Jaetheiri did not pause to contemplate Dathari’s death. She tore me from her corpse’s death grip and rushed to Yethyr.
He was cold to the touch and Jaetheiri was frantic.
“Tezem? Tezem! Tezem!”
Jaetheiri wrenched a plug out of her left ear to put that ear to his chest.
There was no heartbeat.
I realized with a jolt that I could not feel him like I usually could when he was separated from me. I tried to enter his dreams, but there were no dreams to enter.
He was…dead?
I reeled. How could he be dead? He still needed to suffer. He still needed to help me make the Council of Songs and Deathsinger Zasha suffer. How dare he just die? I couldn’t believe it and neither could Jaetheiri. She shook him. “Tezem! Answer me, damn you. Yeth—”
She choked over the syllables as if she was frightened to say his name. She was trembling. Her vision was blurring.
She was utterly lost and inconsolable. I could not get a read on her thoughts because that would require her to have coherent thoughts to begin with.
I heard a rustling and Jaetheiri lifted her head. There was Kvelir, reaching for Yethyr’s dead body with a singular purpose.
Tular’s key, I realized. Yethyr had taken it and Kvelir needed it to open his lockbox containing that blasted treasure.
At the sight of him, Jaetheiri’s directionless emotions narrowed to rage. She flung herself at him, me gleaming white in her hand. He would be an easy kill. He had been a prisoner and as such, had no weapons.
Jaetheiri kicked him down, knocking a thin copper lockbox from his hands, and swung me down upon the traitor.
“I can save him!” Kvelir cried and I held Jaetheiri back from slitting him open. With Dathari dead, she had now killed with me thrice and my influence over her swings was only growing.
In the moment, Jaetheiri assumed she had been the one to abort her killing blow, even though she ardently didn’t believe Kvelir to begin with. “You can do nothing,” she spat. “He’s already dead.”
“The drowning death can be temporary if you hurry.”
The hope that burst upon Jaetheiri was violent in its intensity.
She grabbed Kvelir by the scruff of the neck and dragged him before Yethyr's body. She usually would not be strong enough to lift such a large man, but in this, I was happy to lend her my strength.
“Then hurry.”
Kvelir started pressing into the Prince’s chest, again and again, in a firm rhythmic motion, as if trying to imitate the heartbeat that was no longer there.
Kvelir looked up at Jaetheiri. “Life for life. If he comes back, you let me go.”
Jaetheiri frowned. “It is the Prince’s duty to retain you. You are a heretic.”
“Then tell him I died,” he insisted. “He needn't know; he will never see me again.”
“Where will you go?
Kvelir’s eyes left Jaetheiri to look longingly further down the river, where the selkies had gone. Very, very faintly, I could hear them singing. I was no longer in the water to amplify their voices, but unlike the rest of the Brinn, Kvelir did not need me to hear watersong.
He would hear them clearer if he got closer. If he went to them in earnest.
“Not far.”
Jaetheiri did not hesitate. “Fine.” She gave him a nod. “If he lives.”
Kvelir redoubled his efforts. He pounded at Yethyr’s heart. He pressed his mouth to the Prince’s lips as if he was trying to feed him the breath in his own body.
“How can I assist you?” Jaetheiri asked and Kvelir at once directed her on how to breathe air back into her prince’s lungs. She let go of me to help hold Yethyr and I was quickly stripped of her sight.
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And then, in that blindness, I heard music so deep it might as well have been thunder. It was nothing like the sweet and slippery notes of selkie watersong. It was harsh and uncompromising.
It reminded me of the monstrous song that had preceded Z’krel when he came up from Hell and claimed Mona’s spirit. It wasn’t Z’krel though. This was different. The voice that grew louder and louder seemed to come straight from Yethyr’s nightmares.
“Did you miss me, son of Felnae?”
I felt Jaetheiri’s dread like a physical cold and her hate like physical heat.
“Spryne,” she spat. “Go back to Hell.”
“Of course. I’m just here to collect my sacrifice.”
