Chapter 11: The Price of Immortality
The infirmary was too quiet. The steady beep of the heart monitor attached to Dae was the only sound, a metronome counting out the seconds of his unconsciousness. Aria sat in a hard plastic chair pulled up to the side of his bed, her fingers laced with his left hand. His right shoulder was a mass of sterile white bandages, hiding the clean, pink flesh she’d carved from the ruin. He looked younger in sleep, the harsh lines of pain smoothed away. Just a tall, lean kid with sandy hair stuck to his forehead.
Ithan stood by the window, his back to the room, staring out at the darkening forest. He hadn’t spoken in an hour. The tension in his shoulders was a physical thing, a coiled spring waiting for release.
Bryce and Hunt had left to deal with the Asteri’s “truce,” taking the eerie note with them. Ruhn had gone to check on the Avallen contingent still milling nervously at the edge of pack territory. The world outside was holding its breath. In here, the air was thick with things unsaid.
Aria watched Dae’s chest rise and fall. The bond was a quiet hum now, a deep, exhausted stillness. She’d poured so much of that cold, silver light into him. It had left her feeling scraped out, brittle. Like thin ice over a black lake.
“You should eat,” Ithan said, his voice rough from disuse. He didn’t turn around.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You used… whatever that was. You need fuel.” He finally turned. His green eyes were shadowed. “What was it, Aria? That light. It wasn’t shifter. It wasn’t Fae.”
She kept her gaze on Dae’s hand. It was large, the knuckles scraped, the fingers long. A prince’s hand. A soldier’s hand. Hers, now, in a way that felt more permanent than any vow. “It was mine,” she said simply. “From him.”
Ithan flinched. “Don’t.”
“Why? It’s the truth.” She finally looked up at her brother. “Conner told me what I was. He also told me what it came with. A little bit of their power. A drop in an ocean compared to what Rigelus had, but it’s there. He said it was for survival. A backup system.”
“A backup system,” Ithan repeated, the words flat. He ran a hand over his face. “So you can heal? Like them?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried. I never wanted to know.” She swallowed. “He was dying, Ithan. The wound was Asteri-made. It was eating him. His own magic couldn’t touch it.”
“So you just reached into the part of you that’s him and pulled?” Ithan’s voice cracked. “What did it cost you?”
Before she could answer, Dae’s hand tightened around hers.
A low groan escaped his lips. On the bed, his body went rigid. His back arched, a sudden, violent spasm that rattled the bed frame. The heart monitor’s steady beep turned into a frantic, high-pitched shriek.
“Dae?” Aria leaned forward, her free hand going to his cheek. His skin was on fire. “Dae, look at me.”
His one good eye flew open. It was wild, unseeing, the hazel iris swallowed by a pupil blown wide with agony. He wasn’t awake. He was trapped somewhere inside.
His bandaged shoulder began to smoke.
Thin tendrils of greyish steam rose from the white gauze. Then, a flicker. Not the cold silver light she’d used. This was different. Brighter. Hotter. A searing, magnesium-white flame sparked at the center of the bandaged stump.
Dae screamed.
It was a raw, gutted sound that tore from his throat and filled the sterile room. His body convulsed, fighting against invisible bonds.
“What’s happening?” Ithan was at the bedside in an instant, his hands hovering, afraid to touch. “Is it rejecting the healing?”
“No,” Aria whispered, her blood going cold. She could feel it through the bond. A roaring, incandescent pressure building where his arm had been. It wasn’t rejection. It was… creation. “It’s starting. His real healing. His Fae magic.”
The bandages blackened and curled at the edges. The white flame grew, coalescing into a roaring column of fire that climbed from the stump to the ceiling. It was blisteringly hot, but it gave off no smoke. It was pure, furious energy.
And within the heart of the flame, a shape began to form.
Bone, glowing like heated opal, extended from the seared flesh of his shoulder. It was slow, gruesome, a nightmare in reverse. The humerus lengthened, then the radius and ulna sketched themselves in lines of brilliant white light. Tendons snaked from the bone, weaving a lattice of blazing sinew.
Dae’s scream had dissolved into a continuous, choked rasp. His body was drenched in sweat, every muscle corded and shaking. His hazel eyes were fixed on the ceiling, seeing nothing but the pain.
