I can see a lot of life in you; Aranea

[magnus]

He almost feels bad when he watches her wake up, when he watches the sleep (shallow as it may have been) begin to fade from her eyes. But that quickly dissolves when he remembers why he had come to her in the first place; why he had raced to find her. He is suddenly acutely aware of his appearance, the sweat that darkened his coat in the middle of the night, the way his nostrils flared to gulp in air, the brightness to his eyes. He realized that he must look quite manic, and he did his best to calm himself for her benefit.

“I was just told something rather…incredible.”

Never mind that the news came from his captor.

Never mind that he now had to bury a hatchet he had not been quite ready to bury.

“There may be a way for you to get your voice back.” He took a step back and motioned toward the border of Tephra and the mountain that lay beyond it—the only thing that stood taller than the volcano that overshadowed all of their land. “I have a…relative,” the word pained him to admit, “named Woolf who is rather tapped into the supernatural current. He came to tell me tonight that there is a way for you to  petition the faeries to receive your voice back.” Another pause, a small frown. “But there is a price.”

For magic there always was—at least that is what Woolf had said. (Magnus had been inclined to agree.)

“You will need to sacrifice one of your other powers in exchange.”

A small bargain, he thought, to be given the ability to communicate once more—but he was unsure if she would see it the same way. Still, he had to tell her. He had to at least give her the choice.

“I have been up the mountain before. I can accompany you if you’d like to go.”

out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know
I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll