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Tyr found a half-drunk bottle of spirits and froze. He looked around. “Where’s Ludya?”
“Summoned.”
“What? Where?” Tyr hadn’t even seen her leave.
Grigor held up a poorly folded sheet, tearing it into rough strips. “She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.” He tossed a few of the scraps to Tyr, who caught them on the way back to the table.
Tyr dropped the fabric into piles and set the liquor near Ana’s shoulder. He pulled the knife from his boot and cut jagged lines down the middle of her dress to remove it. “She better be back soon. We don’t have time.”
“Nien.” Grigor pulled his own flask from his vest, took a nip, and sprinkled some onto Ana’s mangled legs. There was far too much blood to make sense of her injuries, but without a healer, withoutLudya,she would lose both legs to infection. “She won’t be.”
“How’s that?” Tyr asked, panic settling in. He’d harnessed it through finding her, through watching her bounce, limp, on Grigor’s shoulder covered in so much blood, but those had been constructive actions, needed to get her to safety so Ludya could fix what had been horribly broken.
“She said you would know what to do.” Grigor tore another strip with his mouth and wrapped it around one of her bare thighs, pulled it taut, and moved on to another. He glanced up long enough to share his impatience. “So fucking do it already.”
“But I—” Tyr mopped at Ana’s wounds, but cruel memories of Adeline dying in front of his eyes eclipsed the hope he’d felt. His failure had nearly cost her—and their family—everything. If not for Ana, it would have. He hadn’t healed in years, and in that time his talent had been squandered, forgotten. “Ludya... She was mistaken. I can’t do anything more than you can.”
Grigor blinked away sweat, his nose flaring. “If Ludya says you can, you can. But Ana will die on this table if you stand there overthinking it. If you love her, save her.”
Grigor was wrong. Ludya was wrong. They were both horribly, terribly wrong, and their wrongness would be the end of Ana.
If Tyr was all Ana had, and his choice was to stand, immobile, in helpless defeat, she had no chance at all.
Another memory invaded. Rhiain, bringing Asterin to him after the man had been beaten near to death. The desperation in her eyes as she’d begged him to save the man she loved... and then hehad, even as his own heart broke.
Tyr reached behind him and dragged a chair to the table. He dropped onto it and peeled Ana’s bloodied hands away from her chest, gathering them into his. “Don’t you dare die on me.” He rubbed her hands in his, searching for the place in his mind he used to go to find the healing magic. “You... You are the breath in my tired lungs. The beats of my fractured heart. The peace in my tortured mind. And if the Guardians or the Ancestors asked me to be the breath in your lungs, the beats in your heart, the peace in your mind, for the rest of our days, just to keep you with me, there would be but one answer for me to give.” He kissed her hands, enveloped by his trembling ones, tears running down his face and over blood both dried and fresh.
A full, stuffed feeling spread across his chest and down his arms, then into his hands. He caught Grigor observing him from the corner of his eye as the man tied tourniquets.
Tyr slowly climbed onto the table, careful not to brush the angry gashes slashed across her poor, battered body. He hovered over her on all fours, pulled in a deep, swollen breath, and pressed his mouth to hers, turning off any part of him not fully connected to her.
The room disappeared. Grigor. The acrid scent of cheap spirits. The cold from a room not yet warmed.
Only Ana remained.
Tyr’s tongue parted her lips, allowing air to flow into her and through her lungs, and breathed for her while she could not, waiting to feel her giving as many breaths as she took.
Thrumming pulsed in his ears, swiftly increasing its pace, his heart beating where hers failed to, beatingthroughher. He could spare no thrill in the victory, though, because there was so much left to do before her heart could again beat independently of his.
You still have everything to stay for.He’d sent the same words to Asterin, telepathically, as he’d pulled him back from the brink over five years ago—the same words he’d sent to everyone he’d ever helped. But his next words were solely for her.You are brave, beautiful, and perfect. You are strong. You see the hurt you’ve caused but fail to see the joy. You saved me, not once but many times. You saved my sister. You have saved your father and your brother, every day of your life since the one she came into it. You are not the terrible thing you were forced to do. And if you leave us now, Anastazja, you’ll never get the chance to prove it.
He sent these thoughts from his mind to hers, waiting for her thoughts to become her own once more.
Guardians, hear my prayers. You have left every one I’ve ever sent unanswered, but you must hear me now. For if you brought me back from the edge of life only to wound me beyond measure, to watch me say good-bye to the love of my life, then you may as well take me too.
Ana’s pulse jumped to life. He imagined his heart moving back into his own chest, to give hers space to beat on its own. She sputtered, gasping, so he tilted her head back to clear her airway. She huffed out one breath. Two. Another. Short, stilted, desperate... but each one more productive than the last.
Grigor rushed over, but Tyr shook his head, to wait.
Tyr hovered over her, frozen. The next part would be the hardest. It had nothing to do with magic.
Come back to me, love.
Nothing.
Grigor grunted and paced. He threw the remaining scraps at the wall.
Ana, come back to me. We’ll find Niko. We’ll help your father. We’ll make everything right. You and me. Together.
