Chapter 6
Elorie
“No.”
My scream pierces between my temples. A mind-numbing echo rattles through me.
The blade is tugged back, and it’s as if the prisoner doesn’t feel the wound at first. His golden eyes sharpen.
Shadows slowly cast over them. With a swift turn, he spins, facing the rebel who just stepped through the shadows.
And in one bloody move, he shoves his hand through the Fae’s chest, ripping his heart out.
Time slows, and I can’t catch my breath. I can’t suppress the panic swelling as blood continues to pour from the prisoner’s wound.
He drops the rebel’s heart, and my stomach turns.
I expect the rebel to crumple to the ground like the rest of them, but shadows split on the wall. The prison opens its maw, revealing a dark, swirling tunnel. Twisting stones and nothingness stretch behind him, swallowing the rebel’s body whole.
The mouth of the prison widens. It clamps its teeth at me and nips at the prisoner’s neck. A tongue of obsidian licks over us, and I wait for it to take us as well. For it to clear this room, or cell, or whatever it is now that there are no runes or walls.
An exhale of death trickles down my spine, and the swirl of obsidian becomes a mirror, reflecting the prisoner’s face when his back is still to me. A final glimpse before the prison closes itself, leaving us bleeding but whole.
Alive but dying.
The prisoner’s knees buckle, and he falls to the ground.
“No.” This time I’m sure I say it out loud.
I rush to the prisoner and cradle his head in my lap.
It’s probably a bad idea to be this close to him, given how easily he seems to inflict death, but I can’t let anyone else die in my name today—not even him.
I’m not worth it.
I knew what I was sacrificing when I ran in here. I accepted my fate years ago, tending to those I knew I’d be burned beside someday on the pyre. Villager and prisoner. Body beside body.
My peace isn’t here on Alyssium, even if this is my home. It is somewhere else.
He wasn’t supposed to try and save me.
“Don’t die.” I hold the prisoner’s head in my lap, patting his face, neck, and shoulders with bloody hands until I flatten my palm over his heart.
It’s beating so hard, thundering beneath his ribs.
So fast, I understand why Callum said humans have hummingbird hearts.
The prisoner’s heartbeat is too quick for a Fae, which tells me he must have been in this prison for a long time.
Long enough for the magic to have drained. For him to have suffered the Beating.
He’s mortal, and a mortal can’t survive wounds like this.
“You’re one to talk.”
Just what I need, my grumpy, sarcastic inner thoughts taunting me about the fact that my wounds are no better. That I’m dying too. I glance down at my side—at the prisoner’s heart—and I feel us both fading.
His golden eyes are nearly black as they stare up at me. Swirling with the last remnants of his thoughts. And even if no words come out as he chokes out a breath, his eyes say so much. He doesn’t take them off me. Sweeping over my face.
The prisoner’s hand lifts, and he brushes his fingers over the blue ends of my hair. A razor-thin smile breaks through the darkness in his expression. Like a flicker of a thought crosses his mind. As if he recognizes something in me. Possibly death.
Or is this peace?
Acceptance?
“Don’t go. Don’t go.”
I shake my head, my eyes burning with tears.
But neither of us look away. We stare into each other—so long I memorize every fleck of color in his darkening gaze.
And then his hand falls. The last remnants of gold in his amber eyes flicker out, and there’s nothing but the coldest, darkest emptiness I’ve ever known.
Something inside me cracks. It splinters through my chest. I can’t breathe or think. The weight that settles is unbearable. It’s crushing me.
“You weren’t supposed to die for me.” A tear slips out.
It lands on his forehead and traces the line of his scar like a river. For a split second, I swear the water sparkles. Fragments of the After calling my spirit.
My fingers trace over one of the runes on the prisoner’s chest as more tears start to fall. I don’t understand the marks, and I don’t know him, but I cling anyway, trying to hold on for both our sakes.
A static pulse surrounds me as I watch his life slowly blinking out. Each heartbeat weaker. Each breath shallower than the last. No matter how hard I cling to him, I can’t seem to hold him tight enough.
Each inhale, I find myself fighting for breath.
I’ve tended to the dead since I was fourteen. Watched corpses get piled on carts outside the prison gates. I’ve offered blessings to hundreds of bodies. Closed so many empty eyes that they haunt me. And still, the thought of watching this male die is unbearable.
My fingers trace his runes, his shoulders. They find his heart again, and I pause, letting the steady beat of his mortality sync with mine. At least neither of us will die alone.
Around us, the prison air thickens, then cools.
Inhales.
Exhales.
“Don’t go. Don’t go.” My heart begs the more he fades.
Outwardly, nothing changes. But I feel him loosening his hold on the air around me. That presence that clung to my skin the moment I saw him kneeling in his cell starts to weaken.
I can’t bear it. He can’t leave me.
Even as I know, soon I’ll be leaving with him.
My head is light while my chest is heavy. My fingers numb.
Closing my eyes, I tip my head back and plant my palm firmly on his chest. Where his hummingbird heart slows, until there is nothing but silence.
I suppose if we go, we’ll go together.
Gods, souls, and stars guide us to Sarrow.
My heart whispers to the After. To the stars. To the Fae who gave up what little life he had left for a dying girl.
There is no more pain. I no longer feel anything apart from this sizzle in my hands. This heat in my chest.
The welcoming crackle of death.
It strokes my skin. Caresses my tongue. A current of midnight rustles through me. Cool and quiet and dark. Like floating in an endless space with no stars. Just a pulse, calling out, guiding me. Through tunnels like those I wandered until I found this cell. An endless, vacant chasm.
Until I stumble upon a single heartbeat.
The pulse so strong, I taste it on my tongue. It knocks against my fingers.
I welcome you.
Drifting into the depths, I release the hold that tethers me to the prison.
That holds me to Alyssium. I let go of self and become the sprinkle of a soul in an endless abyss, guided only by a single beating heart.
I’m a flutter of ash that’s broken free from the pyre.
Drifting so high I might see the Well itself.
Except there is nothing but emptiness and a flicker in the distance. My fingers reach for it, but it’s so far and fragile.
It must be Sarrow.
I thought the gods abandoned us, but maybe Caeces is lighting a path for me now. Welcoming me to the After.
I reach for the prick of light but am met with a thousand threads instead. Strands bind my toes. My fingertips. The stones, the darkness. They bind everything. All shades of silver, gold, black, and red. Glowing as they weave the very fabric of the night.
My fingertips graze them until a golden strand summons me to it. It begs me to wrap my fingers around it. It’s hollow and thin, but there’s something still stirring deep within.
I’m no longer in the prison. I’m free. I’m floating. There is no containment. No cold. No winters or pain or mortality. There is only this sparkling blanket of life and death. Stretching so far that there is no beginning or end.
And that one thread is simply one of many, but I can’t let go of it.
“See through the stars.”
That whisper again.
Is it a warning or a guide? There are no stars here. No light. Nothing to see except what is inside me.
The thread slips from my fingers, and my chest empties. It starts to drift away.
This time, when I reach, it isn’t my hand that stretches out. It is my heartbeat. My being. I expand until I am the emptiness that surrounds me. Until I am the darkness itself, holding this all together.
Death is wicked to be this cold. This callous.
There is no peace like promised; there is just nothingness as I weave in and out of my mind. In and out of my body. I’m in prison, and I am not. I’m in my skin, and I am not. I am alone, and I am not.
Because he is here. Somewhere in the shadows, I feel him.
And when I finally wrap my fingers around that thread, my palm burns. The dark is replaced with pure white light. So bright my entire being opens just to take it all in. Until I am the only darkness left, so I inhale the light from the sky. Swallow it down.
And I burst.