Aria held his hand so tightly she felt the bones in his fingers grind together. “Stay with me,” she chanted, her voice breaking. “Stay right here, Dae, don’t go away, stay with me.”
Ithan watched, horror-struck, as muscle tissue bloomed around the nascent skeleton, pale and new, knitting itself from the shoulder down. Skin followed, spreading like quick-setting wax over the form of a forearm, a wrist, a hand. The fingers, long and elegant like his others, flexed once within the fire, a spastic jerk.
The flames began to recede, sinking back into the newly formed limb. The light dimmed from blinding white to a soft, golden ember glow beneath the skin, which was pink and flawless, like a newborn’s.
As the last of the fire vanished, Dae’s body went utterly limp. The heart monitor slowed, settling back into a steady, strong rhythm. The new arm lay perfect and still at his side.
The silence was absolute. The air smelled of ozone and burnt gauze.
Ithan was staring at the new arm, his face pale. “Gods,” he breathed.
Aria didn’t look at the arm. She looked at Dae’s face. He was unconscious again, his breathing deep and even. The bond was a flatline of exhausted, painless sleep. He was whole.
The cost hit her like a physical blow.
A wave of dizziness slammed into her, so sudden her vision tunneled. The strength leached from her muscles. The silver light she’d used hadn’t just been a tool. It had been a tether, a bridge between her life force and his. She had jump-started a process that should have taken weeks of agony, condensing it into minutes. And his Fae magic, in its furious, blind need to rebuild, had siphoned the energy to do it directly from her.
She tried to stand, to let go of his hand. Her legs buckled.
“Aria!” Ithan’s voice sounded far away.
She hit the floor. The cold linoleum was a shock against her cheek. She couldn’t move. She could only watch as Ithan’s face appeared above her, his expression frantic. She tried to speak, to tell him she was okay, but a thick, cold darkness was pulling at the edges of her mind. Her body felt weightless, empty. A drained vessel.
The last thing she saw was Ithan scooping her up, his shouts for a medic echoing down the hall, and Dae’s new, perfect hand, lying still and innocent on the white hospital sheet.
The darkness wasn’t sleep. It was a void. No dreams, no thoughts, just a profound, endless silence. She floated in it, untethered.
Sensation returned in fragments.
First, the smell. Not antiseptic. Home. Her own room in the Pack House. Cotton sheets, the faint scent of pine from the forest outside her window, the underlying musk of wolf that permeated everything.
Then, sound. A low, tense murmur of voices nearby.
“—drained her completely. It’s not just exhaustion. It’s like… a magical deficit. Her shifter healing isn’t even kicking in.” Ithan. He sounded exhausted, scared.
“She channeled pure Asteri power, Ithan. Then she became a battery for a full Fae regeneration event.” Bryce. Her tone was clinical, but strained. “We have no precedent for this. No idea what it does to a body that’s only half that.”
“Is she stable?” Ruhn.
“For now. Vitals are weak but steady. She’s just… empty.” A pause. “The prince?”
“Awake. Pissed. Demanding to see her.” Hunt this time. “Kept trying to get out of bed until Knuckle sat on him.”
A faint, weak spark of amusement flickered in Aria’s chest. Knuckle sat on him.
She tried to open her eyes. The light from her window was soft, grey. Dawn or dusk. How long?
Her body felt like lead. She managed to turn her head on the pillow.
She was in her own bed. Ithan was slumped in an armchair pulled up next to her, his head in his hands. Bryce leaned against the wall by the door, arms crossed. Ruhn and Hunt stood near the foot of the bed.
All of them looked like they hadn’t slept.
Ithan sensed her movement immediately. His head snapped up, his green eyes bloodshot and wide. “Aria?”
The word was a croak. Her throat was desert-dry.
He was at her side in an instant, a glass of water in his hand. He held it to her lips, supporting her head. The water was cold, blissful. She drank greedily, spilling some down her chin.
“Easy,” he murmured, his voice gentler than she’d heard it in weeks. “Easy, little wolf.”
She finished the water and sagged back against the pillows. “Dae?” The single syllable scraped out.
“Alive. Whole. Driving the healers insane.” Ithan’s jaw tightened. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, his touch achingly familiar. “Just… warn a guy next time you decide to power a miracle.”
She managed a faint twitch of her lips. “Noted.”
Bryce stepped closer. “How do you feel?”
