I wake up with my eyes too heavy to lift. There's a ringing in my ears fading quickly, and an ache in my stomach that's doing the opposite. I try to move but my body feels too heavy. Words won't climb my dry throat, and whatever it is I'm lying on is scratchy and unpleasant.

I can hear muffled voices, some closer than others. Someone's crying, and someone else is pressing down on my stomach. My aching and tender stomach-

I shoot upward, my muscles barking loudly in protest, but then I'm hurling up whatever is left in my stomach. It's not pleasant. Chunky and tasting metallic. Why in heathens am I throwing up blood? Why am I throwing up blood?

I mean to say it aloud, but my mouth is a little occupied.

"It's alright, just let it all pass." Willa. Why is Willa here?

Everything rushes back then, and I'm hurling for a whole new reason.

I was almost swallowed by the Banevenin. I almost died but...

"What happened? Who's crying?" I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. That ends up being a bad idea, as I just end up wiping the black decay of bodies all over my mouth. My stomach threatens to lurch again, but I hold it down and try to ignore the stuff on my lips.

"Well, to answer your first question, your stomach was practically ripped open and you almost died," Willa answers dryly. She hands me a clean cloth and I take it, only lifting my hand off of the ground has my core screaming and I begin to fall. Someone catches me before I do.

"Way to be blunt." Garrison snides. He eases me down, holding my back so I can sit up without falling backward.

"Death isn't a blunt thing," she retorts. "It's Clarice who's crying over there." She nods behind Garrison, and I find Clarice standing with a grime-lathered Vanya. The latter is trying to get the former to calm down and subside the sobs and shaking hands.

"Why is she crying?"

"Experiencing a near-death of someone you care for is an emotional thing. Though to be quite fair, you made it plenty scarier than it should've been," she scolds, somehow mad at me.

"Always so dramatic," Garrison mumbles teasingly. I consider elbowing him, hard, but the pain in my stomach tells me that it'd be idiotic to do so. I glance down at myself, finding blood soaking my shirt and a long pink scar starting from my ribs and leading to the opposite hip. "Do you remember how you got that?"

I shake my head.

"What do you remember?" Willa asks. I take in the several bloody cloths and open bottles in the basket beside her.

"I remember trying the Banevenin's heart. Its heart walls were thick, so it was taking longer to burn. I remember hearing someone yell my name, and when I opened my eyes I looked up and found that the Banevenin's mouth was open above me. Then something grabbed me by the waist. All I remember next is falling, but that's it. That's all I remember."

She nods, looking completely unbothered unlike me. "A little memory loss is to be expected. It should come back throughout the day, but if it doesn't then it just means you blacked out. Nothing to be concerned about."

"And the Banevenin?"

"Dead," she asserts. "The villagers are in Litchelle and are being tended to by Siscilla and the healers. I have three of the Counselors of Thralia working on figuring out what makes the Banevenin's venom so deadly, and the rest of your guard has set a perimeter around us to make sure there are no more surprises."

I nod, knowing that's exactly what I would've done. They let me sit in silence for a moment, and that's when I notice that Clarice has stopped crying. She's not hyperventilating anymore either, but she is staring at her hands which are covered in blood.

"Despite me having to heal what was left of you, she was the one who got you out of death's grip," Willa whispers.

"She usually is."

Clarice says something to Vanya, and then the latter is nodding and misting away to wherever she was sent. Clarice turns to us then, and when she notices me sitting up and awake, her whole face screams relief.

"Thank the Gods and their Saints," she prays as she walks over. I notice all the blood soaking her dress then, and just how much of it there is. With all the blood that's everywhere, I still don't understand how I'm alive.

"Ah, ah, ah," Willa says with a jabbing finger in Clarice's direction. It makes her stop mid-stride. "No more crying."

"I'm not crying," Clarice protests in a tone that says otherwise. She turns away just as her eyes become glossy again.

"Oh, really? Then what's that water in your eyes?"

"Allergies. I'm allergic to tall grass."

"Mmm-hmm."

