Chapter 38
38
M Y BODY HITS THE GROUND with a distant thump. Immediately, my senses dull and darken, as though I observe the world through a film of murky water. Mother Mabel’s face drains of color, and she sways where she stands. “Brielle?”
The West Wind falls to his knees beside me. All-powerful Meirlach, whose steel can master any foe, protrudes from my left breast. “No,” he whispers. “No, no, no, no, no—” It is a mantra, the holiest of chants.
Mother Mabel stares at the spreading pool of blood. She lifts a trembling hand, presses two fingers to her quavering mouth as she scans the novitiates clumped together in their white cloaks, Harper among them. Her hood has fallen back, revealing lustrous ebony hair, blue eyes swimming with tears.
Gently, Zephyrus lifts me across his thighs. “Stay with me.” He cradles the side of my slackened jaw, and his voice cracks as he searches my face. I try to focus on him amidst the looming shadows, but I am floundering, dragged farther beneath the surface of the murk. The deeper I sink, the less agony I experience. I do not fight the pull.
“Look at me.” He shakes me desperately. My head lolls. “Damn it all, look at me!”
As Mother Mabel reaches my side, a wall of air catapults her across the room. She hits the wall with a violent crack, and there are screams, terrible screams. She slides onto her backside, dazed. Blood trickles from her hairline.
“Someone get me a gods-damned healer!” Zephyrus roars.
Yet all is silent. All is still.
“We’ll fix this.” He fumbles for the hilt protruding from my chest. “We’ll…” Blood-soaked hands slip over the gold plating. No matter how hard he yanks, the sword does not pull free.
With a hoarse cry, he releases the weapon. He shakes, fighting to maintain control, and then, as if having succumbed, deflates.
It is an effort to move my hand. Its weight is unbearable. Yet my fingers twitch, brushing Zephyrus’ thigh in whatever comfort I can offer him.
His head snaps up. “Brielle.” Leaning over me, he peers into my eyes.
I swallow around the blood flooding my mouth and throat. “I tried.”
“Shh. Don’t say that.” He pulls me against his sweaty chest. The pulse of his heart beneath my ear begins to fade, as all things do. “Help is coming for you. Just hold on. You have to hold on.”
Deeper and deeper I sink. My words, when they emerge, are naught but breath. “I wish…” A shudder wracks my body, and the blackness spreads, veiling him momentarily from sight. “I would have told you—”
“Told me what?”
I cannot remember.
“Brielle.” The word is too sharp. “What did you want to tell me?” He shakes me again. “Brielle.”
My fingers slacken, fall loose upon the ground. I am dissolving. My thoughts erode, and I begin to forget.
The West Wind dips his head to mine. Even in my blood-saturated haze, I can smell his breath, sweet as honeysuckle. “You can’t leave me,” he murmurs. “Not like this.”
I do not have the words to inform him that I am already gone.
Peeling itself from my body, my soul floats higher in the cavern, far above the gathered spectators, the lush field of grass. I never gave much thought as to how I would die. All I know is what follows: the Eternal Lands. There, I would want for nothing. My belly full. My heart whole. My body restful, rid of aches and pains.
But—Zephyrus. Dear, complicated Zephyrus, who smooths the red, tangled curls from my face with his filth-encrusted hands. A rough, broken sound falls unchecked from his mouth. “Why?” He lifts his head, that emerald gaze piercing Mother Mabel across the field as two acolytes help her to stand. “Why would you send Brielle on that fool’s errand into Under? Why demand she collect the sword? I thought you cared for her.”
The Abbess of Thornbrook is many things. Austere. Rigid. Never bent, as she is now. “I care for each of my charges. Brielle was…” Her expression falters. “She was special. No one else was more dutiful or willing to please. How could I have predicted she would stray?”
He sneers. “You claim to care for Brielle, yet it is clear you barely know her.”
“And you do?” Her eyes narrow. “I have looked after Brielle for a decade. You have known her for a handful of months.”
“It takes more than time to know another’s heart. She is a curious, willful woman. She questions the world in which she lives.”
“Let me be clear, Bringer of Spring.” Mother Mabel’s voice quavers despite the steel beneath. “It is because of you that Brielle is dead.”
A snarl rips through the cavern.
The West Wind leaps to his feet, wind-carved blade in hand. “Take accountability for your actions, Abbess,” he spits. “It was your hand that threw the blade. Do not deny it.”
The fair folk, drawn by the whiff of spilled blood, have crept forward in their tiers, but one quelling look from Mother Mabel herds them back into the gloom.
“Do not doubt my care,” she goes on. “I loved Brielle like a daughter. I tried to guide her to the best of my abilities, but you were selfish. You wanted her for yourself. Now here she lies, a corpse.”
Indeed, my freckles appear as broken scabs against my colorless skin. My blank eyes resemble muddy pools.
“If you truly cared for her well-being,” Zephyrus hisses, lifting the sword with blood in his teeth and grief in his heart, “you would have nurtured her. You would have built her up, infused her with the confidence required to face the world. Instead, she floundered, torn down by the cruelty of her peers.” Another tear courses down his cheek. “The true mark of a coward is choosing to do nothing.”
I peer at Harper from above, my soul grasping onto the last frail tether binding me to my physical self. She bows her head, shamefaced. Isobel appears equally remorseful.
“Better a coward,” Mother Mabel replies with cold scorn, “than a disgraced god. It is not my job to nurture and protect. That is the Father’s duty. My job is to instruct my charges of their faith.” Her upper lip curls. “But what would you know of faith? You have avoided duty your entire life. Why cling to something that does not belong to you and never will?”
