Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 199

Chapter 199: Goodbyes
Anaisa felt Emily’s body relax by degrees in her arms until there was no life left in her. Tears fell freely from the redhead’s eyes.

Laying the woman down gently on the ground, she checked on the others nearby. Trace’s parents, Deborah… and finally, she allowed herself to think of the one her heart had longed to run to first.

Trace.

Part of her dreaded looking for him. To find him dead would shatter her in ways she didn’t want to think about. By delaying the knowledge, she was letting her heart live a little longer. She glanced to where she’d seen him last in the dim light.

An army medic had declared Sanders dead, officially, and was now checking the motionless form nearest to him.

“He’s alive!” The medic cried, and Anaisa’s heart leapt.

She stood and scrambled over the rough ground, another sob breaking free from her chest.

“Trace,” She fell down on her knees beside him. His forehead was bloody, his cheek scraped. But he was breathing. “Will he be all right?”

She tried to ask the question as gently as she could, but it came out as more of a demand.

“I do not know what’s wrong with any of them,” The medic admitted. “There are some minor injuries, but it seems more like extreme exhaustion than some medical cause I can bind up and treat.”

Anaisa glanced towards the dark, hulking shape of the lightless tree.

Without its glowing magic, would all the magic users suffer?

The wait was interminable. Anaisa held Trace’s head in her lap, stroking his hair. She wondered if he was dreaming right now. If she weren’t so full of adrenaline and fear, she might try to go to sleep and find out for herself…

But there was no possible way she would be able to sleep until she knew for sure he was all right. The king and his men poked about in the cave, not finding anything of particular interest. The tree, it seemed, was dead.

That was a topic of much discussion, but no one had a good answer as to why or how, so long as the magic users remained unconscious. Anaisa had her theories, especially considering that all the magic was used in greater quantities than any of them had ever tried before, in an effort to kill one another…

In their furor, they had killed the tree instead. Or it had decided to shrivel up and leave, determining that humans weren’t worthy of its power after all.

One bad person getting magic was a fluke, but if all the magic users had gone to war, they could have broken the world.

It saddened Anaisa a great deal. The army rested, but the king was anxious to get back home. He wanted to go himself instead of sending a messenger ahead to call off the wedding; Who knew what Denholm might do out of desperation, or how many of the guard might secretly be loyal to him?

The first ones to awake were the soldiers who had gained powers from the tree, followed by Trace’s parents. Perhaps it had something to do with only having had their powers a short time? Regardless, they had no magic now.

That left Deborah, the doctor, and Trace still unconscious.

The king decided it was time to move them.

“Get stretchers. We must leave this place.” He ordered. “Sapphira is in the kingdom, and though I left guards around her, I cannot rest until I know she and my wife are safe.”

They were loaded slowly, and Anaisa shivered as they took Trace’s unconscious form from her. She wished she could will life back into him, wake him up so that she could see that he was all right.

As they lifted him, she stayed on her knees on the cave’s floor for a moment. Closing her eyes, she pressed her hands against the ground and stood slowly. It seemed she would be among the last to leave the cavern, and she was handed a lamp, accordingly, and a waterskin to refresh her after the battle. She slung the strap over one shoulder, not feeling particularly thirsty at the moment.

Walking to the cracked ruins of the formerly shining tree, she ran her hand along it for a brief moment.

“I’m sorry,” She whispered. “I’m sorry we couldn’t do better. Handle it better. We’re not entirely evil, we just can’t seem to make ourselves be good, either.”

Anaisa frowned, realizing that talking to a dead tree wasn’t the greatest sign of sanity in the world.

“I don’t know if there’s anything we could do to bring you back, to make it better,” She sighed, “but… I just wanted you to know that the gifts you gave. We appreciated them. You helped us save Ewan’s life. I will always be thankful for that.”

Even though the tree’s leaf was what gave Barnabas the opportunity to wreak as much havoc as he had, the evil had begun long before he’d gotten powers. He would have found another way to scheme, regardless. It wasn’t the tree’s doing.

She shook her head and turned to go, but something caught her eye. Just at the base of the trunk, beneath the roots, there was the faintest, almost nonexistent glow.

“Are you… are you still alive?” She asked, stroking the tree’s trunk gently.

Kneeling down, she set the lamp on the ground and pressed her cheek to the cool stone floor of the cave so that she could see underneath the small gap there.

It wasn’t an illusion. There was a faint glow!

With a bit of trepidation, and not even sure if she should be doing it or not, she took a deep breath and slid her hand into the narrow space between the root and the rock. She felt a little deeper, searching until she found it.

There it was, a narrow root, still glowing gently.

“You’re not dead,” She whispered. “At least, not… not entirely.”

She reached to her side, and uncorked the waterskin that rested there.

“I think you need this more than I do right now,” She told the little root, pouring the contents of the waterskin at the source. “Get better soon.”