Chapter 16
MORRIGAN
Ididn’t realize that I had fallen asleep until the sound of screaming rang through my ears so loudly that it caused them to ring.
I quickly covered them with my hands and looked around my room. It was like they were here… but weren’t.
They began again, and something in my chest seemed to push me out of bed—similar to the feeling of when the wraiths summoned me, but with my will still intact.
I decided to allow my feet to follow the path that they were drawn to, pausing every couple of seconds when another scream tore through my head.
The yelling became clearer as I walked through the halls, and I realized that they were masculine. But it wasn’t Azrael.
Finally, I came across a familiar door that I had barged into only a couple of days prior, and I sucked in a nervous breath as my feet pleaded to move forward.
I shouldn’t, I thought to myself. This is his room. He’s a grown man… god? Whatever he is, he doesn’t need your help.
I forced myself to take a step back, when another scream pierced my ears, and my conscience began to win the battle over my mind. “Gods dammit,” I muttered, just as I pushed through his door.
I rushed to his bed, expecting to see him thrashing and kicking—something other than him lying still on his bed, not even moving an inch. I cocked my head, confused as I watched him. I had heard the screams.
Great, Morrigan. Now you’re a creep who’s watching a stranger sleep in his bed.
With a roll of my eyes, I turned on my heel to leave, but then another scream had me stumbling into the wall as I covered my ears.
I turned back to him, and he was still unmoving.
But the more I actually examined his body this time, I realized he wasn’t breathing either.
His chest didn’t rise or fall. He appeared stiff as a board against his sheets.
I pulled my brows together and approached him once more to confirm my suspicion, and as I carefully knelt onto his bed, Tristan’s body suddenly began shaking violently.
“Oh, gods,” I breathed out, quickly scrambling toward him to lift his head. My breathing picked up into heavy pants as I tried to think of what to do. I had never seen something like this before. “Mom!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, hoping she’d hear me. “I need help!”
Tristan’s eyes began to flutter, and it looked like he was trying to open them.
That’s when I also noticed that the little black veins on his face were…
spreading. It was extremely slow, and almost impossible to catch.
But as I narrowed my eyes and surveyed them, I watched each of the lines slowly crawling over his skin.
Tristan jerked hard, and I did the only thing I knew to do. I reached down to grab his hand, hoping he would feel my touch. “I’m here, Tristan,” I whispered to him, then turned over my shoulder again. “Mom!”
Seconds later she appeared, and her eyes went wide as she saw me on the bed holding a convulsing Tristan. He’s a god. I didn’t think gods had any sickness. It didn’t make sense to me.
“Gods…” my mother said the moment she ran to the bed. “I don’t— Mara isn’t here. She usually—”
“Mara?” I asked, but my mother didn’t respond. She just looked at Tristan frantically.
“Let’s get him on his side; she usually does that during his episodes,” she said quickly, helping me turn him over. “They cause his body to seize, and we don’t want him to choke. Sometimes these make him sick.”
“But he’s a god,” I argued.
Once again, she said nothing, just focused her gaze on Tristan’s face. “They usually only last a couple of minutes.”
He faced me now, and, slowly, his eyes were beginning to open.
Again, I heard a scream in my ears, but his mouth never moved.
I realized then that I wasn’t just hearing him.
It was internal, like I had reached into his mind and could feel his suffering.
He had called to me, whether he realized it or not.
“Tristan,” I whispered, lowering my face to his.
His eyes slowly rose until they met mine, and they were swollen and red from the strain in his face.
“Tell me what to do. I’ll let you in, just this once. Tell me how to help you.”
He looked like he was struggling to focus, his lips pressing together as hard as they could. But eventually, I heard the faintest whisper.
Fire. His voice entered my mind in a haunting whisper, similar to how it sounded when he used to speak to me.
“Fire?” I asked, confused.
His body shook hard, and he blinked a couple of times as he tried to focus again. Yours.
I didn’t understand. My fire? How would my fire help?
Please.
Shaking my head, I brought my hand toward him and called to my fire.
It took a little time to surface, but eventually, the heat hummed through my arm, and I directed it toward my fingers.
My eyes began to glow against his face, reflecting in both of his eyes, and I was faintly aware of my mother staring at me from the side.
“Now what?” I asked him quietly.
With a sudden jerk, he was able to move his face forward an inch, just enough for my hand to connect with his cheek.
I didn’t have any time to think before the orange light of my flames seemed to seep from my fingers, creeping into his skin and crawling across his face until they reached the black veins there.
The moment they connected, I watched the veins retreat slowly, like my fire was burning away whatever dark magic lurked in his skin.
After a couple of seconds, I felt Tristan’s body fall slack against the bed, his convulsions ceasing almost immediately.
“How did you do that?” my mother asked.
“I don’t know.”
I watched Tristan’s eyes close as he took in staggering breaths, trying to regain what he had lost. Eventually, my flames dispersed into his skin, trickling away like they had been absorbed.
Why did that work? I asked myself, wondering if Tristan was listening. He didn’t answer, though.
“I’ll get you some cold water,” my mother said to him, scurrying out of the room.
