Chapter 39 Nyssa
Nyssa
I was wrong. I was so very, very wrong.
Blindness wasn’t emptiness — it was a sharp, unyielding excessiveness.
It was a constant crackle of visual static no matter how hard I dug the heels of my palms into my eyeballs, or how badly I tried to will my powers to heal me.
But they couldn’t. I was powerless against the wrath of a Titan, and I knew I should heed that deadly warning.
Who was I to take on one, let alone a whole host of them?
Who knew how many Kronos had once again rallied to his side, promising them complete and total rule of the world they helped create?
Vaguely, I became aware that I was not alone in this place.
I could hear voices surrounding me — familiar, perhaps, but altogether too loud and disembodied — speaking about me, over me, but never to me.
No. They had given up on that quite quickly.
I had no words for them — only screams to drown out the static.
“Somebody needs to sedate her… she’s going to hurt herself…”
Hurt herself… What a wonderful idea. Maybe if I claw my eyes out, the brightness will stop and I can drown in the blessed silence of the dark. Yes, I think I’ll try that.
I lifted a hand out in front of me, disturbed by the odd sensation that I did not really know how far from my face it was. Everything was distorted in the blinding white.
“She’s stopped screaming at least,” someone said as I hooked my index finger about to plunge it into my left eye socket.
“No!” a male roared, and I felt, more than heard, him leap at me.
I twisted sharply to my right, hoping to avoid him. A satisfied smirk curved my lips when I heard him hit the floor instead of me, and the scent of honeyed-whiskey followed in his wake.
Aros.
Sorry, big guy. It won’t kill me, but not doing this might.
Again, I jabbed that finger at my face.
A different set of fingers reefed my hand back — smaller, not belonging to any man — and a different aroma filtered in. Cinnamon and citrus. And something sweeter.
Jasmine, I thought. Just like my mother’s vines back home. Home. A choked sob worked its way past my lips and I crumpled in the arms of the woman. I want to go home.
“It’s alright, Nyssa. It will be okay.” The soothing tones of Evadne’s voice reached past the glaring static — and I almost fell for it.
“No!” I screamed, swinging so hard and fast she couldn’t have expected it. I felt my fist hit something bony, heard her sharp inhale, and still I fought to remove my eyes myself.
They might grow back. They might not. I only sought to end this horrific white misery.
Her hands locked around my arm and this time, Aros snatched at the other so that I was forcibly restrained between the pair of them. No matter how hard I thrashed or how loud I screamed, neither relented.
Trapped.
I was trapped.
No no no no no, I cannot do this, I cannot, I cannot, I cannot.
My whole body shook as I rocked back and forth between them — flitting between agonised screams and heartwrenching sobs.
A loud shriek tore through the walls, and for a heartbeat, I was rather impressed at the sound I’d managed to make. But then logic tapped on my forehead and I realised I was incapable of such an inhuman sound — and that it had come from outside the walls.
It sounded again, more urgent than before, and then I felt her.
Velira’s consciousness clawed at the thick obsidian walls I’d thrown up around my mind in the middle of the battlefield, lest they feel the torture too.
The second I allowed a crack to appear in the wall surrounding my mind, Velira rocketed through it, followed swiftly by him.
Caelus was fainter, but still overwhelmingly here. Velira was here. And I was not alone.
All at once the fight fled me and I crumpled in a heap on the floor. The unsuspecting twins dropped my arms, and somehow the hot palm of Aros managed to slip beneath my head before it crashed against the floor.
I knew not where I was, but I knew that Velira was close. So close I could touch her if I only reached out far enough. And I knew that I needed her.
Weakly, I stretched my arm out in the direction that I could feel her soul. “Vel,” I whispered, my voice scraped raw and unusable. A second later, two beefy arms slid beneath my tired body and hoisted me into the air.
“I’ll take you to her, darling,” Aros murmured softly, in a tone I didn’t think I’d ever heard from him before. At least not directed at me. He sounded tired, sad… utterly defeated. And I didn’t like that at all.
Wearily, I reached my hand up again and felt his muscles tense beneath me, no doubt certain I was about to attempt another eye-gauging while his arms were busy holding me aloft.
Instead, I curled it around in the general direction of his face, feeling blindly until the gentle tickle of his long, fiery mane tickled my fingertips.
I followed it further left and my fingers grazed against a stubbled cheek and the heated skin of the fire-wielder.
My palm curved to cup his cheek and I felt a breath hitch in his throat as he paused mid-step.
He sighed deeply, his breath leaving a string of goosebumps across my skin in its wake.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed. “I’m so sorry, Aros.”
His arms pulled me tighter for a moment and then he set me down on something cold, hard and granular. Sandstone, presumably.
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Unlike me.”
Almost immediately, a grating sound occurred — like metal on stone — and I flinched, fearing another attack, freezing only when I heard the snap of a leathery wing extending above my head and the soothing tones of my dragon in my mind.
Godling, Vel murmured, using her foreleg to drag me close. Oh, I’m so sorry for leaving you, godling.
I latched onto her with a sob, somehow free to release all the unshed tears safely within the cocoon of her wing and her unconditional love.
Oh, godling, I’m so very sorry.
It’s not your fault… I told you to go. Ordered it. None of this is your fault.
We will fix it, I swear to you. If Apollo can’t do it, then I’ll find someone who can, even if I have to fly to every land in every realm and beyond.
Words abandoned me as more tears streamed down my cheeks.
A disturbance in the chamber had me clutching more fiercely to my dragon’s leg, unwilling to string myself together to confront whatever this new thing was.
When my bond sang and my heart leapt, I knew that I didn’t have to.
He was here.
“Caelus,” I whispered a second before the balcony doors crashed open.
“Velira.” I heard him say. “If you don’t lift that wing in the next two seconds, I’m climbing under it, fangs and flames or not.”
A deep, rolling rumble sounded right next to my ear, made even louder now with my sight gone.
And that renewed realisation jarred me so badly, I started shaking once more.
Panic gripped me right down to the tips of my ice-cold fingers; right down to my tingling toes.
It was a lance to my brain and a dagger to my heart.
“Velira!” Caelus shouted, muffled by the pouding heartbeat in my ears.
Wind danced over my face and the brightness somehow grew even brighter.
And then I was home.
I fell apart in his arms as he held me, whispering quiet reassurances against my hair. I tasted the overly-sweet tang of ichor and realised I was crying. I realised that what had been done to me — stolen from me — had scarred me worse than I’d realised.
What if I never see again?
“Shh, I’ve got you, Nightshade. I’ve got you.”
You will, Velira assured.
But what if I can’t?
Then I will share my gaze with you when you need it, and you will adapt for all else.
“It’s going to be okay,” Caelus half-whispered, half-sang.
“You sound so sure,” I said to both of them.
Their response was swift and unanimous.
I am.