“Like I got hit by a bus. Then the bus reversed and ran me over again.” She shifted, and a deep, all-over ache protested. “What happened?”
“You funneled your life into his healing,” Bryce said bluntly. “His body took what it needed to rebuild the arm. It took it from you. You’ve been out for sixteen hours.”
Sixteen hours. Aria closed her eyes. The void made sense now.
“The arm?” she asked.
“Perfect,” Ruhn said from the foot of the bed. He looked uneasy. “Better than perfect. It’s… like it was never gone. Full mobility already. His Fae healers are calling it unprecedented.”
Of course it was. It was forged in her stolen fire.
The door to her room burst open.
Dae stood in the doorway, filling it. He was barefoot, dressed in loose infirmary pants and a white t-shirt that strained across his shoulders. His sandy hair was a mess, his hazel eyes blazing with a frantic energy. The new right arm was clearly visible, hanging at his side. It was indeed perfect. Identical to the left. Pink, whole, real.
He looked from Ithan to Aria in the bed, his chest heaving. “You’re awake.”
Before anyone could stop him, he was across the room. He moved with a predator’s grace that belied the fact he’d been mortally wounded a day ago. He dropped to his knees beside her bed, his new hand coming up to hover over hers, as if afraid to touch.
“You’re an idiot,” he breathed, his voice raw. “A magnificent, terrifying idiot.”
Aria looked at his new hand. She lifted her own, heavy as stone, and placed it in his. His fingers closed around hers, warm and solid and alive. The bond, so quiet before, swelled with a torrent of relief, guilt, and a ferocious, overwhelming possessiveness.
“You screamed a lot,” she whispered.
A shaky laugh escaped him. He brought her hand to his forehead, resting it there. His shoulders slumped. “It felt like I was being unmade and remade at the same time.” He looked up at her, his eyes searching hers. “You were there. The whole time. A anchor in the fire. Then you were gone. You just… vanished.”
“I got tired,” she said.
Ithan cleared his throat. The moment fractured. Dae looked up, his expression shifting from vulnerable to guarded in a heartbeat. He didn’t let go of Aria’s hand.
“Prince,” Ithan said, his tone formal. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”
“I’m fine,” Dae said, the words clipped. “She’s not.” He looked back at Aria. “What did it do to you?”
“I’m okay,” she said, squeezing his hand. It was a lie, and they all knew it. Her body felt fragile, hollowed out. A shell.
Bryce exchanged a look with Hunt. “We need to understand this. What you can do. What it costs. The Asteri said they have no quarrel with you, but that note felt less like a peace treaty and more like a quarantine notice. They’re afraid of what you are. We need to not be afraid of it.”
“I don’t know what I am,” Aria said, the truth of it a cold stone in her gut.
“You’re my sister,” Ithan said firmly. “That’s what you are. Everything else is just… wiring.” But his eyes flicked to Dae’s new arm, a troubled shadow in their green depths.
Dae followed his gaze, then looked at his own hand, still wrapped around Aria’s. He flexed the fingers slowly, marveling at the movement. A thought seemed to occur to him, his expression turning grim. He looked at Ithan.
“The messenger said the Asteri no longer have an interest in me. In Avallen.” His voice was low, deliberate. “That means the opposition back home just lost its biggest backing. The lords who were waiting for Rigelus to put them in power…” He trailed off, the implications settling in the room.
“You have to go back,” Ruhn said softly. It wasn’t a question.
Dae nodded, his jaw tight. He looked at Aria, his thumb stroking the back of her hand. “They’ll be in chaos. If I don’t claim the throne now, someone else will. Someone worse.” He took a deep breath. “I have to leave. Soon.”
A silence stretched, filled with the weight of unspoken goodbyes and the precarious future.
Aria looked from Dae’s determined face to Ithan’s stormy one. The bond was a tight knot of dread and resolution in her chest. He was leaving. The world, which had narrowed to this room, to his hand in hers, suddenly yawned wide and terrifying again.
She pushed herself up on her elbows, ignoring the protest in her muscles. “I’m going with you.”
Three words. They dropped into the quiet room like stones.
Ithan’s head whipped toward her. “No.”
Dae stared at her, shock wiping the determination from his face. “Aria, you can’t. You’re not— you’re exhausted. And Avallen is… it’s not safe for you.”