The two of us sat there in silence for a long moment, and I was almost nervous to breathe too loudly. Eventually, Tristan’s eyes rose and met mine again.
“Thank you,” he said breathlessly. Then I felt a hand on top of mine, and I realized that I was still cupping his cheek.
My face instantly heated in embarrassment, and I pulled my hand away, slipping from under his grasp. “You’re welcome,” I answered quickly, “I… think.”
I peeled away from the bed and remained standing as I waited for my mother to return. Tristan’s eyes never left mine. He just watched me as I paced from one edge of the bed to the other.
“How did I do that, exactly?” I asked.
“I… wasn’t sure if…” he panted, clearly still out of breath.
I decided to put him out of his misery. “Another time,” I assured him. It wasn’t exactly the highest priority right now.
My mother ran back in with some water and helped Tristan to sit up, handing him the glass. At the same time, I heard a smaller pair of footsteps approach the door, and turned to see Azrael rubbing his eyes before peering into the room.
“Azrael!” I called out. “Why are you up?”
“I heard yelling,” he groaned in a soft, tired voice. “Is Mr. Tristan okay?”
I gave Tristan one more glance before making my way to Azrael and picking him up. His head instantly fell to my shoulder as he slumped over in my hold. “He’s alright now. Let’s get you back to bed.”
As I walked away with him, I heard Tristan whisper in the back of my mind.
Thank you, Morrigan.
I tried my best to ignore the lingering heat on my palm where our skin had connected.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there with Azrael.
Eventually, he fell asleep on my lap, and I didn’t have the heart to move him.
I heard a soft knock on the door, then my mother stepped inside. Her eyes lowered to Azrael snoring on my legs, and a small smile pulled at her lips. “I can take over if you’d—”
“No,” I said a bit too loudly. Azrael stirred, and I began humming to him quietly once more until his breathing deepened again. “I… I’d rather be here.”
With an eerie kind of grace, my mother moved toward the bed and sat down beside me.
It was hard to see her as a… whatever you would call it.
Ghost? Soul? To me, she was just… her. Her skin may have been a few shades paler.
The brown in her hair may have faded slightly.
But she was still the beautiful Lady Guinevere that I had spent my entire life adoring.
“You haven’t forgotten my song,” she mused, almost as if saying it to herself instead of me.
I wanted to respond to that, but it reminded me of every nightmare she held me through.
Every bad night with Maeryn… Yes, my mother did what she could to soothe me.
To protect me at the risk of being removed from my life.
But as I looked down at Azrael, I wondered what exactly it was that I could offer him.
Between trying to be at his side every day, and battling my own nightmares, I had barely rested.
If it wasn’t for my mother taking him in the mornings, I would be running on fumes alone.
How would I protect him?
“Morrigan,” she whispered, and her cold hand touched my cheek. I felt her wipe away something wet just below my eye, and I didn’t even know that I had been crying. “What’s wrong, flower?”
My bottom lip quivered, and I bit down on it as I tried to find the words.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to do this.
” I gestured to Azrael with my chin. “What if I fail? What if he gets hurt because of me? What if, after everything I’ve done, we go home and he—” I had to stop myself and take in a shaky breath. “What do I do?”
Her smile widened into a warm one as she scooted herself closer to me. “Your best,” she answered simply. “You do your best.”
I had to fight for control, trying to prevent my shaking from waking Azrael. “He has no one, Mom. He doesn’t have a father… a mother…”
“He has you.” Her fingers threaded through my hair as she held the both of us at her side.
“I don’t want to fail him,” I whispered, the confession heavy in my chest and weighing my heart down like a mountain of stone.
“My sweet girl,” she sighed, pulling me closer. “Look at him.”
When I lowered my eyes, Azrael’s fingers dug into the fabric of my pants, but his face relaxed with a sense of ease. He never looked this peaceful in the tunnels—there was no peace there. But here, he barely went a single second without smiling during the day, and it had barely been a week.
My mother’s fingers gripped my chin before lifting my face to meet her gaze.
“Morrigan… I spent years praying to the gods for them to give me the strength to even achieve half of what you have accomplished for that boy.” Then, her eyes glistened a little against the light of the candles hanging around us. “One wall.”
“What?” I asked, not understanding what she meant.
“You spent your entire life trapped by a single wall. And I’m asking you to let it down. Protect yourself. Protect Azrael. But find that crack again, and slip through it. Take your freedom. Unburden yourself. No one will hurt you here. I need you to believe that.”
I stared into her eyes for a long time, neither of us saying a word. Unburden yourself. How could I?
“I don’t want to be weak anymore,” I admitted to her.
“I feel like a ragdoll. A toy. Some moments, I have a small amount of clarity, but at night, in the dark, it’s like I’m drowning.
And I’m scared. I’m scared that if I even acknowledge that feeling, then I won’t make it back to the surface again. ”
My mother pulled my face to hers, pressing her lips against my forehead, and a single tear slipped free as I closed my eyes. “Take the leap, flower,” she whispered against my skin. “You have all of us here to catch you when you do.”