Chapter 14
fourteen
After depositing me back in the cottage, Aelen provided me with fresh leathers to replace my blood-stained ones and promptly left.
Since, he’d been quiet. The few times he did appear, he might as well have been absent from the ghostly pallor that never left, and his tightly glued lips.
In those few days, he’d been reluctant to take me to train, leaving me to the ever-increasing sickness brewing in my gut. I found it difficult to argue.
He seemed so broken.
Any attempt of mine to remedy this was met with half-hearted dismissals and promises of tomorrow. But painful bouts of illness filled my mornings, leaving me curled up against the chamber pot, along with lonely evenings when he never appeared. I didn’t think I’d find myself missing his face.
But after the ceremony, I'd rather not be alone.
Since that day, my sickness had progressed rapidly.
With little to no time remaining, I had no choice but to train the dragon by myself.
So when the predictable darkness came, and the moons edged across the horizon’s bending labyrinth of branches, I tucked the lantern beneath my cloak and took to the wintry paths.
Melt holes had formed on the ones that led toward the city, but on the roads that wound toward the stables, they grew fewer.
The wind only increased until it cut through me.
When I threw myself into the ebony dragon’s stable, I nearly couldn’t shut the doors, fighting the freezing gales.
The dragon shuddered in the low lantern light as I approached, his chains dragging against the floorboards.
Exactly as I remembered, unaffected by the strengthening storm, but bothered by my entrance.
This time, I came armed with the knowledge of their melodic lumen and the control it had. They bent the laws of reality, shaking away a divine curse by mere song. All I needed to figure out was exactly how to use it.
The dragon retreated from my approach, scraping his way into the corner. I heeded Aelen’s advice and didn’t move further. Instead, I raised a palm. My heart thundered, but I wouldn’t let my fear show, keeping my features flat.
“I won’t hurt you.” His volcanic gaze flicked across me, trying to read me. “You can understand me, can’t you?”
He huffed a breath that spread wet steam across my face and eyed the door.
He’s searching for Aelen.
“He’s not here. It’s just me.” I took a timid step, feeling with my toe.
When the dragon didn’t move, I inched ahead, but he stared through me, and gave me the same heavy look as before.
Something fluttered behind my breastbone.
I hadn’t seen him in a week, and how he reacted had been weighing on me since. “Can you see my soul?”
When he exhaled, the steam burned against my skin, teetering between uncomfortable and a scald.
“What do you see? You saw something before. I want to know you.”
The beast raised itself until it towered over me and practically grazed the vaulted ceiling.
He snarled, and bright runes snaked up my body, flashing one at a time as they crawled across me.
When they crept up my forehead, there was a sudden bright flash of light followed by searing pain—as if he branded the rune into my brain.
I collapsed to a knee, trying to catch my breath and lift the lantern, but half my vision had succumbed to his magic.
With my head spinning, I began a soft song.
I hummed to myself before finding the right words, the ones I’d sung alone in my room, and then in the cell.
The ones I’d sung to myself when the night came and shifted along the walls of the cottage, or when the pact had me vomiting into the chamber pot alone.
My song of solace, sadness, and despair.
When I looked up to the dragon, and met his eyes, he hummed back. It started as a low groan in his chest, but moved to his belly and a whistle through his jagged teeth. Something in those fiery rubies changed, and he knew me.
The flutter next to my heart shifted, and I sang my other favorite, a liturgy of Ovatar.
I belted it out but for every word I sang, the beast shifted further back.
He never groaned another note. I raised my voice, and inched forward, urging it along, but it only backed away and scraped its talons in a hollow motion.
Its claws tapped, and I pressed on, singing.
Deeper, louder until I landed on the chorus of Ovatar’s deeds—and the dragon snapped.
A flash of teeth raked along my arm. It only took a second.
The lantern slipped and crashed with a violent crack into the hay.
I shook and held my dripping arm, my body frozen.
The beast shifted back and held his head high.
But it didn’t lunge again; it didn’t need to.
He huffed, his breath misting like smoke as the pain bloomed up my mangled limb.
Its eyes read of the same thing I’d seen on Aelen’s face during the ritual.
Something so familiar, now a thousand miles away.