Clarice goes to wipe her face but stops when she notices the blood on her hands again. They end up falling to her sides as she grunts in angered defeat. Saints what must be going through her head...I don't even know what's going through my head, but it sure isn't pretty. Part of me wants to tell her that I'm thankful she saved my life - because I am. The other part of me wants to grab her shoulders and make her tell me what in heathens she was thinking by jumping off of that damn cliff again.

I'm a teenager. Teenagers aren't supposed to have such violent heart attacks at this age.

It's one thing to see her so pale and thin after being tortured for months, a whole other thing to see her throw her body off of a cliff as if to tease death itself. The moment I turned around and watched her feet leave the edge, I saw my whole life flash before my eyes. I can't explain it, just that everything that could've been sprinted through my brain was replaced by everything that would come should she not come back from that ledge. The realization of it had my heart pulling the rest of my body before my mind could react. Wind burst from my feet as I ran after her, diving over the ledge and trying to take hold of her body before she hit the ground. I was about to jump when a massive pillar of earth shot up in front of me, carrying her at its top.

I was off the ground with the wind howling in my ears before anyone else got the idea to mist up there. And you best bet I heard all the curses from both men and women of our guard. Dirty curses.

When I saw her standing at the top, relief filled me, but only for about half a second before I was overrun by rage. It infuriated me that she thought nothing of it. That she didn't understand how jumping off of a cliff could've been fatal had something gone wrong. If Serephina can take someone's power then Xaxias most likely can. Who was to say he couldn't have at that moment? Who's to say he couldn't have taken all of our powers and left us helpless to save her? I wouldn't have had the wind to try and slow her descent or catch her entirely like I did the girl from the town. The Ginerva wouldn't have been able to mist to save her. She would've plummeted to her death, and I would've lost her. Sure it would've been by her own doing, but I would blame myself.

I'd blame myself for not having kept a closer eye on her or sticking by her side to make sure she didn't do something irrational, nor that Xaxias or Visha or the ever-lost Morana decided to come and take her. I could've used the wind to always keep tabs on where she was and stop her if she tried to run or jump again. Every day I'd come up with another reason that I was at fault, and for others I would likely get so mad that she thought it was okay to go and do something so stupid, that I'd have to go to an empty field to spout my rage.

But she did save my life today, and I can always yell at her later for her stupidity later. I just hope that if and when I have to save her life, it won't be such a close call as this one was today. I hope I don't have to save any of their lives and it becomes a close call. If I keep having these heart attack scares, I don't think I'll live past twenty-five. Or whatever twenty-five years of a mortal lifespan is equivalent to in an immortal one.

"Thank you, all of you," I say to the three of them. I know I probably have more people to thank, but this will do for now.

Clarice's eyes find mine, and I watch as they fall to the scar on my stomach and then shudder before she looks away again. It must've been really bad for her not to be able to last a few seconds without almost crying again.

"Thank me once this war is over and there is peace," Willa snides, still somehow angry at me. "I'm sure this won't be the first time I have to sew your skin back together."

Vanya mists in with Melody's reins in her hand. The mare squeals when she sees all of us. She rushes over to Clarice first, her nose searching her head to toe.

"I'm fine," Clarice mutters quietly, pushing away the mare's prodding nose. Melody stops when she finds Clarice's hands, then her head snaps to me and she's trotting over hurriedly. I repeat Clarice's statement, but the mare doesn't listen and goes straight for my stomach. She starts nickering as if scolding me for it.

"Just let the late Queen huss and fuss. She'll be fine in a moment," Willa says with a roll of her eyes.

Queen. Right. I'm still trying to adjust to the fact that it's Queen Dawn, Clare's mother's spirit, within my mare. I mean, it explains how Melody can act so humanly despite her being a horse, but it's still unsettling. I grew up thinking that Melody was just a horse who I loved. Then the Gods pull another one-eighty on me and I come to find that it's actually just a horse who carried someone who supposedly died ten years ago, and is now trying to help us kill the same person who was once trying to kill her.

Today has been a day. This month has been a year.

Melody nickers again when she's satisfied that nothing's wrong with me.

"I don't understand you when you talk like that," Willa snarks. Melody nickers again, likely a retort by the sound of it. Mak appears at her side then, Vanya now gone.