Jaetheiri’s stomach dropped. “No. His spirit isn’t yours to collect.”
“I told you once, girl, what you had to do to save him, but it seems you waited too long.”
“No,” she said again. I had never heard her so desperate. “It’s not time. There’s still time!”
“He is dead. There is nothing stopping me from taking his spirit down to Hell where it belongs.”
“I’m stopping you,” she said at once.
Spryne laughed and that rattling sound was much worse here than in even Yethyr’s dreams. “And what can you do, oh mighty Venerated Victor? I haven’t manifested into the living realm. You can’t touch me. You can’t even see me.”
Stubbornly, she grabbed my hilt and immediately, I could see through her eyes again.
Through me, she could see him.
Spryne’s draconic head was right before her eyes, flaming slits wide with glee.
Jaetheiri did not hesitate.
She swung me at him and we both got visceral satisfaction in his panicked recoiling. His body had impossibly been protruding from Yethyr's chest and through Kvelir’s oblivious pumping hands like the bony wyrm was an ethereal ghost. It was as if he had traveled here through a Hellgate within the Prince himself.
Even more impossibly, in a blink of the eye, Spryne had fled his body. Coil after coil of his massive body now circled the lake several times over, out of Jaetheiri's reach.
All to avoid being struck by me.
He snarled in rage.
Jaetheiri had narrowly missed him, but in a way, Spryne had lost the exchange nonetheless.
He had allowed me to witness his panic. He feared being touched by me and now, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I could hurt him, even in this liminal limbo.
“You will regret involving yourself, Son of Daened.”
I said nothing. What was there to say?
“Hurry, Kvelir,” Jaetheiri said.
“I’m trying.” Kvelir clearly could not see or feel Spryne, but going by the ashen terror on his face he could hear him just fine. “If a demon takes his spirit, there is nothing I can do.”
“You waste your time. Dead he is and dead he will remain. Your prince lacks the strength to recover.”
But I had the strength; I just needed to get it to him.
“He is always stronger with the sword,” I said in Jaetheiri's voice. “Perhaps a touch from it will restore him.”
Jaetheiri didn't question the false thought. She started to place the flat of my blade against her prince’s collarbone.
Spryne saw the motion and struck, quick as the wind.
Jaetheiri was fast. I was fast.
Together, we were faster than a Highlord of Hell.
Jaetheiri swung me around and my white blade met rows of his white teeth, blocking his razor maw from reaching Yethyr. He struck, again and again with a force that would have blown any mortal warrior away.
But Jaetheiri kept her feet planted firmly. She had my strength with her.
It reminded me of fighting Aztomag in the Palace of Songs, except Aztomag had been properly called to the world by the Datrean Council. She had been physically there, her floating stomach of a body would smash through doors and shatter finery. Our battle had left absolute destruction in our wake.
But Spryne was like Z’krel in Datrea or the angel Kenth back on the riverbank. He had not actually manifested in the world. Jaetheiri could not even see him without holding my hilt. His body passed harmlessly through everyone and everything.
Everything except me.
I felt a flash of pride as my edge grazed the demon’s teeth and did not shatter. I felt pride that my makers made me capable of passing beyond a worldly barrier that not even a demon could cross.
Spryne technically could not hurt Jaetheiri. If she stopped parrying with me, he would pass harmlessly through her.
It was only the spirit of Yethyr that she was defending.
Kvelir had done something. I felt like I could almost feel my connection with Yethyr again, flickering faintly in and out of my senses like a candle.
I knew I could help him. Spryne had started attacking in the first place because he knew if I had enough time, I would snatch Yethyr’s spirit from his jaws.
So that was what I would do. I needed to help him now, while Kvelir was keeping him in this liminal state of life, and I made Jaetheiri know it.
Jaetheiri parried Spryne again, but this time, she let the momentum of the swing go down, so that my edge brushed Yethyr’s cheek.
“No!”
I poured all my will into his lungs and Yethyr gasped for breath.
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