28. I Long for You
28
I LONG FOR YOU
Finnian
The Present
The magic of the potion lifted, and the blood rushed into his head.
The seconds came screaming back to him before it had happened—the vial to his lips, Cassian’s form being swallowed by divine power, the devastation mangled on his face, destroying all the resolve Finnian had to go through with it.
The image had spiked through his heart. I cannot do this either, he had wanted to tell Cassian, but he knew that would only be a catalyst to convince them not to continue.
He hadn’t been able to breathe through the tears as he tipped the potion back.
The empty vial had slipped from his hand, and he fell to the floor and waited. Clutching at his chest and gasping for air, his whole body wracked with tremors.
With what breath he had left, he squeezed out the final words to seal his fate: “ Glom sanningarna. Tro lognerna .”
Every memory of Cassian would be altered. He would not feel treacherous affection in their arguments, his eyes would not wander over Cassian’s lips. He was the High God who imprisoned his father, who tried time and time again to curse Finnian, mercilessly.
Now that it was over, it was as if he’d woken up from a slumber, dissociated, as his mind raced to process the last five years since he’d handed himself over to Cassian.
Five years. In Moros, tortured and cursed.
Something had gone wrong.
“Cassius,” Finnian said, like an answered prayer. He ripped his head up, latching onto Cassian’s gaze, bronze-gold under the pool of his tears.
Finnian’s heart fractured. Five years since they’d been reunited. Five years since their plan was supposed to have reached fruition. What torment that must’ve been for him.
Cassian lurched Finnian into a tight embrace. “I missed you.”
Finnian threw his arms around Cassian’s neck, burying his face in his shoulder. “I am so sorry.” Tears trembled in his voice, dampening his cheeks. “I don’t know why the potion’s effects didn’t break. I am so sorry it took me so long to come back to you.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. You were tortured and cursed by my hands. I?—”
Finnian ripped away, heart pounding. He studied Cassian, searching to locate the wears and tears of the past nearly two centuries, to acknowledge all the changes.
Finnian wanted to know when Cassian had started wearing his hair shorter on the sides, who had given him the watch on his wrist—because he knew Cassian would never take time out of his day to purchase something for himself—or when the sunlight had faded from his gaze. He looked barely alive. A husk, like one of Finnian’s ghouls, forced to walk the earth with their soul tethered to their flesh, hollow and vacant.
Oh gods. Finnian tightened his grip on the tops of Cassian’s shoulders to stop himself from kissing him, to breathe life back into his soul. He could feel the haste of time clipping at their heels. Years had passed. What was the situation with Ruelle now? What had driven Cassian to curse him?
“The blood,” Finnian said. “We must finish this. You cursed me, which means Ruelle?—”
Cassian hauled him back into a hug. “We will.”
Finnian fell silent, momentarily relishing in Cassian’s warmth, the firm beat of his heart. “I have a feeling we are strapped for time. Please .” His whole body was on edge, fueled with an urgency that stemmed from the tightening in his gut to get a move on.
“I never should’ve let you do it,” Cassian murmured.
He didn’t like this. The way Cassian held him, as if it was the last time, or the way he spoke, airing a grievance he’d carried around for far too long.
Finnian pushed off his chest and took a step back. His limbs quivered, but he squared his jaw and said, “I’ll call for Alke. We have to end this.”
Cassian lightly held onto the tips of his fingers, staring down at them, wistful and terrifyingly melancholic.
“Finnian,” he said, lifting his gaze, “let me have this moment.”
Their eyes met and the sides of Finnian’s throat constricted. There it was again. A note of finality, drawing near.
“Why?” Finnian lashed out, tearing his hand from Cassian. He wiped at his tear-stained cheeks.
A pathetic smile formed on Cassian’s lips. “Because I do not know what the future holds, and I would like to savor this moment with you. It is the only thing that has kept me going for the last century and a half.”
Finnian’s heart plunged into his stomach. “Stop talking as if this is our final moment together. We have walked this far. I will not let anything stop us.”
At the flare of his frustration, the ringing sounded in his head. A distant, haunting buzz snagged down his jaw, rattled in his teeth.
He ground his molars.
“Finnian.” Cassian’s weary plea tightened his chest.
The breath went light in his lungs. “No.” His voice wobbled.
Rotating towards the grove, he ignored the thrumming in his skull and put his fingers to his mouth. He inhaled deeply, but as he went to whistle, the breath stuttered out at the view of the ruined garden.
Ember-lit remains of charred stems and dust blackened the ground.
You ruin everything—everyone you love.
A lump swelled in his throat.
The itch burrowed like a corkscrew, and he cringed.
He rolled his neck against the writhing nerves under his skin and blew against his pinched fingers.
The high-pitch call rang through the darkened sky.
“Stop.” All emotion drained from Cassian’s voice and filled with alert. “Something is off.”
Alke emerged down from the charcoal-soaked clouds and into the stream of moonlight, his cobalt feathers glistening like raindrops.
“No!” Cassian thrusted out his arm. Bands from his gilded abyss shot forth.
The movement was subtle, and had Finnian not learned to be wary of the night, he would’ve overlooked the whirling mass snaking through the darkness like a specter straight for his bird.
“Alke, stop!” He slung out his hand and a stream of fire expelled from his palm, roaring up into the sky. The fiery glow lit up the silhouette of a shadowy monster widening its jaws and catching the bird in its mouth.
Alke cried out.
For fuck’s sake.
Finnian jolted towards Cassian, but the ground trembled and a force knocked them backwards.
Finnian felt the dense divine power against his skin as his back collided into the ashy remains of the grove.
Nightrazers flocked around him, a collection of black holes all pointed down at his face.
He pushed against the skeletal grip locked around each of his biceps, lifting his back from the ground. The restriction around his arms tightened, and he was shoved back down.
He let out a grunt as needle-fine teeth tore into his arm. Another set took a chunk out of his side. Waves of pain seized up into his neck, rippled in his ribcage, burned down his leg.
Fucking nightrazers.
Nostrils flared, he channeled his magic into his right hand, his pain sublimating into unadulterated rage.
An explosion of brassy tangerine fire spilled from his palm. The spout heaved like magma from a volcano. Screeches filled the air. The nightrazers scattered like vultures, giving Finnian enough time to hop up to his feet.
Quickly, he stuck out his hand and spun in a circle, barricading himself with the flames. The heat smothered his breath, but he didn’t care. They would keep the nightrazers at bay until he got a grasp on what was?—
“Finnian!”
He snapped his head in the direction of Cassian’s voice to find him thrashing against the iron bars of the fence, bound in place by the Chains of Confinement.
Finnian clenched his jaws as a figure stepped into his line of sight, obscuring his view of Cassian. An animal’s skull with horns twisting out of the skull hid his face.
In Finnian’s periphery, another stepped into the firelight, her fingers clasped around Alke’s neck.
Marina pried apart his beak, allowing access for a shadow the size of a worm to slink down his esophagus.
Old memories flashed in Finnian’s mind of that day—Mira looking down at him, holding Alke by the neck.
Know your place.
Rage beat in his blood, the intensity of it harmonizing with the steady ring trapped like a fly in his head.
The shadow slithered out from Alke’s mouth, its body curled around a syringe. A viscous vermillion shining in the fire’s gleam.
His nephew’s blood.