I stumbled back once the feeling returned, taking care not to look at my wounded arm. But I couldn’t help myself. One glance was all it took to make me retch. The slice went from my wrist to my elbow, twisting along the bone, and spilled blood across my boots.
I ran.
I snatched the lantern on my way out, a deep crack now spiderwebbing it's glass. The broken light reflected phantoms across the wall and then out into the snow, my blood soaked soles slipping.
I needed to get back to the cottage. I needed something to mend this. Anything, before I bled to death in the blizzard.
Specks of crimson dropped into my tracks, stark against the muddied snowbanks.
My hand shook, the tremors swaying the blue light against the trunks, the shadows shifting like a pendulum. But I ran faster, didn't dare slow. Not until they lengthened and licked my boots. I slid to a stop and froze, every hair standing on end. My arm dribbled into the untouched snow.
Drip, drip, drip.
I froze. I didn’t want to, but my bastard legs betrayed me.
Blood pooled around my shoes as my gaze swept across the forest. Every sharp movement of the lantern sent the darkness hiding, but it wasn’t enough. Something darted in the depths, swimming behind every bulbous and twisted trunk.
I spun, trying to keep it at bay. But the quicker I moved the light, the faster it's movements became. Jumping between trees, more liquid than corporeal, gathering into different shapes.
I strained to focus on the shadow, but before I could get a good look, it snapped behind a new tree, a different trunk. Every glimpse it got closer and closer until it shimmered just beyond the light. Still. Watching. Waiting.
My pulse pounded in my ears. There was nowhere left for me to run.
I forced my arm to respond. To raise the lantern toward the rippling shadow despite my mind screaming no.
Paint it in magic, in comforting blue.
“Please go away,” I breathed.
“Paint me in dark,” it croaked. The voice was lower than the tree branches. But shrill enough to deliver ice into my veins. Cold shot across me, chiller than the surrounding snow.
A wraith.
“I’m not afraid,” I said. Yet my voice shook harder than my hands.
“You should be.”
There was a long growl that crawled along the frozen ground.
“You are.”
It edged forward, not into the light but enough the glow illuminated its horror. Skin shed from ancient bones, the image of a rotting I’phri, with blackened orbs, and a wicked mouth that spilled fetid rot.
The lantern slipped from my fingers, extinguishing onto the snow.
My feet took off and I flew. The soles of my shoes hardly left a mark as I darted through the trees. It wasn’t enough. It hung onto my every movement, matching every footfall, and gaining.
The slithering crunch that gave it away came closer and closer—until its tendrils converged on me.
It threw me into the bank, my head cracking along a bulbous root. The lightning in my side didn’t register. The only thing that did was the terror turning, and the beast before me. It pinned me a hair’s breadth away, its breath a frostbitten breeze that froze my eyelashes solid.
The visage before me was somehow worse than the accompanying voice.
Worse than the thing I’d glimpsed. A gnarled wooden face matched its terrifying teeth.
Wilted leaves surrounded sickly yellow flesh and a gaping mouth that tried to consume me.
It gnashed and grew, eyes melting to ink and dripping onto my horrified face.
I screamed. I fought. My voice contained every ounce of fear built up since Deldren was dragged to the block. I let loose every bit of pain and terror that languished inside. And I shoved.
My fingers radiated blue, and my chest burned with the heat of a thousand blazing suns.
I was fire.
I screamed and forced my burning magic into the monster, pressing it harder. Deeper.
The beast lit up, catching in the blaze that emanated from my palms. It shrieked and shoved me down, pressing woody, rooted fingers into my dripping wound. I screamed again, forcing my will, my fear, every piece of me into my palms.
And I killed.
My hands grew bright as a blue sun, and twice as hot as I forced the wraith off me and pressed my searing flesh around its throat.
It didn’t merely catch. It burst into flame as I shoved it off and into the dirt.
Another shrill cry nearly burst my ears.
But the monster exploded violently into a cloud of ash.
Its final dying trill nothing but a gasp that dissipated into the wind, along with whatever remained.
My chest blazed a bright blue but quickly faded to the tattered remains of my leathers. I flexed my fingers, but didn’t linger. Burnt ash and bright crimson painted the snow.
I was bleeding to death.