“It’s not safe for you either,” she fired back, a spark of her old self cutting through the fatigue. “You just said the lords are in chaos. You’ll be walking into a den of sharks who just had their keeper shot.” She looked at Ithan, pleading. “He needs someone there he can trust. Someone they didn’t plan for.”
“You are eighteen,” Ithan said, his voice rising. “You just woke up from a magical coma. You are the sister of the Vanir Prime and you are not going to the Fae capital as some kind of… of bodyguard!”
“I’m not going as a bodyguard.” Aria held his gaze, forcing strength into her voice she didn’t feel. “He has guards. He has Ruhn.” She glanced at Dae. “You have a bond with a wolf who killed an Asteri. Think about that. What does that say to your sharks?”
Dae was silent, studying her. The bond hummed with his conflicted calculations—fear for her, the brutal political advantage her presence would provide, the sheer, overwhelming need to not let her out of his sight.
“It says,” he said slowly, “that the power dynamic has shifted irrevocably. That I have an ally they cannot understand and cannot challenge.” He looked at Ithan, not with defiance, but with
a startling, brutal honesty. “It also paints the biggest possible target on her back, Holstrom. And in my court, the knives aren’t just metaphorical.”
“Exactly,” Ithan shot back, stepping closer. The air in the small bedroom thickened. “You get it. So why in the Hel would you even consider taking her into that?”
Dae didn’t drop his gaze. “Because she’s asking. And after what she did for me, I don’t have the right to tell her no.” He looked back at Aria, his hazel eyes searching her face. “But you have to understand what it is. It’s a cold, polished viper pit. Every smile is a lie. Every gift has poison in the ribbon.”
Aria swung her legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cool under her bare feet. A wave of dizziness passed through her, but she locked her knees. She stood, pulling her hand gently from Dae’s. She needed to be on her own feet for this.
She walked to her closet, the movement slow but deliberate. Ithan watched her, a muscle ticking in his jaw. She opened the door and reached inside, not for clothes, but for the long, cloth-wrapped bundle leaning in the corner.
She pulled it out. It was heavy.Real.
Unfolding the thick canvas, she revealed the Firegard. The grey blade was dormant, reflecting the dull grey light from the window. It looked like a piece of scrap metal. Utterly innocuous.
She hefted it in her hand, finding the balance point. The weight was solid, comforting. A fact in a world of shifting uncertainties.
“You’re not hearing me,” she said, her voice quiet but clear. She turned to face them, the sword held loosely at her side. Bryce and Hunt straightened, a reflexive caution in their postures. Ruhn’s shadows deepened. Ithan’s expression was pure, unadulterated dread.
Aria looked at her brother. “I’m not the little sister who needs guarding anymore. That girl died in the courtyard with Rigelus.” She gestured weakly at herself with her free hand. “This… this drained version? It’s temporary. But what I am now isn’t.”
She took a steadying breath, focusing on the feel of the leather-bound hilt in her palm. “So I’m going. With my very pretty new flaming sword.”
She looked at Dae, then back to Ithan, a faint, defiant smirk touching her lips. It felt strange on her face.New. “And if someone gets…testy…I’ll just point it like a menacing chaos junkie and see if that works.”
The room was dead silent.
Bryce Quinlan burst out laughing. It was a sharp, incredulous sound that cracked the tension like ice. “Oh, fuck me. I like this version much better.”
Hunt rubbed the back of his neck, a reluctant grin tugging at his mouth. “Can’t argue with the logic. It’s a persuasive argument.”
Ruhn just nodded slowly, a look of grim approval in his eyes. “It’d certainly make an impression at court.”
Ithan said nothing. He was staring at her as if he’d never seen her before. The girl who clung to him for comfort, who hid behind him in crowded rooms, was gone. In her place stood a young woman with tired eyes and a world-killing sword, making a joke about her own terrifying power. The grief in his expression was for the sister he’d lost, warring with a stunned, reluctant pride for the one who’d taken her place.
Dae’s reaction was different. He hadn’t laughed. He’d gone very still, watching her with an intensity that burned through the bond. It wasn’t fear. It was a dark, fierce hunger. A recognition. She wasn’t just his anchor anymore. She was becoming something else. An equal. A force.
He stood up from his kneeling position, his new arm flexing unconsciously. “Well,” he said, his voice a low rasp. “When you put it that way.”
