Chapter 44
Chapter 44
I have never been more aware than I am at this moment that loving someone and protecting them can’t mean making their choices for them.
Every part of me wants to intervene.
To stand in Erik’s way and tell him: Don’t do this .
But I could no sooner stop the waves crashing against the cliffs behind me.
Within minutes, Graviter has agreed to Rachel’s plan. He quickly rises into the air to mobilize the dragons to help fortify the human villages against an imminent attack.
Rachel and Catalina hurry back to their dragons—but not before Mother Solas murmurs something to Rachel, who pauses but then nods.
Erik goes with them and I should be listening for what they say, but when I try to stand, my world spins.
I find myself sinking back to the ground.
If Erik goes to this fight at the edge of the darkness, I won’t be able to help him because my power—my mere presence—would endanger him.
Even Gallium’s presence on that battlefield could be a trigger for the darkness. I can only pray that Karasi will ensure my brother’s tools are nowhere nearby. Or… she might bring them with her just to taunt him and tempt fate.
I want to scream at the unknowns. All the games she could play while she risks the darkness and her people’s lives.
I consider for a moment that if I take off my medallion and leave my hammer behind, could I go with him then?
But the whisper in the darkness returns to me.
The way it called to me. The way it pulled me…
It knows me.
I can’t go near it without endangering myself and anyone with me.
My heart is suddenly thumping hard in my chest.
Erik glances back to me across the distance as if he senses my disquiet.
I wrench my focus back to Dusana and then to Mother Solas, whom I’m surprised is approaching me instead of leaving with her granddaughter.
Taking a deep breath, I finally rise to my feet, easing myself upright through the moment of dizziness.
I will face my fears soon enough.
Dusana remains kneeling on the grass, but judging by the dark rings under her eyes, it’s because of exhaustion, not obedience.
“If I may, Lady Asha,” Mother Solas says to me, folding her hands in front of herself, “I’d like to stay with you for a short time.”
Since the moment I met her, Mother Solas has been open and honest with me, so I have no hesitation in speaking my mind. “Your granddaughter needs you now more than ever. Why would you stay here?”
Mother Solas waits for the dragons to lift into the air and fly away, watching them leave before she answers me. “She trusts me to keep her informed if Erik changes his mind, but that isn’t why I want to stay.”
She has my full attention. “Mother Solas?”
“Rachel doesn’t know this, but the smoke from the crimson coal back at the city has damaged my chest. Breathing isn’t easy. I’m not in a good way.” She gives me a brave smile. “For some reason, I can breathe more easily here. Maybe it’s the moisture in the air, but I feel it may ease my passing.”
My eyes are wide. “You’re dying?”
“It won’t be long now. A few days at most.” Then, with the stoicism that must have seen her through Malak’s entire reign, she turns to Dusana. “Your Queen is certainly something, isn’t she?”
Dusana tips her head back and returns Mother Solas’s frank stare with a shrug. “She is the center of her own world.”
Mother Solas extends her hand. “Right, then. Up you get.”
Dusana scoffs at her. “A dying human woman offers me her hand? You would sooner drop me and blame it on your bad breathing than help me. We are enemies, old woman. Don’t try to make me your friend.”
“Why not?” Mother Solas asks. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t a dead woman, too. You said as much.”
Dusana scowls. Muttering under her breath, she takes Mother Solas’s hand and wobbles to her feet.
“Also,” Mother Solas continues, “my chest may burn with every breath I take, but that makes me even more determined to live the remainder of my life to its fullest.”
At that moment, Blackbird appears at the edge of the forest. Concord is close behind him. They both peer up at the sky as if to check that the dragons are gone.
A second later, two smaller figures burst from the tree line, darting between the birds. Galeia is a giggling blur, her tiny legs moving astonishingly fast, while Cailey is a streak of bright light chasing after her.
Seeming satisfied that the threat is gone, Blackbird bounds after them while Concord steps regally through the trees, checking the space around her before darting forward and pouncing after him.
Beside me, Mother Solas plants her hands on her hips. “Food,” she declares. “They’ll be hungry.” She eyes Dusana. “I’m certain you must be hungry, too.”
Dusana gives a groan. “I’m famished.” She brushes the grass off her pants, but she quickly glares at Mother Solas. “Sharing a meal doesn’t make us friends.”
“As you like.” Mother Solas strides away, calling loudly, “Little Wolf and… uh… Bright Child, who wants to go berry hunting in the moonlight?”
Galeia pops her head up above the grass, which is taller where she’s crouched, so all she reveals is the top of her face and her bright eyes.
I’m certain she heard hunting and not berries .
Oh, dear.
Mother Solas and Dusana are already ten paces away. I move to follow them, but Erik has prowled back to me.
“Asha.”
At the way he says my name, my heart is instantly heavy, and all my peace vanishes.
I speak my fears without hesitation, knowing that he will hear and listen to me. “You’re choosing a path that could tear me apart.”
