Chapter 17
seventeen
Inever slept, and at some point, the darkness and the blankets became one great weight that smothered me. The chills eventually ceased, but I was left a writhing mess.
When Aelen returned in the morning, I mumbled something about being ill and told him I needed to train, which he refused. I was too weak to argue. He briefly mentioned that I looked unwell and then left. I waited for him to take me to the dragons, but he never did.
When my ears began ringing again and I touched them, an unwelcome wetness greeted me. I didn’t dare look.
My clock was soon to strike midnight.
So when the night came once more, I did the thing I shouldn’t have.
The thing I’d been repeatedly warned against. I grabbed my cracked lantern and ventured into the snowstorm.
Though the days were milder now, the nights were brutal.
The wind screamed through any gap in the forest it could find.
Ice bit through me and seeped into my cloak.
But I pressed on until I fell into the stables, the wind slamming the doors shut for me.
Mourn rose to a stand to greet me. I needed to address him directly. Demanding anything of him wouldn’t get me anywhere. He wasn’t mine to command. Anything I needed would have to be asked.
At the sight of his teeth, innate fear filled my veins, but it was nothing compared to the illness that roiled inside.
“I need your help,” I said, inching closer to the ominous beast. “I need to kill my father,” I paused as I gauged if he exuded any malice, but there was only curiosity swirling in his volcanic eyes.
“I can’t do it without you. He’s too strong for just me, he nearly killed me once. If I don’t, I’m going to die.”
But with every word, my guts clenched, and the pain almost brought me to my knees. “Quickly,” I added. “I’ll die quickly. Will you help me?”
He lowered himself from his hind legs until his great jaws were at eye level.
He spread a breath that steamed along his chains, briefly obscuring him, but not the sigil he wrote.
It formed at his claws and flashed along the floor until it reached my feet, brightening until it was blinding, and then slipping away.
It bore a single word that burned into my vision.
Fight.
“Thank you,” I whispered and moved closer. He lurched, his talons scraping against the wood, but never once flashed teeth.
I wanted to leave immediately. To release his chains, and fly to Ilyatria—but I didn’t know how.
Aelen’s warnings of his weak muscles rang loud and clear, and we had hardly been bonded for a day.
Not hardly trained together at all. If I left now, I’d surely die.
I couldn’t fly unless I was at death’s door.
I might have been sick and dying, but not close enough to dead.
I need to train.
So I began to sing, choosing my sonnets carefully.
When I sang of bloodshed, he wrote sigils that bubbled up corrosive vermilion pools, and when I hummed songs of the encroaching cold, they grew razor-sharp crystals that could gore a grown man.
But to conjure the runes, I had to let the images and emotion linger in my soul.
For every word, we grew closer, and the runes came easier, but I still wasn’t certain if I could kill my father.
I’d have to be quick, adjusting the song while keeping the tone steady.
If I dipped too much or stopped putting as much heart into the elegy, the sigils ceased, and he’d bristle in frustration.
The hours melted away as we went song by song until he released a puff of steam that singed my skin. Mourn’s sign that he was finished.
“One more song,” I crooned, begging. But he clicked his claws against the wooden floor and flashed a row of teeth. “One more—”
The room spun and my guts flipped as I keeled over, so sudden I hardly felt the sting of wood on my knees. I couldn’t feel anything but the agonizing retching as my stomach upended and emptied its contents onto the fresh hay—the remnants of yesterday’s breakfast.
As I heaved again, it was tinged with blood. My fingers grappled at the hay, hoping to feel anything that wasn’t pain. In the agony, time became a fickle thing that ran through my fingers and then almost stopped entirely.
The rattling of chains and a low groan broke the oppressive silence—a few words of comfort from the scaled beast.
I waited for my strength to return—just enough to limp from the stables. By the time I could sit up, the orange light of dawn crept through the cracks.
Aelen always returned by first sun, and he’d explicitly barred me from entering the stables alone. I uttered many curses, both out loud and internally, but one roared over the rest.
Shit.
I hobbled to my feet, weaving through the haystacks as I hurried as fast as I could.
I needed sleep, but more than that, I needed to get back to Ilyatria.
How long had I been in Eltide? I didn’t know.
Weeks had passed. I’d lost track of time, and now mine was running out.
The pact was coming to claim me, and I had to go, but I wasn’t ready.
He’d said six months. It couldn’t have been six months!
Could I even kill my father? Mourn and I had only trained for two days. We’ve not properly bonded for a full week. But with how rapidly I worsened, I didn’t have a choice but to try.
I picked up speed, ignoring the bending brambles as they tore at me, and the rolling nausea inside. I wasn’t ready. If I took to the skies, I’d need Aelen’s help—if he didn’t kill me first. He swore he wouldn’t, but after violating his only rule, a blade might not be far away.
If I made it to the cottage before him, maybe I could convince him to aid me. Explain just how sick I was. And for once, maybe he’d understand.
Maybe he’d listen.
I hastened my pace through the snowbanks. The road became nothing but a muted shade of gold, tinged with the glint of the sun’s bastard light. The trees thickened and thinned. When I swung around the last bend and the largest climbing oak, the cottage finally came into view.
Aelen waited beside the door, paler than the surrounding snow. He bore flared nostrils, crossed arms, and a gaze that could murder me—and very well might.