He walked to her, stopping an arm’s length away. He didn’t touch her. He just looked from the sword to her face. “You’ll need a scabbard that doesn’t catch fire. And clothes that aren’t shredded workout gear. The Avallen court is vicious, but it’s also painfully formal.”
Aria shrugged, the movement making the sword tip dip. “I can stab them in a ballgown just as easily as in leggings.”
Dae’s lips twitched. “I have no doubt.”
Ithan finally found his voice. It was hollow. Defeated. “You’re really doing this.”
It wasn’t a question. Aria turned to him, her bravado faltering for just a second. She saw the raw fear in his eyes, the ghost of Conner standing between them. “I have to,” she said softly. “He has to go back. I’m tied to him, Ithan. Not just by choice. By this.” She tapped her chest, where the bond hummed like a live wire. “If he walks into that pit alone, I’ll feel every cut. And I can’t… I can’t lose anyone else.”
The confession hung in the air. It was the truth, naked and unadorned. Her power, her choices, were no longer just her own. They were inextricably linked to the battered Fae prince who needed to claim a throne.
Ithan closed his eyes. He looked older than twenty-two. He gave a single, stiff nod. “Okay.” He opened his eyes, and the Prime was back, masking the brother. “But you take backup. Pack backup.Knuckle. Track. Your pick. They go as your guards, under your command, not his court’s.”
It was a compromise. A thread of control. Aria nodded. “Okay.”
“And you come back.Regularly. Or I’m bringing the whole pack to Avallen for a visit, and we won’t be polite.”
“Understood.”
The logistics took over, a merciful slide into practicalities. Bryce and Hunt left to report to their own monarchs about the new, unstable status quo. Ruhn began murmuring into his phone, arranging secure transport to the coast where a Fae ship would be waiting.
Dae lingered by the window, giving Ithan and Aria a sliver of space.
Ithan stepped closer to Aria. He didn’t try to take the sword. He just put his hands on her shoulders, his grip firm. “You call. Every day. You feel a twitch you don’t like, you get on a plane. You understand?”
“Yes.”
He pulled her into a hug, burying his face in her hair. He held her tightly, as if he could imprint the feel of her into his memory. “I just got you back,” he whispered, the words muffled.
“You didn’t lose me,” she whispered back, her throat tight. “I’m just… expanding the territory.”
He gave a wet-sounding laugh and released her. He swiped a thumb under his eye. “Smartass.” He glanced over at Dae, his expression hardening again. “You. Keep her alive. Or what’s left of you after she’s done will be nothing compared to what I’ll do.”
Dae met his gaze squarely. “I’ll protect her with my life, Prime. But I think we both know she might be the one protecting me.”
Ithan grunted, a non-answer that was as close to acceptance as he would get. He gave Aria one last, long look, then turned and left the room. The door clicked shut behind him, a sound of profound finality.
Aria stood there, the sword heavy in her hand, the echoes of her brother’s fear clinging to the quiet room. The bravado she’d mustered felt thin, a shield over a core of deep, trembling uncertainty. She was going to a Fae court. She was half-Asteri. She had a sword that ate gods.
Dae’s presence shifted behind her. She felt him before he touched her, a warmth along her back. His new right hand came to rest lightly on her left shoulder, his left hand covering the one she had clenched on the sword’s hilt. He didn’t try to take it. He just held her hand there.
“It’s going to be hell,” he said quietly, his breath stirring her hair. “They’ll test you. Insult you. Try to break you just to see if they can.”
“I know.”
“But,” he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper meant only for her, “watching you hold that sword and make a joke about chaos? That was the most terrifying and beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “So let’s go scare the shit out of them.”
A small, real smile finally broke through her fatigue. She leaned back against him, just for a second, drawing strength from the solid reality of his body, from the bond humming between them. They were a mess. A wounded prince and a depleted goddess-with-a-sword, walking into a den of enemies.
She lifted the Firegard slightly, looking at the dull grey blade. “Do you think it’ll light up if I just threaten to use it? Or do I actually have to stab someone?”
“Only one way to find out,” Dae murmured, a dark amusement in his tone.
Aria took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. The dizziness was fading, replaced by a low, simmering determination. She wrapped the sword back in its canvas, the mundane action strangely grounding.
“Okay,” she said, turning to face him. “Let’s go pack a ballgown.”