Apples and Snakes

All I've Lost

The shouts and hisses of spells being cast had stopped, and the crackling fires had been put out. Am I dead? I wondered. But it shouldn't hurt so much, not in Heaven. Does this mean that I'm still alive? Or am I in Hell?

If I listened, I could still hear my ragged breaths, laced with exclamations of pain, little high-pitched whimpers that sounded childish and silly, but I honestly could've cared less. This means I'm alive, right?

Footsteps clattered quietly, and I heard quiet murmurs and groans, and the occasional sob. Some steps drifted closer and closer to me, until I knew someone was beside me. I managed to open my eyes, but the person was on my other side. I could see the desolate hall.

Strong arms slid under my side and knees and cradled me close to their chest, when I breathed in the cologne of pine and forest, and relaxed a bit in those strong arms, and burrowed my head closer to his chest, until he set me down on a cot, and I immediately felt the withdrawal of warmth.

"Vulnera Sanentur, Vulnera Sanentur, Vulnera Sanentur." I heard Ky's deep voice chant, and I faintly became aware of a wand tracing over the wound. I could feel the skin restitching itself together. It now stung, but it was healed enough that it would only scar.

"Be careful sitting up," he advised, looking rather worried. I found myself smiling gently.

"Ky," I murmured, as I just lay there. He slid an arm under my back, and sat me up gently. Stings traveled down the new scars, leaving me breathless, but I'd be fine, I knew right then.

"What happened?" I asked. "Is the battle over?"

"For an hour," he said. "The Dark Lord gave us an hour to bury our dead, heal the wounded, and hand over your brother."

"Have you done the last one yet?" I asked, rubbing my eyes, and still finding that that my cheeks were wet.

"No," Ky said quietly. "We're not going to hand in your brother, as much as I want to."

"Want to?" I asked, my eyes looking into his. I saw something both gentle and fierce raging in those dark eyes when he looked into my emerald ones.

"Your family doesn't deserve you, Alice," he said. "I just get angry about it, just thinking about how your parents treat you. And how your brother thinks of you. I mentioned you and how you're like an angel with a shotgun, and he thought of you as some dark, chaotic force he was lucky wasn't angry at him."

"An angel with a shotgun, huh?" I asked, and he smiled a little, brushing my bangs out of my eyes.

"You've got the most pure heart out of anybody I know," he said softly. "Yet you're so strong, so resilient, a fighter with kindness. You've had mercy, even in your darkest times. After all, you did forgive me."

I smiled a little bit and twisted my arms around him, and rested my head against his chest, holding him close.

Then I heard cries of horror, and saw a half-burned, scarred, leg-less, arm-less wreck of a girl being carried in on a stretcher. My heart was in my throat when I saw the face, almost unrecognizable, but the one eye left was definitely Ellie's brown.

"Ellie!" I cried, and I ripped away from Ky, and went over to my friend. The others stood with me, and we were all thinking the same things. She's too far gone and we can't lose another friend to the war.

She looked up at us fiercely. "Promise me," she exhaled, in a ragged breath, spraying lava-like spit into the air. "Promise that you'll avenge me, avenge the Deryn, avenge my work."

"I will," I promised as tears dripped onto my face again, and I touched her shoulder. "I will avenge you."

Rage surged within me, turning my vision red, and the stinging in my side was numbed. Her eye then closed, and I frantically felt for a pulse. Nothing. She's gone. The hollow realization clawed at my heart, and fire was in my very heartbeat, sending flame through my veins every couldn't stay there one more second.