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I just prayed I wasn’t too late to see them one last time.
51
Lily
They were still there, still tied to the tree branch with their arms stretched above their heads. Krynn had slumped to his knees, his tattered wings dragging the ground. Sel was still somehow upright, but he was barely breathing and when I put my hands on his cheeks and lifted his head so I could see him, his eyes were such a dark brown color they were almost black.
“Princess…” he rasped out. “You…came.”
“Of course I came!” I was crying—the tears rolling down my cheeks though I barely noticed. “Oh Sel, please don’t leave me! Please, I need you both!”
Krynn raised his head with an obvious effort.
“Can’t…help it…my Lady,” he breathed, his voice barely more than a whisper. “So…sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry! I should have found a way to save you!”
“Excuse me, your Highness?” someone said. I didn’t realize they were talking to me until they repeated the title and then said, “Queen Lilliana?”
The sound of my name got my attention and I turned to see a squadron of the Palace Guards standing there, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.
“Forgive me, my Queen.” The young Fae guard at the head of the squadron bowed deeply to me. “But is there anything we can do to help the Captain?”
“Cut him down!” I somehow managed to say. “Cut both of them down. I need…need to be with them at…at the end.”
The guards obeyed quickly, cutting the ropes that held Krynn and Sel in place. They laid them gently, side by side on the ground under the giant oak tree they’d been tied to. I sat between them, heedless of the dirt and mud getting on my gown, and cradled both their heads in my lap. The guards stood by watching uneasily but I was too upset to ask them to leave.
Suddenly, Lady Nolana was there again at my side.
“Oh my dear!” she exclaimed. “I am so very sorry!”
I was too—but I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to give up!
“There must be a way!” I sobbed, my tears falling like rain on both of my guy’s faces as I cradled their heads. “There must be some way to save them! I can call lightning from the sky and make a freaking thorn bush grow in under a minute—there must be a way I can reverse this poison!” I looked at Lady Nolana hopefully. “When I bite them, I’m able to heal their wounds afterwards. Maybe if I tried to suck out the poison…”
Her eyes grew wide.
“No, my Queen—you mustn’t! Bitterworm is a deadly poison—the first sip of their blood would kill you or drive you mad!”
“There has to be a way, though!” I said stubbornly. “Some way I can heal them!”
“But my Queen, though you can heal the wounds of those you bite, you are not a Healer,” Lady Nolana said gently. “As powerful as you are, you have no Healing Magic with which to counteract the poison.”
“No,” I said. “No, I guess not. I—” Then I stopped. “The Palace Healer!” I exclaimed.
“What?” Lady Nolana asked, frowning.
“The Palace Healer—I know there is one. I heard Sel and Krynn talking about him,” I said. I looked up at the young guard who had asked if I needed help. “You—go and fetch me the Palace Healer at once and bring him here.”
“Yes, my Queen!” He and several other Palace Guards rushed off. When they returned shortly afterwards, they were dragging an older High Fae with a long silver beard dressed in a white robe. ‘The Healer, my Queen!” the young guard said and pushed him forward.
The older Fae looked at me fearfully.
“My Queen—what can I do for you?” he asked.
“These two have been given bitterworm poison,” I said to him. “Can you cure them with your Healing Magic?”
“Let me see their eyes.” The Healer knelt beside me and lifted one of Krynn’s eyelids. When he saw the dark brown color, he shook his head. “My Queen, I am very sorry but this one is too far gone! My magic alone isn’t enough. You would need a thousand Healers to cleanse the corruption from his system.” He looked at Sel’s eyes and shook his head again. “I am sorry—the Captain of the Guard is also too ill to be saved.”
