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“Calista,” Silas’s haggard voice followed as we raced into the trees where folk were taking the wounded, the broken. Where they took Tor.
“I need to get to him.”
Two clearings were already filled with fae, running about trying to tend to those we’d been able to drag behind the wards and barriers.
Warriors stood watch in the trees. The injured we were able to reach were laid out between them. Tova set to work along with Niklas and Elixist Falkyns. She was one of the few Mediski Alvers who knew how to heal the body, at least well enough to keep most folk breathing.
The Norn sisters aided with their hums of rune spells to cast away pain and blood.
I wanted to vomit at the sight of Gorm pacing near Cuyler’s head. Blood coated my Blood Fae’s—my friend’s—face. I could hardly make his features out beneath the gore.
A compress made of healing oils and blue moss was wadded into a clump by Tova. “Hold it; stop the bleeding.”
“His eye?” Perhaps for the first time, I heard the blood lord’s voice waver.
Tova shook her head. “I don’t know. You speak in absolutes, Lord Gorm, so I’ll be frank—stop the bleeding, or he’s gone.”
Gorm’s pale eyes shadowed. He took the moss and knelt by his son. Soft whispers, words not meant for us, came from the blood lord to his warrior son.
Next to them, Hagen Strom gripped his brother’s shoulder as Tova fought her own tears and stitched up a festering gash on Bard Strom’s throat. Deep and dangerous should it bleed much longer.
I blinked through the tears and kept running toward the center clearing.
In the corner of my gaze, the dead were laid out and tended to by Raum, Isak, my Shadow Queen’s thieving friend, and his wife.
Pain was hot and cruel and carved through my chest as I took in the fallen. Magus of the Court of Serpents stared blankly at the treetops, his spell-caster mother’s body at his side. The eldest serpent sister dropped to her knees, her bloody blade across her lap.
The woman’s big, owlish eyes were soaked in silent tears as her folk crossed both Magus’s and Yarrow’s hands over their chests, daggers in their lifeless grips. The woman placed a kiss to each of their heads.
I kept running.
Ettan warriors with their thorns and roses embossed on their gambesons were laid out. Falkyns and huldra and blood fae. So many of our people.
A cruel fissure snapped through my chest at the sight of the once-cursed tracker from the South. Bo sobbed against the unmoving chest of Rune—the winged fae who’d befriended Saga and my Golden King.
They’d taken so long to love each other after the battles in the South. Now, their time was stolen too soon.
A tear fell onto my cheek. No more. No morehjärtaswould be lost.
I forced my gaze ahead and ran for the crowd in the center of the trees. Where was he?
The gleam of the wards near the shore were still bright. How long we’d be separated from the sea fae, from Davorin, I didn’t know. I couldn’t think. I could hardly breathe.
My skin was on fire. Unseen flames licked down my arms to my fingertips where the lingering burn of seidr faded. I ignored the bite of pain and sprinted toward the crowd, the anguished cries in the center of the clearing.
“Stop the bleeding,” Sol shouted, his voice thick with agony. “Tor, stay awake. You look at me.”
My Lump was hunched over his consort, one hand behind his neck. Elise, Arvad, and Valen had their hands on Tor, trying to stop the wretched fountain of blood bubbling through the wound in his chest.
“Tor,” Sol’s voice cracked. He pressed his forehead to his lover’s brow. “Stay here. Alek needs you. I need you.Please,dammit,open your eyes.”
Sol buried his face into the crook of Tor’s neck, cradling his consort’s head. Tor’s chest was barely moving, and every breath he did take rattled in wet blood. Bile burned my throat—the Otherworld was opening its gates.
Everyone else knew it.
Ari’s face was hard as stone. He clung to Saga’s hand without mercy, and looked nowhere but Torsten Bror’s unmoving, bloody body. Kase’s eyes were black as midnight. Malin and Herja tried to help in stopping the bleeding, taking Elise’s place when my Kind Heart would hurry away, sobbing without trying to stop it, and snatch up more moss, more stained linens.
Halvar lowered to one knee beside Tor’s legs and gripped his friend’s ankle, like he wanted to be there as he stepped into the hall of the gods. Kari kept a hold on her husband’s shoulder. She didn’t speak a word, but what she knew would happen was written in every furrow of her face.