"She said that you're an old bat who is only alive because she needs you to make sure her children don't do something stupid," Mak informs. Melody huffs. "Again."

"I don't believe anyone in this world could keep your children from doing something stupid," Willa argues.

"She says that's fair," Mak replies for the horse.

"Right, well." She turns from the mare, addressing me and Clarice. "Time to make you two look semi-presentable."

"Presentable? For what?"

"There's a whole frightened town of people not far from here. The last thing they need to see is you two walking around looking like Grim Reapers. Here." She throws me another shirt from Melody's saddlebags and I go to catch it, but the movement has my abdomen screeching. I would've fallen onto my back if Garrison hadn't caught me.

"I thought being immortal had its benefits," I mutter angrily as I put my hands on the ground behind me to keep myself upright. I can't hold my entire top half up without it hurting, which is something Garrison seems to know since he's still got one hand at the center of my back to take some weight.

"You heal faster than a mortal, but not that fast. Healing that quickly is unrealistic."

"Nothing about our lives is realistic," Clare points out as she wets a towel Willa handed her and uses it to wipe off her arms.

"Well, then it's not realistic enough for our crazy reality." She wets another towel with the water Clare has summoned, then hands that one to me.

Just reaching up to grab it from her has my stomach barking again, but she's letting me do the work rather than her baby me and doing it herself, and I'm thankful for that. It's hard to ignore the pain, but I do my best as I try to wipe off the blood and black muck. The blood comes off, but the muck just smears. I get most of it off, but my skin is still at an odd, darker shade. I'm glad I can't see my face. I'm sure I'd either laugh or frown for the rest of the day. Garrison just looks uncomfortable about my appearance.

Clarice doesn't look much better. Her hair is still moussed with the muck, her dress is a torn and horrific thing compared to how it looked yesterday, and her skin is tainted too.

Willa frowns at our sorry attempts. "It's...better. I suppose."

"Dawn says that we should throw them in the lake. She says they smell bad," Mak relays.

"So do you!" Clarice argues.

"She's a horse, she's naturally prone to not smell like roses."

"Well aside from dousing them in lemon oils, this is the best they'll get at the moment." Melody neighs her disapproval. "Yeah, yeah. Now come on, we should see the councilors first and see if they've made any discoveries yet," Willa declares.

"Dawn asks that both Darius and Clarice ride on her." The mare neighs loudly. "Correction, she demands it."

"I'm fine," I protest.

"Only if there's food," Clarice bargains. Mak takes out an apple from one of the saddlebags and offers it to Clarice who stares at the fruit with distaste. "Is there anything else?"

"Is an apple too plain for your royal ass?" Mak asks. Melody squeals, but Clarice only scrunched her nose at the fruit.

"I just don't want an apple."

"Fine." Mak shoves the apple back in the bag and starts digging around for something else. "Then have...this pickle and lemon. Maybe you can squirt some of the lemon juice on you to make you smell less fleshy."

"Thanks." Clare takes the pickle and lemon and waits for Melody to lower herself onto the ground before hopping onto her back. She starts eating the pickle happily, which only makes Mak stare at her dumbfounded and concerned. Mak and Willa share a look that's more than just a glance, but I try not to think too much of it.

"I can walk," I insist.

"Like hell," Willa argues.

"I can-"

"You can't even hold yourself upright."

"Then how do you expect me to ride a horse?" I challenge.

"Well you're not riding alone, now are you?" I glance to where Clare still eats her pickle on Melody. "You can't sit up without a little help, and I'm not having you two walk when there's a perfectly healthy horse to carry you. You'll be healed in a few hours enough for you to walk then, but for now, you're not going to strain your body and try walking with an injury to a muscle that supports all the others in keeping you upright. It's either you get in the saddle and come with us, or you stay here until you're able."

"Dawn agrees," Mak states after the horse huffs.

I argue, they win, and then Garrison and Alex are helping me into the saddle behind Clarice. I tried to sit upright so I didn't lean on her back, but Willa was right. I can't sit up on my own. Not to mention that Clarice told me to hold onto her, and when I didn't listen and Melody stood up, I ended up nearly toppling us both off of the mare's back because I couldn't keep myself balanced. Thankfully, she was not injured so she caught us and then told me that I weighed more than I looked. I took it as an insult, but it still made me conscious of just how much I'm relying on her to keep me on here. My legs are holding tight to Melody's ribs, and Clare gave me the stirrups to keep steady.

