi had given him too much.
“This guy’s not a member of our group!” Wong protested. “Did you swear oaths of brotherhood to him too? Because you’re not allowed to do that! You can only do the actual swearing part to one group!”
“Shut up and stop whining!” Kyoshi mi
ssed the two of them so much it hurt. “The world’s greatest doctor is on her way here right now. She can treat you better than I can.”
She turned back to Rangi. “You’re not properly healed. You’re just not bleeding anymore. In all likelihood you’re going catch a fever from the dirty wound or a punctured gut, and I don’t have the experience to do anything about it. You might even have permanent damage.” Atuat’s hurried, emergency-focused training hadn’t granted Kyoshi as much healing ability as it did knowledge about what abilities she lacked.
Rangi saw her distress. “Kyoshi, I don’t care.”
“I do!” Kyoshi’s confidence had vanished as she’d struggled with Rangi’s injury. It had come down to luck and less than an inch. Maybe Rangi had twisted slightly at the last second, or her armor had deflected the blow. The thin stone blade missed her lung. If it hadn’t, there would have been no helping her.
Kyoshi was ready to call herself the most fortunate Avatar in existence. “You’re going to get worse before you’re better, but Sifu Atuat should be here by then. Your mother too.”
Rangi grew still. “Does that mean Yun is . . . Is it over?”
The others, noticing her shift, went silent. Kyoshi had been asked that very question long ago, after the final time she’d seen both Jianzhu and Yun under the same roof. One her greatest fear, the other her greatest regret. Both of them now gone.
The hollowness left behind let her know the answer for certain this time. “It’s over,” she said.
Rangi cupped her hands over her face. She sniffed, sharp little noises ringing in her palms. Kyoshi pressed her forehead to Rangi’s.
And together they cried for their friend.
THE MEETING
Kyoshi kneeled before the stone.
Using her fans, she’d tried to engrave it with the information normally written about the deceased for posterity, but each time she tried, it was too much for her to bear.
