Chapter Thirty-Eight: So Many Pieces

The healing magic was slow to take effect this time. Osmund felt movement in his torso as the energy flowed through it, and bit down on the pain. He didn’t want to cry out again.

He blinked up at Cemil. The shape of him was just a daze of colors, but even like this, he could tell the other man was harrowingly tired.

Osmund reached up to touch that handsome, beloved face. Or he tried, but his hand wouldn’t respond to the signal from his brain. It lifted a bit, then flopped back down. Heavens, he was so weak.

“Cemil,” he attempted again. As the pain subsided, he started tingling all over, from his fingers to his toes, the sensation flooding back. He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say. The dagger—the Anshan girl—Sakina—

“It’s over, Osmund,” Cemil murmured. “The gryphon is dead.”

Gathering his meager strength, Osmund turned his neck to behold that looming shape. It looked now, for all appearances, like a weeks-old corpse, long picked-over by scavengers. So impossible to believe that the appearance of life, shambling as it was, had clung to those few scraps.

What was this he felt? Ah—grief. Even for an existence like that.

“Don’t move around,” Cemil ordered, fatigue putting a bite in his voice. “That cursed weapon was trying to do to you what it did to that creature. It would have hollowed you out from the inside.”

“You…” Speaking was so hard, and his mind was so foggy. “Were you…in my head?”

“You had visions? Then, did you see me?”

Yes. I think so. But you were…different. “I…heard you.”

Cemil continued his work, focused and intent, impossible to read. “I spoke to you. I wasn’t sure it would help. I don’t know whatever it was you saw.”

Osmund tested his limbs as the healing magic’s warmth finished its course. He was weak still—so weak—but with enough effort, he could move. He tried to pull himself into a sitting position, but in the end, Cemil had to help him with a hand pressed to his back. Once upright, he watched in dawning horror as Cemil reached down for something on the ground. The dagger!

“Nononono!” he cried, instinct curling icy fingers of terror around him as he lunged forward with all his remaining vigor. “Don’t touch it! No!”

“It’s alright. Look.”

Osmund looked. The dagger—the blade—it was in so many pieces.

Shattered.

“I—oh. It’s… Did you…?”

“It happened when you broke free of its spell. It can’t hurt anyone now.”

I did that?! He couldn’t tear his gaze away. “B-but you must’ve needed to study it,” he slurred. “Cemil, I’m—”

Cemil motioned to someone nearby—oh heavens there were other people in the cave all this time—and then at the dagger. A light mage who was not Sakina used a hovering construct in the shape of a hand to scoop up the shards of the broken weapon before maneuvering them into a pouch at their hip. “It was too dangerous to handle in its previous state,” the Meskato prince informed Osmund briskly, turning back to him. “You did us a service. Don’t ever do it again.”

Osmund nodded mechanically. Through the haze of his vision he noticed the other Meskato riders waiting, restless, nearby. One of the soldiers cradled in their arms the abducted Anshan girl. Her injuries had been healed, but her clothes were still speckled with her own blood. She was staring down at the ground with a vacant expression—hopefully nothing that being back in her own bed with her loving family around her couldn’t fix.

Just like before, Cemil had to help Osmund to his feet. (Secretly, Osmund maybe wouldn’t have minded being carried just a little.) “Can you sit on Anaya?”

“I can. Yes.” Before he could say anything else, Cemil hefted him onto the saddle, then swung himself up in front. And then they were moving through the darkness.

Osmund drifted in and out of the excitement. Single-file they galloped through the winding tunnels of the gryphon lair, which indeed must connect directly to the outside. Shaky tendrils of sun glimpsed through openings in the rocky ceiling were the only flashes of light. I wonder how many people have ever seen this firsthand…or have had the misfortune to smell it. All around, the echoing calls of the Meskato riders coordinating. Osmund was grateful his only job was staying upright. His hold tightened on Cemil’s middle.

At last the air was changing, the cloying stench replaced with fresh bracing gasps of earth, and then the world erupted into white: they were emerging into the harsh brightness of the canyon. The agitated brays of gryphons greeted them, too.

The scene resolved into dizzying detail. Osmund scanned the skies anxiously. Sakina’s shining constructs—they were no more. She must have expended every effort keeping them going as long as she did. In every direction, bursts of magic added to the furor as light mages in Cemil’s party threw out constructs of their own, attempts to keep the beasts distracted, to little effect. Was it difficult from horseback? Or perhaps they just weren’t as skilled!

It was a desperate charge. No matter where he turned, there was chaos. It was tempting to press his face into Cemil’s solid back and count the seconds with his eyes clenched shut. He didn’t.

Up ahead he glimpsed the path up the rocky cliffs—it was there, just there. Can we make it?! Osmund focused on it with all his effort as the horses raced, willing it closer, closer, closer—just a little further!

“Screeeaaaaaaaa!!” A headsplitting sound rang in their ears just before a towering gryphon dropped down into their path, wings opened in a threatening display. This was it! No escape now!