Sitting on Melody, we can see over the edge of the tall grass. It's hard to miss the large dead form we're heading towards. All that's on this side of Adaeric is flat land. I bet you could see the Banevenin for miles, likely double or triple that when it was alive and standing.

Clarice's shoulders jolt suddenly and her head turns at an odd angle. She finished her pickle and moved on to her lemon, which only has her cringing when the sourness hits her with every bite.

"Why are you eating a lemon?" I ask her.

"Why'd you have a lemon in your saddlebags?" she quips back, swallowing the last piece she bit into. She's been eating it like an orange.

"It was going to be used with the meat for one of our meals."

"One lemon was going to be used for a whole slab of meat?"

"Well, I didn't necessarily plan on sharing it," I confess.

"You selfish bastard!" Ethan yells, putting an offended hand to his heart as he walks alongside us.

"Shut up." He only looks more offended before scoffing and facing forward again.

"A lemon sounded good," Clarice says, answering my question with a cheerful shrug. She takes another bite and I watch as her face scrunches and her whole body quivers with the touch of the acid. I try really hard not to laugh.

"You know lemon is bad for your teeth."

It takes her a second before she relaxes again, though her eyes are already on the next bite in her hands. "Maybe, but it sure does clear your head and keep you awake. Here, try it." She offers me a piece.

"No thanks."

"Oh, come on. Trust me, it's the kick you need right now."

"I prefer kidzra," Amel announces.

"He can't have kidzra," Willa calls back to him.

"Ha. That sucks." I glare at Winston.

"Just try it." She tries to put a piece into my mouth but I dodge it.

"I don't - I don't want it - Clarice!" She keeps trying to shove it in my mouth, and I keep having to jerk my head in all directions to avoid it.

"It's good, I promise."

"No - I -" My body tilts too far to the right, and thanks to my still healing stomach, I can't catch myself. Clarice does though. Her arm goes around me as much as possible within the saddle allows, and keeps me upward. Her other arm catches me before I fall onto the ground off the other side. Both Ethan and Alex frantically reach up and help to keep me on the mare's back.

I sigh loudly when I'm once again stable on Melody's back. I hate everything about this. The uselessness, the instability, the pain that is now annoyingly sharp since I'm putting more weight onto Clarice's back to stay upward. Not that she seems to notice, she's too busy staring behind us with a sad expression.

"My lemon," she pouts. Rolling my eyes, I turn my head and find the lemon now covered in the dirt a good few feet behind us. I look back at her and find her face in a truly heartbroken expression as if she watched her father die all over again.

I shake my head, ridding of the memories of the way she broke that night after she and Lance sparred for hours on end. No, this expression isn't that kind of pain, but it sure is a good damn attempted replica of something similar.

"Maybe Darius has another one stashed in his bags that he didn't plan on sharing," Ethan says bitterly. I glare at him again, yearning to punch him hard in the gut. Clarice gives me a hopeful look, but I open my mouth and whatever she sees on my face has the corner of her lips turning downward. Apparently, I've become easily readable.

We keep riding in silence, heading for the gaping mouth with the two rows of large sharp teeth still dripping with that green venom. Seeing the way it just lays open as if it's simply playing dead and will soon swallow each and every one of us has my heart speeding up.

The scar on my stomach pulses in response as if it can sense the very thing that tore into it. I was nearly gutted by those teeth - nearly eaten whole by a thing that I killed. I was raised and put into many classes and lessons to prepare me for my future, but this...nothing could've prepared me for this. Nothing prepared me for the day that started this all. To think that this all started with me sneaking out of the castle grounds - which was then one of the most dangerous things in my life - and it led to me ending up here. My stomach is torn, creatures from the underworld are resurfacing, the power of two elements running in my veins, and all too many reveals about how my life was practically already written for me, nor was it a thing I originally thought it'd turn out to be.

I mean, I'm sitting on a horse who is the