Chapter Thirty-Six
What would I say to him, El? The fact that we do not like Sorin is hardly actionable. And for good reason. Neither of us has been gifted with the power of foresight, only a terrific and often dreadful ability to discern what dwells in men’s hearts and minds.
But an evil deed undone is just that. It does not exist, and “yet or ever?” remains an unanswered question. A chasm of possibility—and free will.
Ash loves Sorin, and I will not take that from him.
Only Sorin can do that.
An ancient letter from the Lover to the Huntress
filed in the archives at Blade’s Rest
Being dead felt like floating.
Or perhaps it felt like being one with the Dream. Aleksi could have sworn this was familiar, some primal memory of both existing and not existing. Of possibilities.
He sucked in a breath, and something warm rushed into his lungs. Not air, but water. Panic seized him, and he thought about fighting . . . until he realized it was causing him no distress. It did not hurt, and he did not feel like he was drowning.
It took a moment for the panic to recede, but when it did, Aleksi laughed.
His idea of eternal bliss, of the perfection of the Dream, was now water.
It was as beautiful as it was hilarious.
Something touched Aleksi’s face—careful fingers grazed one cheek, while gentle lips brushed the other.
He opened his eyes.
Visions of Naia and Einar floated in front of him. Naia’s hair was a dark, glorious cloud that drifted around her face and shoulders, and the light that filtered through the water gleamed off of Einar’s silver-purple skin.
Not hilarious, after all. Just beautiful. Because if Aleksi was bound to spend eternity in the Dream, this was precisely how he wanted to do it—holding images of Naia and Einar so close that he could touch them.
Then his visions looked at one another, both anxious and relieved, and began to tug him upward.
They breached the surface, and Aleksi took another breath. He half expected to cough up great lungfuls of water, but the air flowed effortlessly into him.
“You’re alive.” The words ended in a quiet sob, and Naia tucked her face under Aleksi’s chin.
Was he? It did not seem possible, yet here he was. He wrapped an arm around her, rubbing her back as her shoulders heaved with the force of her tears. “Are we certain?”
Einar enfolded them both in his large arms before curling one hand around the back of Aleksi’s neck. His fingers came to rest over his pulse, as if Einar needed reassurance, too. “You almost weren’t. You left most of your blood back on that beach.”
That definitely fit with his recollection of events. “Then how?”
Naia lifted her head. She was still crying, but now a brilliant smile curved her lips as she pushed his wet hair back from his forehead. “Rahvekya.”
Rahvekya. First the island had helped him defeat Sorin, and now it had helped him to truly and fully keep his promises to Naia and Einar. Aleksi had felt the island’s magic reaching for him as he’d lain bleeding . . . but he had not realized it could do something like this.
“I believe your island likes me,” he told them.
“Loves you,” Naia corrected. “Look.”
She gestured around them. He saw for the first time that they were in the lush, secluded cove they had visited before, the one that Naia said had been created by the island in the aether, just for her and Theron.
At the time, Aleksi had mourned the fact that the tiny hot spring had been big enough to hold only two.
They were in the same spring, only now it was large enough for three.
Einar pressed his forehead to Aleksi’s temple. “You’re part of our story now,” he rasped as he slid his fingers into Aleksi’s hair. “So don’t think you can escape us.”
“I never wanted to.” Aleksi knew that Naia understood, but did Einar? “You know that, right?”
It took Einar a moment to reply. When he did, the words were a fervent whisper against Aleksi’s cheek. “Yes. That did not make it any easier to watch you go to war against Sorin on your own . . . but I learned from Theron’s mistakes. Some things are more important than our own lives.”
Did Aleksi still believe that? If he had died—or, at least, had stayed dead—then his friends would have been devastated. They would have been left to spend their immortal lives wondering if they could have saved him if only they had been there.
It was an impossible sort of guilt, because there could never be any release or respite from it. They could never have known whether being there for the fight would have kept Aleksi alive . . . or gotten them all killed and allowed Sorin free rein to destroy the world.
Naia and Einar would have suffered in a different way, with less guilt but more devastation. Losing him would have reinforced all their worst memories of losing each other, and it was easy to understand how that sort of pain could spiral.
But yes, Aleksi would do it again. Because if anyone else had fallen to Sorin’s wrath because Aleksi had stepped away from, instead of toward, the danger, it would have been even more disastrous. He would have lost part of himself.
Love could die and yet persist. It happened every day, and he knew it to be true from his relationship with Alysaia. But love could not wither and still survive.
“Some things are more important than our own lives,” he finally agreed.
“I want you both to live,” Einar said softly. “I want a thousand years, and then a thousand more. But if something happens . . .” His fingers found Naia’s cheek, and Aleksi felt Einar’s smile against his lips. “We’ll find you again. It’s what we do.”
It was their grand, fated destiny . . . and now Aleksi was a part of it. “I like the sound of that,” he murmured.
A woeful understatement, but words did not exist to describe the wild thrumming of his heart. It was that moment when he’d thought he had died and journeyed to the Dream all over again, except he was alive.
And Naia and Einar were in his arms.
“I love you,” he whispered. Those words could not fully convey his joy, either, but they were all he had.
No word in any language had yet been invented that could encompass the full breadth of this emotion.
Poets and bards had been trying for all of existence, and all they’d managed to capture were hazy glimpses, no matter how talented they were.
Aleksi should know, for he had inspired many of those attempts. But as Naia and Einar whispered back to him, then abandoned words for the more concrete demonstration of touch, he wondered.
What could the three of them inspire?