“Everyone fall behind me! And prepare yourselves!” Cemil yelled behind him.

“Cemil–?!” Osmund saw the man reaching for that wicked sword.

“You too, Osmund,” Cemil gritted out, head angled so his words would carry over his shoulder. “Hold on.”

Osmund didn’t see any other alternative. He held onto Cemil desperately, anchoring them together, as if by this embrace he could protect the Meskato prince, and not the other way around.

He felt that familiar, supernatural tug, the sword draining energy from the very air around them. And then—

the sharp crack of the blade, sending an arc of death sailing towards its target.

The rest of the escape was a blur, measured breath by breath.

Osmund remembered collapsing at the end of it all, not on the familiar cot at the widow’s house, but instead into a soft pile of sheets that someone pointed him towards. A second later, he was dead to the world.

Thankfully, no memories, from childhood or otherwise, came to trouble him. It was a numbing, dreamless sleep.

When he came to—

“Ah, there he is. Look who you’ve brought home, kitty.”

Osmund’s lip crinkled and his eyebrows drew together. An all too familiar sight greeted him once he opened his eyes: a stray cat, nuzzling at his bare arm!

Seriously, do I have a natural fish smell?!

“Nice to see you,” Sakina said. She was kneeling over him, tired bags under her eyes, but it was secondary to the blessed fact that she was still in one piece. She petted down the skinny cat’s arching back with one hand. “Cemil wasn’t lying. Animals do adore you. What’s your secret, hmm? Do you go around feeding the strays in every town you visit?”

Wincing, Osmund sat up. His joints struggled as if his body were made of stone (and his brain submerged under several layers of swamp, for that matter), but the monstrous pain in his ribs was completely gone. “You’re alright,” he whispered in awe. “I’m glad.”

Sakina’s mouth quirked into a familiar dry smile.

“For now. When Cemil wakes up, he’ll turn that sword on me after he realizes how angry he is.”

At the mention of the Meskato prince, Osmund’s eyes widened. “Cemil, he’s…” He tried too quickly to rise, and a rush of vertigo forced him back down.

Where are we, anyways? A glance informed him there were other cots in this long building where worn and injured soldiers were receiving attention from local healers. Many of the beds, however, were empty. Outside, he heard the faint sounds of celebration. Or at least, he hoped that’s what those drums and that shouting were.

“Cemil is…” Sakina trailed off, her affect melting away. She now wore a concerned frown. “He’ll be fine. In time. He pushed himself far beyond his limits, but I’m sure that won’t come as a surprise.”

Osmund worried his lip. The knowing way Sakina said it, it sounded like overexerting himself was certainly no recent habit of Cemil’s. “Where is he?”

“He’s resting. There’s nothing either of us can do to make it happen faster.”

Sakina sounded so authoritative. It was a tone meant to put a question to bed. Osmund wasn’t moved at all.

“Where is he?” he asked again.

Eventually, he managed to pry the Meskato prince’s whereabouts out of Sakina. Osmund got the feeling there was more she’d intended to say, but he didn’t want to listen to her try to apologize or justify herself about what happened on the cliffs. Not right now.

(Maybe he was actually, possibly, a little angry at her too. But it would pass.)

Two soldiers were posted outside the door, which was a good indicator that he was in the right place. “I’d like to go inside,” he told them tiredly. “Cemil’s in there, right?”

The guards looked at him, then at each other. One of them leaned in and mumbled something to his fellow. They were evidently trying to work out whether the prince’s stablehand, slash, not so secret lover merited entry. “Go in,” he heard at last.

Osmund slipped his way into the dimly lit room. It was humble and small, a far cry from the man’s bedchamber at the governor’s mansion. On a simple cot on the ground, Cemil laid motionlessly. Osmund crept carefully closer. Even when an errant floorboard squeaked beneath his weight, the Meskato prince didn’t stir.

Oh. Though they’d shared the same space at night, this was the first time Osmund had ever seen the other man beneath the pull of sleep. A breath caught in his lungs; he forced himself to release it in a long exhale. He was inside of a beautiful painting, and if he made any sudden moves, he’d be transported outside the canvas again.

He took a step. Something on the ground caught the low light from the one uncovered window just before he would’ve nudged it with his foot. It was a small glistening glass bottle—the kind that they’d been using for the nightroot potion. No, there were two of them. Both empty. Oh, Cemil, Osmund thought.

But Cemil seemed peaceful. His breaths were steady and deep, his black hair splayed around him in loose tangles. A single stray eyelash rested delicately on his cheek. Osmund could look for a thousand years and never have his fill.

He sat cross-legged beside him. By his knee, he noticed the prince’s hand. It was outstretched on the floor, palm open, inviting. He wondered how simple it would be to slide his own hand against it, to hold him like that. So simple.

But Osmund wouldn’t disturb his rest for the world.

As the minutes ticked by, he laid his body contentedly down on the hard floor beside him. And dreamed well.