51. Lily

They were still there, still tied to the tree branch with their arms stretched above their heads. Krynn had slumped to his knees, his tattered wings dragging the ground. Sel was still somehow upright, but he was barely breathing and when I put my hands on his cheeks and lifted his head so I could see him, his eyes were such a dark brown color they were almost black.

"Princess…" he rasped out. "You…came."

"Of course I came!" I was crying—the tears rolling down my cheeks though I barely noticed. "Oh Sel, please don't leave me! Please, I need you both!"

Krynn raised his head with an obvious effort.

"Can't…help it…my Lady," he breathed, his voice barely more than a whisper. "So…sorry."

"No, I'm sorry! I should have found a way to save you!"

"Excuse me, your Highness?" someone said. I didn't realize they were talking to me until they repeated the title and then said, "Queen Lilliana?"

The sound of my name got my attention and I turned to see a squadron of the Palace Guards standing there, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.

"Forgive me, my Queen." The young Fae guard at the head of the squadron bowed deeply to me. "But is there anything we can do to help the Captain?"

"Cut him down!" I somehow managed to say. "Cut both of them down. I need…need to be with them at…at the end."

The guards obeyed quickly, cutting the ropes that held Krynn and Sel in place. They laid them gently, side by side on the ground under the giant oak tree they'd been tied to. I sat between them, heedless of the dirt and mud getting on my gown, and cradled both their heads in my lap. The guards stood by watching uneasily but I was too upset to ask them to leave.

Suddenly, Lady Nolana was there again at my side.

"Oh my dear!" she exclaimed. "I am so very sorry!"

I was too—but I didn't want to be. I didn't want to give up!

"There must be a way!" I sobbed, my tears falling like rain on both of my guy's faces as I cradled their heads. "There must be some way to save them! I can call lightning from the sky and make a freaking thorn bush grow in under a minute—there must be a way I can reverse this poison!" I looked at Lady Nolana hopefully. "When I bite them, I'm able to heal their wounds afterwards. Maybe if I tried to suck out the poison…"

Her eyes grew wide.

"No, my Queen—you mustn't! Bitterworm is a deadly poison—the first sip of their blood would kill you or drive you mad!"

"There has to be a way, though!" I said stubbornly. "Some way I can heal them!"

"But my Queen, though you can heal the wounds of those you bite, you are not a Healer," Lady Nolana said gently. "As powerful as you are, you have no Healing Magic with which to counteract the poison."

"No," I said. "No, I guess not. I—" Then I stopped. "The Palace Healer!" I exclaimed.

"What?" Lady Nolana asked, frowning.

"The Palace Healer—I know there is one. I heard Sel and Krynn talking about him," I said. I looked up at the young guard who had asked if I needed help. "You—go and fetch me the Palace Healer at once and bring him here."

"Yes, my Queen!" He and several other Palace Guards rushed off. When they returned shortly afterwards, they were dragging an older High Fae with a long silver beard dressed in a white robe. ‘The Healer, my Queen!" the young guard said and pushed him forward.

The older Fae looked at me fearfully.

"My Queen—what can I do for you?" he asked.

"These two have been given bitterworm poison," I said to him. "Can you cure them with your Healing Magic?"

"Let me see their eyes." The Healer knelt beside me and lifted one of Krynn's eyelids. When he saw the dark brown color, he shook his head. "My Queen, I am very sorry but this one is too far gone! My magic alone isn't enough. You would need a thousand Healers to cleanse the corruption from his system." He looked at Sel's eyes and shook his head again. "I am sorry—the Captain of the Guard is also too ill to be saved."

But I refused to listen to his pessimism. Instead his words "you would need a thousand Healers" seemed to echo in my brain.

A thousand Healers…the magic of a thousand Healers…or maybe just the magic of one Healer magnified a thousand times. Would that work?

I didn't have a thousand Healers, but I could feel the Power of the entire Court still pumping through my veins. Even though I was no longer at the end of the long chain of hands, the magic I had absorbed from my people lingered inside me.

I looked at the Healer.

