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“Can she feel this?” I gulped.
“No,” Red said, her voice hoarse. She reached up and I took her hand.
“You’re fine. You’ll be fine.” Softly, so worried I’d break her more than she already was, I pressed a kiss to her fingers. Even now, in the state she lay in, she frowned at the gesture.
Without looking up from his work, the healer responded to the question I didn’t have the courage to pose. “She’s dying. I can patch her up for now, give her a few more days, a couple of weeks tops, but they ripped through her kidneys. I was able to heal just about everything else, but I can’t do anything for organs that are already dead.”
“What does that mean?” Red gripped my hand tighter as I shouted the question. I wanted to lunge for the healer’s throat to shake him until he told me there was some other outcome than her death. Red had hardly gotten to live.
“She’s poisoning herself,” he said plainly. “She can’t filter out her body's toxins and eventually she’ll shut down.”
“No,” I argued as if it would help. I shook my head. The long pieces of hair stuck to the sweat on my face and forehead.
“Milo,” Red whispered. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not!”
“If either of us gets to be mad, it damn well should be me. I’m the one dying,” she moaned as she pushed herself to sit up on her elbows.
“Don’t move,” the healer snapped.
“Shut up, I’m dying. I can move if I want to,” Red barked back. She faced me with a new softness in her features. “Use me.”
“What?” I stuttered. “What are you talking about?”
“Take me to Tierasia. Use me to break the oath. You said it yourself, you don’t care about anyone, but you care about me. Take me. Use me.”
“You’re delirious,” I laughed dryly.
“Damn it, Milo,” she hissed, pulling apart newly stitched skin as she twisted to look at me more fully. The healer huffed under his breath, backtracking to the new tear. She lowered herself slowly, her cheeks red. “Don’t let my death be for nothing. I don’t want to die because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Make it mean something, let me help you. It’s the only thing I can do.” She breathed heavily. “I’ve thought about this before. Never in a million years would I give my life for you, but seeing as I’m dying anyways...”
“I can’t let you die at her hands. I can’t…I can’t watch that.”
“I just want it to mean something.” Her eyes were shiny with fresh tears, though she refused to blink.
“Can she make the trip?” I turned toward the healer. It felt selfish to even ask, like in her final hour I was taking advantage of her, but if this was her last wish...the one thing I could do for her to make it mean something, then I would. Then I had to. Even if it would kill me to watch my queen bathe in her blood.
“If it’s a short one, yes, but if it’s going to take a lot of time, I can’t guarantee it. She’ll be weak at the end. Eventually, her body will start shutting down, and essentially she’ll be in a coma until it suddenly all just stops.”
A single tear ran down Red’s face as he spoke and she swiped her hand across her cheek to catch it. She bit into her thin lip so hard that I was certain her teeth were meeting in the middle.
“I’ll…I’ll talk to King Windre,” I finally said, though even that alone was hard to mutter.
“I’ll say yes,” King Windre’s voice said firmly behind me.
Twisting, I nearly fell back onto Red as I realized he was sitting with his legs folded underneath him on the cot behind us. King Windre was stroking his braid, his expression solemn.
“How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to know it’s what she wants. You don’t belong here anyway, Milo. It’s time you return home.”
“What about the tokens?” I asked, though I hardly wanted to hear the answer.
“One will stay here, but we have made arrangements for the second to go back to Tierasia. There’ll be a shift in power, I presume.”
“Randsin?” His name fell from my lips quickly, my guess at who would follow me home and reach for the crown. Somehow, he and I were destined to have intertwining paths.
King Windre nodded. “Barthalow is dead, by the way. He did do a number on the guards at the gate, regrettably. Randsin and the girl have been taken to another room to be evaluated. I didn’t want you to strain more than you already had outside.” He shrugged, not making any move to get up from the position he had folded himself into.
