Shadows of Iraedes | NanoWrimo 2021

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: FIGHTING THE DARK

Black surrounded him as he floated weightless. He looked up watching as the light above the water shimmered with an oily and blurred gleam. The light was dimming as he sank. He couldn't move.

He'd been so close, too.

He wanted to fight, to move his arm, to kick his legs to just push himself to the surface, but he was out of energy. It had taken everything he'd had to get as far as he did, but it hadn't been enough. He just hoped someone came along and helped Aurora. He didn't want her to get attacked and taken by the Thoro again.

For a moment he let his eyes close and he thought about her chances to get away. When she got to dry land, where was she going to go?

Gharet was dead.

And Evander would be too.

As far as he knew she didn't have any family, he knew her parents had perished in the plague. As for siblings, she'd never mentioned any. She had an aunt... he remembered her saying the farm she'd go out and visit at times.

As he considered her options, his mind kept drifting back to the sankts. They would find her. They would lock her up again and they would destroy her, worse than they had Gharet.

As if thoughts had energy he found a burst of it and it allowed him to kick his legs, pumping them for everything they had left and he raced for the light above.

The air was slipping out from his mouth the last bit he'd had before he'd gone under. He felt his lungs burning inside as he squeezed his lips shut tighter to keep any air he had trapped.

And then he burst through and gasped in a deep lungful of air. He didn't feel it had been a mistake for it allowed him to make the last ten feet to the beach. He felt his feet catch on wet sand and he dropped to his knees, sputtering and spitting water. It ran down his face, off his hair strands and dripped from anywhere that had an edge, his jacket corners, his cuffs, his shoulders.

He felt his shoulders vibrate and he fell into the water. His face half submerged beneath the clear blue. With his mouth open some of the salty water entered his mouth but he couldn't be bothered. He had air and he was on land. He had made it.

The lungful of air he'd taken surfacing to make the last leg of the journey came racing through him and he was panged with a body amount of pain. He yelled out as it ran in rivulets across him. He tensed and even a sob escaped his mouth at the amount he was in.

He didn't feel the hands as they stroked his hair as he let out an exasperated breath. The waves rolled across his legs just reaching his chin as he lay in the wet sand. Even through the many knives stabbing through his body, he'd never felt something so comfortable.

Later when his mind wasn't exhausted, he'd look back and laugh for thinking the sandy beach was as soft as a feather down mattress with the way he had been feeling at the time.

But in the moment his head spun and the world felt like he was being whipped around, tossed and rolled. He opened his eyes slowly but realized he was laying flat against the beach with the waves lapping at the heels of his boots still.

"Can you help me up?" he said in a low, raspy voice. His mouth felt like he had swallowed rough and jagged rocks.

He felt her hands before he saw them, shaking by him, trying to figure where to touch him that wouldn't hurt. They trembled in uncertainty for a moment more but then she buckled and grabbed a handful of his jacket and heaved him into a sitting position. He hunched forward, but he was sitting.

"Thank you," he said, the effort to force words from his mouth seemed to be as tolling as working on a farm for hours. His body was beyond tired. He couldn't feel his left arm and he still avoided looking at it. He didn't want to even see what the damage was; just imagining it made him cringe. He felt like a child in that aspect where he couldn't stomach wound from a fall much less what had happened when he'd landed hard on the ground, and even after the struggle to get to the beach. He just hoped the salt water of the ocean helped clean anything that had opened.

"No," he felt Aurora shift closer to him and then she moved into his sight. "Thank you. No one would have done what you did."

"I didn't–"

"I don't know what you were about to say, but I'm going to be very brash with you for a moment and cut you off. You risked your life for mine when you barely know me. There is nothing in this world I can do for you that can make it up to you. I owe you my life. I know I would have died back there. I wouldn't have been freed and I wouldn't have even gotten the chance to risk jumping from the cliffs. I will spend the rest of my life for you. I am yours if you want it." She looked down at the sand between them as she said the last part, almost a hesitant look on her face as if she felt she had escaped from one trouble and was now indebted to something unknown for the rest of her being.

"Aurora," Evander said in a quiet voice the only other the sound over the waves rolling in on calming notes. He reached forward, raising his right arm slowly, his limb felt like a thousand pounds. He moved a wet strand of sand colored hair from her forehead and pushed it behind her ear. "You don't owe me anything. I wanted to save you. I did that on my own accord, even if it was for you, but it is the reason that I did it for you.

"All I want is to give you everything you've never had. If there's something you want, I want you to tell me so I can do everything in my power to give it to you. Aurora?" he stopped, concern weighing down his features. "Was it something I said?"

She knelt in front of him, her hands over her eyes, tears slipping down her cheeks. Her face as flushed and she was one second away from full out sobbing. He watched her lips quiver.

"Why are you doing this?" she mumbled through her tears.

He leaned back. All of a sudden the world fell before him. What had he done?

"What do mean? What did I say that's made you so upset?" He reached over and pulled one of her hands away from her face. She looked through her wet lashes at him, her eyes rimmed with red and her cheeks streaked with tears.

"Why are you being so nice to me? You rescued me back on the wharf, and you just rescued me again, this time risking your own life, for mine!" she said. An angry note seemed to flit through her lyrical sounding voice. "I am nothing. I come from nothing, and you don't know me, but you're doing everything to save me. It's just... it makes me feel like a burden. I owe you. I owe you everything, and all you want is to give me things?"

"Are you... are you mad at me?" Evander reared back startled and surprised. He wasn't angry, but he wasn't expecting her reaction to be unwanting.

"No!" she said and then her eyes widened. "Maybe a little; I don't really know how I'm supposed to feel right now. I feel very confused," she said, and wrapped her arms around her small frame. Her pink and once sparkling dress was faded and dull looking soaked to her skin, the shade of magenta, now a dark red.

"Aurora," he said and scooted himself forward, closing the small distance between them. He wrapped his uninjured arm around her and pulled her into his soggy self. "I don't expect anything from you. I want to do things for you. Will you let me?"

Things are getting steamy!!