He squeezed her fingers and fell into darkness.
Liquid gold trickled down his raw, burned throat. He swallowed reflexively once, twice, then erupted into coughing, and that hurt so bad it brought him back awake.
“Goddammit,” somebody said miserably. “It’s all about you again, isn’t it? Wake up and drink this right now, do you hear me? I hurt so bad, and I’m so tired, and all I want is another hug from you, AND YOU CAN’T DIE ON ME, QUENTIN, BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE THE FINAL FUCKING STRAW! I SCREWED UP MY WINGS EVEN MORE TO SAVE YOUR LIFE, YOU ROTTEN SON OF A BITCH. PARAGLIDING IS A STUPID IDEA, AND I’M DONE, I’LL BE SO DONE IF YOU DIE! DONE!”
It was definitely something, to have a harpy throw a screaming shit fit in your face. Just about enough to wake the dead. Her powerful lungs drove each word like a railroad spike into his head. It was like the worst hangover ever times a thousand.
He whispered, “I know I’ve already bought you, but do you by any chance come with a snooze button?”
“Shut up,” she sniveled. “You suck. Drink the rest of this.” Her ragged breathing sounded in his ear as she lifted his head with one trembling hand and nudged his lips with the rim of a small bottle.
Half-conscious as he was, he still remembered how precious that bottle was, and he closed his lips firmly around it so that none of the liquid could escape. She tilted the bottle, and he drank the contents down.
Power glided into his body and started to supernova. She held another bottle to his mouth, and he drank that too, then a third, as quickly as he could just before an upsurge of pain hit.
It ran over him like a steamroller, the Power of the healing potions working through his body to repair extensive damage. It might save his life if it didn’t kill him first. His lungs felt like they had been pumped full of napalm, and he arched his back as he struggled to breathe. For years afterward, he would wake up from nightmares of drowning and suffocation.
Aryal bent over him, supporting him as best she could with one arm as she laid her cheek against his good one, whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay. Don’t fight so hard, it’ll pass in a moment. It’s going to be okay.”
Shuddering, he concentrated on the sound of her voice until finally the pain began to recede, and he sagged against her. His lungs still felt raw and tender, but he no longer felt like he was smothering.
Vision began to return to his healing eye, and as he looked up at her, she came halfway in focus. At some point she had ditched her breastplate, and he rested against her torso. Her gaze was hollowed out again, and she looked beyond exhausted. Her sleeveless tunic was torn, and she was filthy, sandy and still covered in blood. Underneath the blood at her shoulder, her skin looked purple with a gigantic bruise.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said.
Her eyebrows rose as she gave him the ultimate in skeptical looks. “You need more healing potion,” she told him. She picked up another small bottle and raised it to her mouth to bite out the cork.
He grabbed her wrist. “Wait, how many was that again? We only had five each.”
“I drank one. One of the shadow wolves tagged me and I wouldn’t stop bleeding,” she said. Her voice was beginning to slur. “I had to set my broken leg first. Nothing I could do about the wings. They’re so messed up, just, whatever.”
The exhausted hopelessness in that made his heart constrict. She had taken so much damage, one potion would have barely taken the edge off of it, just enough to start the healing process again on that bite wound. “You need that one too.”
“No.” She bit out the cork. “You do, because you’re the one-trick pony guy, right? You get better, and then you can help me.”
She made sense. As he got stronger, he could help her with at least some basic healing. Reluctantly he let go of her wrist. “Yeah, okay.”
She held the bottle up to him, and he drank. Fiery pain started to build again, as the Power in the potion forced injuries to heal. Healing potion could only do so much. The rest was up to the body’s resources, but it could sometimes mean the difference between life and death, and it was a strong step forward.
“So you’re alive now,” Aryal mumbled. “Okay then.”
Her arm loosened from around him, and he caught himself on one elbow as he spilled out of her hold. He twisted around to find that she had slumped over in the sand.
His overworked heart thumped. He reached to check her pulse, and while it raced too fast, it beat strongly against his fingers. Relief spun in his head. This trip had aged him something like twenty years.
He looked down her sprawled body and around at the surrounding area. She had maneuvered to the pier and found his longbow too, along with his supply sack, and she had splinted one of her legs with the wood from their longbows, tying them with the bowstrings. The length of wood was much too long for her leg, and she had drawn crazy patterns in the sand as she worked back to his side.
The kind of passion and determination that took made the back of his eyes smart. He had no words for what he saw.
No words, except: “I think you might be both my suicide and my salvation.” And he needed her for both. “I love you like a heart attack, woman.”
She didn’t reply. She was out cold. He turned onto his uninjured side and curled around her, blood, filth, sand and all, and then somebody must have shot out his headlights inside because darkness slammed down on him again.
The sun woke him. He didn’t want it to. He covered his head with one arm and drifted for a while, but then it got too fierce. Finally he sat up to look around.
The fucked-up, perforated bitch’s body still lay sprawled on the sand where Aryal had left it. Several feet away her head bobbed at the edge of the shoreline. A single bark of laughter burst out of him at the gruesome sight. It hurt so much that he stopped. It wasn’t funny anyway.
He bent over Aryal, gently pushing her bloody hair back from her face. Her pulse had slowed to a less alarming pace, and it still beat steadily. The sun had already started to turn her pale skin pink.
It was his turn now to deal with things. He managed to get up on his knees, then to his feet. Part of him was wild to get out of his own armor, but as he looked down at the half-melted mess at his chest, he knew that was going to hurt like a son of a bitch. So first things first.
His supply sack lay beside her, along with all the scattered, empty bottles that had held the healing potion. Okay, there was food in that sack, and hopefully the brandy bottle hadn’t broken. Day was looking up. He limped to the last boat on the pier to retrieve the wineskin of water. Now for shelter. He looked in the boats until he found a folded canvas sail. Then he walked back to Aryal, dragging the sail behind him.
Jamming their swords tip first into the sand on either side of her, he took one end of the sail and draped it across the hilts so that the top half of Aryal’s body lay in shade.
“I am a goddamn genius,” he told her. The cry of seagulls answered him.
After he took two swallows of water, he knelt and lifted her head to moisten her lips with a small trickle. Then he stopped the wineskin and sprawled beside her, half in the shade. He would work off the armor after a little rest. Just needed to close his eyes for a few minutes.
He found one of her hands and laced his fingers through hers.
This time when the darkness sucked him down, it was mingled with peace.
This time he dreamed he was in a sauna. Galya’s severed head sat on the bench and sneered at him. She tried to convince him that he wanted to become her shadow panther, and he kicked her into a corner, which was against sauna rules, and somebody started tapping on the door in reprimand, and that pissed him off so much he woke with a start.