She steps forward, skirting Pierus’ body, the oozing roots. Her gaze falls to my blood-drenched form before darting away, pain tightening her features. “Brielle belongs with her people. We will take her back to Thornbrook, where she will be buried. I will not allow her to rot in this place.”
“You would take her from me?”
Mother Mabel peers carefully at Zephyrus. “If you cared for her at all,” she says quietly, “you would wish her a peaceful rest.”
I’ve never seen his features so anguished. “I told Brielle to return to Thornbrook. I did not want Pierus to harm her. But she did not listen to me.”
“Do you not see the pattern of your actions?” A few more strides bring Mother Mabel nearer to my side. “The death of one lover, and now the death of another. When will enough be enough? When will you learn?”
The devastation, when it hits, is total. I watch Zephyrus’ expression fracture, its slow, shameful crush beneath remembrance.
“Live your life, Zephyrus. Leave this place, if you wish. You’re free.” Mother Mabel reaches out a beseeching hand. “Just return Brielle to us.”
Indeed, freedom is something he has long desired. I’m only disappointed I cannot share this joyous moment with him.
Curled over my corpse, Zephyrus weeps in earnest. Great, heaving sobs that would break the back of a weaker man. His sadness is so potent it tinges the air, feathering the edges of my waning soul. Something tugs at my gut as I float higher. The Father calls. I’m not ready to go.
“I don’t care for my freedom,” Zephyrus grinds out. “All I want is for this woman in my arms to be alive, unbroken, whole.” He touches the corner of my mouth where the blood has begun to harden. “What must I do to bring her back?”
“It cannot be done.” The long column of Mother Mabel’s neck is a pillar of palest marble as she lifts her chin. “That is the unfortunate reality of a mortal life.”
“I will not accept that.” He snarls it, his face a mess of snot and tears. “Under holds the well of my power, and I, dear Abbess, am a god unchained. We shape the world as we see fit. Nothing is stronger.”
She stands uncowed. “It is the law.”
“Laws can be rewritten.”
“Not this law,” she says. “Not death.”
Brow scrunched, Zephyrus stares into my pallid face. His palm cups my cheek tenderly, and I see the man he could have been, unburdened, free to choose. He is not like his brothers. He is neither bleak winter nor the scouring air to the south. Spring is gentle at heart. It shatters the earth’s icy, hardened skin.
“Do you believe in miracles, Mother Mabel?”
Her black eyes narrow to slits. Fine facial lines tell the tale of restless nights.
“It seems exactly the sort of question one who knows nothing of our faith would ask,” she responds with a bone-deep weariness. “If you had bothered to read our Text, you would know that in the Book of Grief—”
“Aiden the Blessed healed a drowned woman after she lay dead for three days?” Mother Mabel stares. “Or perhaps in the Book of Fate, when Ian the Just regained sight after a lifetime of blindness?” He smiles a hard sort of smile. “I am well acquainted with your Text, Abbess. But I did not ask what is written in its pages. I asked if you believe in miracles.”
The question clearly makes her uncomfortable. Another moment passes before she states, “I do.”
“Then take me instead. My life in exchange for Brielle’s.”
Mother Mabel blinks at him, dumbfounded. A hush dampens the gloom of Miles Cross. “You, a god, offer your life for a mortal woman?”
He dips his chin in a rare display of subservience. “I am kneeling before you, willing to do whatever it takes to bring the woman I love back to life. If you believe nothing else, believe this.”
She frowns, crosses her arms over her stomach, a shield to protect the soft, vulnerable parts of her body. “I do not know if it can be done.”
“You are a vessel of your god, are you not?” When she nods, Zephyrus says, “Then tonight, you will act as my vessel. We will use the combined power of our blood to reverse Brielle’s death. Mine, yours, the Daughters of Thornbrook.”
She contemplates the West Wind as one might a particularly frustrating enigma. The fair folk are so quiet they have faded into the background. “You loved Brielle, and I believe she loved you, too. Why else would she sacrifice her life for yours? Perhaps what you speak of is still possible.”
Mother Mabel peers down at me. How tall she stands when no longer cloaked in Pierus’ shadow. “It is time Brielle returns to Thornbrook and takes up her mantle as acolyte. Once her death is reversed, I will ensure that she remembers nothing of this night, or any that came after your first encounter. I cannot risk losing her to you again. It will be as though you had never met.”
“If that is the price of her life,” he whispers, “then I will gladly pay it.”
Pressing a kiss to my chilled cheek, he sets me aside, careful not to disturb the sword jutting from my chest. He then stands before the altar, dagger in hand. He does not flinch as he drags the blade through the center of his palm. Blood drips onto the white stone.
He turns, motions to my peers with grief-hardened features. “They will each gift their blood. You will go last, Abbess.”
The Daughters of Thornbrook calmly approach the altar. They readily pierce their fingers, squeezing the skin until blood wells, then patters onto the snowy slab. Harper slices her palm with a quiet sob. The remaining women add their blood to the mix without complaint, even capricious Isobel.
Mother Mabel is the last to approach, appearing small and bent in the vast space. “Heavenly Father,” she says. “For you, our hearts are open.”
As her blood joins the small pool, a wind snaps through the cavern, stirring shadows into dust.
“Let it be done,” intones the West Wind, and the world ruptures in the white light of a newborn star.