Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,89
the three. If you bring him back, he’ll most likely live a good, full life.’ And then he looked at me helplessly and asked, ‘Okay?’”
She laughed harshly.
“Thinking back on it now, I realize how asinine it sounded. How little sense it made. People with disorders and disabilities and genetic whatever become amazing change-makers all the damn time. In fact, I don’t think anyone normal ever did a damn thing to make the world a better place. But he was trying to make the decision for me and trying to justify it to me – anything to make me feel better and get me kneeling beside the damn body so I could save the kid’s life.” Annaleia fell silent for a little while. He let her be silent, just holding her.
She was so real, so warm, so small in his arms. For fifty years, he would have given anything and everything he possessed just to have this moment right now, despite the pain, despite the circumstance. That was a lot for a dragon to give up. He didn’t take this moment for granted.
“So I did,” she finally said. “I knelt beside the boy’s body. It was the older boy, the one who looked around nine or ten. I closed my eyes and focused on placing every last ounce of strength or life or energy or whatever you want to call it into my hands and then into him. Just like I had for my mom.”
She took a deep, shaky breath, and let it out in a shudder. “We left that house that night with two children. Behind us in the house of death were a little boy and his slaughtered father. We took the children to the head of another warden clan and told them they were the sole survivors of a job that had gone pear shaped and that their warden mother was still missing. The clan leader told us they would handle it from there, and perhaps wisely – they asked no questions.”
Annaleia pulled at her arms, gently tugging to free them from Ares’ grip. He let her go, and she wiped at her eyes and face. He summoned a cube of facial tissue, and she smiled gratefully, pulling one from its depths to loudly blow her nose. “I found out later on that the new Sirius clan leader went after the Apex who’d killed all those wardens. I heard she found him and killed him. Then she rebuilt the Sirius clan from the ground up. And then she adopted the kids – and taught them to defend themselves.”
He’d heard that too, though he didn’t know who the woman had been at the time. She would be retired now. Or most likely dead.
Ares glanced down at Annaleia, noticing the smallest hint of the edge of one scar peeking out from beneath the collar of her sweater. She still hadn’t told him about the scars.
But just as he was thinking as much, Annaleia glanced down at her left arm, where the cuff of her sweater hit the back of her hand. She pushed it up a little ways, revealing two parallel scars side by side that looked a little like the number eleven. “These are the two scars I earned that day,” she told him. “This one,” she ran her hand over the first one, “appeared on my body when I resurrected my mom. It just opened up – and damn, that was surprising. But then it closed again. Just like that. Leaving a scar.” She moved her fingertip to the second one. “This was the one I got resurrecting the warden’s little boy.” She lowered her hand, taking hold of her sleeve to slowly take it up her entire arm. Revealing more than a dozen other scars just like them. “Every time I use my power to bring someone back, another wound opens up on my body, and that wound becomes a scar. One life, one scar. Over and over again.”
Ares stared down at those marks, utterly at a loss for words. So many times…. So many people she had saved. There must have been nearly a hundred scattered over the skin on her body. And not one of them had prevented her from getting the next one. Not a hint of hesitation. No plans to stop. Annaleia was a one-woman army, fearless, reckless. Do not go gentle into that good night. Dylan Thomas’s epic line should have been her banner, the flag of promise she rode in under