"Give me your vein."

"Excuse me? What?" He grew suddenly pale. "My Queen, I don't understand!"

"You don't have to understand—just give me your wrist so I can bite you!" I snapped. "I need your blood—I need to absorb some of your Healing Magic!"

Trembling, the Healer pushed up the arm of his long white robe and held his wrist in front of my face.

I felt a certain distaste in biting anyone I didn't know and love, but in this case I was willing to make an exception. Baring my fangs, I sank them into the bracelet of veins on the underside of his wrist.

The Healer gasped but didn't move a muscle as I began to suck. I closed my eyes as the salty flow of blood rushed into my mouth and down my throat. I called to the Healing Magic I felt in his blood—I invited it to enter me—to live in me and make me its host.

And I felt the magic answering my call. A warm flush went through my whole body, infusing me with heat and light and healing energy. I knew instinctively that I had what I needed.

Hastily licking the wound closed, I pushed the Healer's wrist away. Then I placed one hand on Krynn's forehead and one on Sel's and began to push the Healing Magic, bolstered by the power of the many, many Dark Fae who were now my people, into their bodies.

"Heal,"I told the magic. "Heal them—heal the ones I love. Cleanse their systems of the poison…purge all the toxins…make them well and whole again!"

At first I didn't know if it was working. I kept pouring more and more power and magic into both my guys, but neither of them was moving. Then, suddenly, Sel's eyes popped open.

"Princess?" he gasped and I saw that his eyes were back to bronze again. Even better, every last bit of the ugly polluted brown was gone.

"Sel!" I exclaimed, keeping my hand on his head. "Are you all right?"

"I don't fucking know. Feels like someone's pumping me full of pure energy!" he growled, his big body twitching.

"Oh, sorry." I took my hand off his forehead, but kept pushing magic into Krynn. "Just give me a minute," I told Sel. "Let me just?—"

"My lady!" Krynn's eyes popped open with a gasp. He sat up abruptly and stretched his wings. "They're healed!" he exclaimed. "Lady Elgiana left them in tatters, but now they're healed!"

"She healed more than your wings, Krynn," Sel pointed out, sitting up as well. "You should see your eyes—they're not brown anymore."

"Yours aren't either." Krynn frowned. "But I thought Lady Elgiana gave us something—some poison."

"It was bitterworm," I said grimly. "But you're both better now—aren't you?" I asked anxiously.

"Better? I feel like I could fly to the fucking moon," Sel exclaimed, bounding to his feet. "And I don't even have wings!"

Krynn got up as well and flapped his wings experimentally.

"I feel…different somehow," he murmured.

"Different good or different bad?" I asked, giving him a worried look. He appeared to be completely cured—he and Sel both did—but what if I had missed something?

"Different good—I think. Let me concentrate…" He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them, there was an incredulous smile on his face. "My Lady," he said to me. "The Needing…it's gone!"

"You're fucking kidding," Sel said, frowning. "Everyone knows there's no cure for the Needing. Once you've got it, you're a Needer forever."

"Not anymore!" The pure joy on Krynn's face was enough to bring tears to my eyes. "I don't know how you did it, my Lady, but you drove it out—the parasite that lived inside me is gone!" he told me. Dropping to his knees in front of me, he took both my hands and kissed them. "Thank you! Thank you for healing me!"

"You're welcome!" I felt tears in my eyes again and yet I was laughing—laughing with relief and joy that my guys were going to be okay. That I had been able to use the Power my people had given me to save them. And still I felt it inside me—it almost seemed that it grew more as I used it rather than dissipating.

"My Queen, now that your servants are healed, you should probably go and talk to your people again," Lady Nolana murmured. She had been standing back and watching everything so quietly I hadn't even noticed her.

"The people?" I asked, still feeling almost dizzy with relief.

"You left them rather abruptly," she reminded me. "And right in the middle of your coronation."

"Oh, right…" I rose and did my best to brush off my long white skirts. They were hopelessly stained but I didn't care. "Come on," I said to Sel and Krynn. "Let's go finish this."