Chapter Twenty-Nine
Numa stumbled in the wet sand, desperate to reach her fallen lover. His chest bloomed with blood as though he too had been stabbed by some invisible blade. She sank to her knees, crying out his name.
“Please stop!” she yelled at Nikhil. “They’re linked! Stop. You’re killing him!”
Blood gushed between the two figures embracing like lovers. Nikhil’s knife was buried in Meri’s heart and he murmured dark, vindictive promises in her ear as he bared his teeth and twisted the blade.
Numa yelled his name again and finally caught his attention, but Nikhil stared dumbly at her, his bloody hand still tight around the hilt of the dagger buried in Meri’s chest. He glanced back down at his work, hypnotized by the waning arterial spurts, but finally pulled back, leaving the blade jutting from the body that fell to the sand.
It was far too late, though. The bleeding in her lover’s chest wouldn’t stop, and neither would her healing smoke close the wound.
“Shh, little one. Be still,” Dionysus whispered, reaching up to brush his fingers over her jaw.
“No! You are mine, and I won’t let you die!”
“Who said anything about dying? I’m a god. Gods can’t die.”
Beside her, Nyx cursed and Numa blinked, trying to refocus on what had shifted the Dionarch’s attention.
“His horns are gone,” Nyx said, raking her fingers through the dark hair that fanned across her lap. “He is shrinking, losing his power.”
Numa cupped his face, her heart twisting at the realization that he had grown smaller, lighter. “What is happening?”
A worried-looking Zephyrus slipped down to his knees beside her, sliding a hand in a comforting caress over her back. “He paid a price to control her. This was that price. His blood gave her life, and destroying her took some of that life from him.”
“But not all of it, right? Please tell me he isn’t dying. Don’t lie to me!”
A shadow loomed above them, and she looked up into Nikhil’s horrified face. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I would have found another way, had I known.”
Dionysus shook his head weakly and coughed. The wound in his chest reopened and another surge of blood spilled from him. “There was no other way, but you can help stop the bleeding.”
“Anything. What can I do?” Nikhil asked.
“Burn her. Turn her to ash to sever the link between us, or I will be stuck in this dying state forever.”
Nikhil’s eyes flashed with sharp desire, incongruous with the moment. “It would be my pleasure.”
Nikhil let out a sharp whistle and raised an arm. The army came to attention as he walked toward them, and he stopped before Numa’s two nephews and their fire-winged mate. Numa’s brothers and sisters also gathered around to hear his command. Nikhil’s order passed back through the ranks, and one by one the dragons shifted, rising into the air as their wings spread and caught the currents.
Hundreds upon hundreds of winged creatures twisted on the ocean breeze, the dragons mingling with the turul. They flew up and circled around above the shore. At the lowest point, a few dragons at a time hovered in a circle around the bloody corpse of their enemy, opened their mouths, and let loose torrents of blinding flame.
The turul sang and the wind kicked up, fanning the flames incinerating Meri’s body. When the first group of dragons departed, another group circled down and breathed their strongest fire at the sand beneath.
This went on for some time, and with each blast, Dion relaxed in Numa’s arms, his breathing growing slower and more even. Eventually the wound in his chest closed on its own and he fell unconscious, but his pulse was strong.
“My father will live,” Nyx said, sliding her palm across his forehead, her face a mask of concern. “Let us take him back to the palace to rest.”
Numa was only peripherally aware of other figures surrounding them. The familiar stature of an old friend appeared. The fact that Nereus was back at Nyx’s side went barely noticed, but lent her comfort nonetheless. Her siblings were alive and whole, their own mates surrounding them. Her sister’s long-lost children had survived as well.
Love and hope pervaded the air, but she couldn’t shake her own worry, not as long as Dionysus lay unconscious. She held tight to his hand when Nyx and Nereus pulled their group into the drift. Her other mates were near, none of them willing to part with her or Dionysus any more than she was willing to part with them.
They landed in a tower room with a big bed. Cade held Dionysus in his arms, the god’s body as beautiful as ever. Smaller now, he was dwarfed in the ursa’s hold. When Cade lay Dion down and covered him, Numa immediately returned to his side.
She stared down at him, troubled by the steady, yet faint aura surrounding him. She knew what it looked like, but was loath to admit what she saw—that he had become mortal.
“Will my breath heal him? Can we bring back his power?” she asked, casting a desperate glance at Nyx.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “No god in memory has ever made such a sacrifice. Stay with him. Let us know when he wakes.”
Numa nodded distractedly, lying down to cradle Dion’s head against her chest. When Nyx and Nereus left, her other mates gathered, pulling up chairs or settling on the bed as well.
Zephyrus slipped onto the mattress behind her and wrapped his arms around her middle. “We are alive and whole, and all of us willing to do whatever we must to help him.”
“I know,” she said, allowing the West Wind’s comforting song to lull her to sleep.