He shakes his head, his dark hair falling across his eyes so much like he used to wear it to hide his wolfish features. “I made you a promise, Asha. I will never hurt your heart again.”
I fight the burn behind my eyes. “You can’t make a promise like that and then run toward death.”
In the distance, Galeia’s giggles float across the wind, along with the soft chatter of women who have somehow gathered together in this place, such a powerful combination of sounds that I can hear them above the crashing waves.
Erik takes a step toward me. “You removed the device from my heart. I can fight Karasi with the strengths I gained without risking the darkness. At least not any more than another human would risk. I can do what I was destined to do.”
“Die in battle?” I ask, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. “Like your people?”
“No,” he whispers. “I can do what you need me to do.”
He’s now right in front of me, one arm sweeping around my back. “There isn’t anything I won’t do for you, Asha. You are my family. You are the one I would embrace any darkness for?—”
“And yet you would break me.”
“Never,” he says, his voice a deep growl.
He sounds so certain, and yet his actions are a deep contradiction to his promise.
He presses his forehead to mine and his voice lowers even further still as he asks me a question I wasn’t expecting.
“If you could create any future for us, what would it look like?”
Tears burn behind my eyes, and I let them fall.
“A home,” I say. “Not in the mountains. Not in the snow. Not in the wasteland. It would be here where the grass is green and the trees give shade and the sky is never red.”
My anvil is within reach of my left hand, and as I speak, my palm brushes up against it. My feelings are so strong that I can’t possibly contain them.
I don’t want to contain them.
My power is mine now. To use as my heart and my conscience dictate.
“And our house?” he asks.
The pain of the past floods me, but with it comes moments of connection and change that I will always cherish. There are good memories among the bad, and it’s those good memories that tug my lips into a smile.
“Not a house,” I say. “A tower .”
A rush of energy flows through my hand into the anvil, and with it, all my wishes take shape around me.
Faster than a heartbeat, the black rock spreads beneath our feet, and the grass transforms into stone.
Walls spring up around us. Strong walls that can’t be breached with a ceiling that’s open to the sky. And still, my power flows as the rock we’re standing on rises upward, more walls and more rooms forming beneath it, giving it strength and structure. I can’t see them from where I stand, but I feel them form, as certain of their existence as I am of Erik’s nearness.
Our upward momentum slows and then it stops, all so effortless that we don’t lose balance.
A window forms in the wall opposite us, letting the moonlight in while the rush of the ocean sounds far away.
The view from the window is breathtaking. Stars sparkle in the distance, and the moon sits high in the sky.
Erik hasn’t taken his eyes off me, but his voice is soft as he asks, “A cage in the sky?”
It won’t have escaped him that there may be a window, but there are no doors.
“Does it need to be?” I ask him, a challenging tone entering my voice.
He shakes his head, a slow, resolute movement, but it’s the tears filling his eyes that freeze me.
“I won’t die in this battle,” he says.
My voice is a whisper. “How can you possibly know that?”
“Because it won’t come to pass.”
My forehead creases and my question is quiet. “What?”
His arms tighten around me, strong arms that are suddenly shaking, while his eyes… his deep-gray eyes that once held so many secrets, are leaking tears he doesn’t try to hide.
His voice is ragged. Raw. Hurt . “You believe I’m the one in danger, but, Asha… precious Asha… why do you think the dragons gave you their scales? Why did Cailey fall to the Earth to save you? Why did Thaden Kane hand you his only child? And even the Valkyrie Queen asked you which side you would fight on, and you said?—”
“The darkness is the real enemy.”
I can barely breathe.
A storm of fear and dread builds within me.
Only an hour ago, Erik and I stood quietly at the cliff’s edge, and he asked me if he should have died on that mountain.
He told me I was his anchor and that he feared what he would become if there was peace.
And now, a terrible realization dawns on me.
He fears what he will become without me.
“You can do what nobody else can,” he says. “You can banish the darkness.”
He slides one arm away from me to press his fist to his heart. “The battle you’re facing, your fight with the darkness, is the one on which our future turns. And it will take everything—” He draws a shaky breath, and his voice becomes ragged. “Stopping the darkness will mean giving everything . All of you. Your power, your mind, and your heart.”
He turns his hand from his own chest to mine, pressing his palm to my heart in the same way I pressed my hand to his chest on that first night in the throne room.
“Everything,” he whispers, and then he falls silent.
When he presses his cheek to mine, his tears dampen my skin.
Outside, the wind picks up, beating against the walls of the tower I created while inside this room, there is a peace that is destined to break.
“I made you a promise, Asha. I will never tear you apart. But you can’t promise me the same.”
“No.” My denial is instant. “I will find a way. All this power…” My breathing is rapid, my heart thumping, my fist closing around my medallion, my other hand pressing over his. “I will find a way.”
I crush my lips to his, vowing that no matter what it takes, I will survive.