wouldn’t have to think of any of it.
Not ever again.
Soon, she’d fly free. Perhaps she’d even find her mother waiting for her. Perhaps she’d find peace.
Her heart did another skipping bump and she smiled at the feel of her own heart dying.
It didn’t hurt. She hadn’t known if there would be pain or not. With her mixed blood, it was never easy to say which trait she’d inherit.
When it came to heart ailments, it seemed the elvish in her had won out again. Her heart’s strength was merely…slipping away. Ever slowing beats and eventually she would drift into a sleep that could linger for days or weeks.
Without the treatments her people knew, she would be dead within a month. And mostly likely even those would not help. Human or elvish will made up for so much.
Tyriel had no will left. No desire left to live and suffer and fight.
There was a brush on the edges of her mind that felt oddly familiar as she drifted closer to sleep. The contact warmed her and almost stirred her to curiosity. But her exhaustion won out. Still, that presence warmed her as she slid into sleep.
For once, she didn’t feel alone.
The crashing of doors, the burning smoke didn’t faze her at all.
* * * * *
The low, sprawling house, so lavishly built, wasn’t at all what Aryn expected.
When the songs were sung of heroes heroically rescuing the Princess, it was from a towering, craggy cliff, or a cave buried deep in a jungle.
But the steed had started to liven, and purpose had returned to his eyes. The wildness had slowly leeched out of the intelligent steed over the day and half since they’d found him but now, he truly resembled the beast Aryn remembered from years past.
And he knew why.
They’d found her.
Somewhere in that stately home, Tyriel lay trapped, beaten, alone, likely thinking she’d been abandoned.
We’re coming, he thought, wishing he could send the thought winging to her.
This was where Kilidare had led them, where Aryn’s heart and soul had been guiding him. They had stumbled through a thick, obscuring fog that tasted metallic, almost poisonous, burning and stinging Aryn’s eyes.
“’Tis illusion,” Jaren said quietly from atop his mount. His dark-green eyes shifted to a paler color as power rolled through them. One hand lifted and his fingers spread, flexed, and a mist of light formed, then dissipated. “It feels deadly, but it isn’t. It’s just a protective shield. It hides something.”
The something had been this place, this house. After the light had dissipated from Jaren’s hand, the fog surrounding them had started to lift. And as they moved, it lifted ever more until they moved into a circle of free air. By midday, it was all gone. And at nightfall, they came to the edge of a clearing in the woods and that low sprawling structure came into view.
In the light of the full moon, Jaren said, “I feel her, her strength wanes.”
And the stallion near went mad, scenting her. Aryn could feel her, too.
The strategist in him would prefer a plan of sorts and he muttered just that out loud.
Jaren slid him a narrow look, his eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the dark. “As would I, swordsman. But her time runs short. I did not leave my Princess with good words between us. She is young, too young, too good a woman to die in such a place as this. And I know this scent—’tis my fault she is in there. At the time, I did not believe he would come seeking her so quickly.”
Aryn lifted a brow, quizzically.
“Didn’t you wonder how I knew you were in the city?” Jaren’s humorless laugh came, faded. “You are in the presence of one of the few psychic warriors known among the kin, swordsman.”
Irian was oddly quiet.
The blade at Aryn’s back was becoming heavier, the way it had in the early years, before Aryn had realized just what he held when he first took up the blade. “Know you, friend, it grieves me that it led to this. If I had known she would come to any danger, any pain…never would I have risked her, never.”
As they crept closer, their presence muffled by the deft touch of Jaren’s magic, Irian spoke somberly into Aryn’s mind.
“It’s not your fault, Irian. Tyriel has always done what Tyriel wants to do—and her actions shouldn’t have put her at risk, but they did. That isn’t your fault.”
“Ahhh, but my wanting her so desperately clouded my thinking. And