Chapter 19
nineteen
When I awoke from the onslaught of agony and darkness, I was greeted with boundless white. The moon hung in a different spot from where I remembered it.
How long was I unconscious?
Long enough. I was lucky to only fall from half the height of a tree, instead of when we were soaring beyond the clouds.
Had I not, I wouldn’t have awoken and instead been a mangled, unbreathing mess. But thick flakes swirled around me and pelted the untouched snow.
I scanned the midnight sky for Mourn but heard no cries from above. My last memory was the sight of him fleeing upward and gaining altitude with my burden gone. I’d guess he fled back to the safety of Eltide. But what of me?
I was alive, but with a pounding headache and no inkling of where I fell. The warm wetness of my misty breath caressed my face before I dredged myself up from the snow. I’d landed in a thick embankment, and the rest of the unforgiving white wasn’t quite knee-deep—a minor victory.
In a cruel land like this, I’d take what I could get. Every few steps, I’d pause and listen to the nighttime Eltide to see what curse would come, but I only found the echo of resounding silence.
Where were the ghouls, or the unnatural trees?
I had my knife still safely tucked at my waist—well, not my knife. Aelen’s. That name burned on my tongue. I didn’t need him. I’d find my own way to Eltide.
But I gazed through the thick entanglement of branches, and didn’t see Mourn—or even Numen. I held my breath and listened to the eerie silence, praying for the flap of a wing. Anything to confirm his safety. But there was nothing.
So I picked a direction and trudged ahead.
But the moon traced along the sky, and the cold bored deeper with every step.
Soon it bit into my flesh and seeped through my bones.
Then not only did my hands tremble, but so did the rest of me, down to my ankles, which shook in my boots.
The steps quickly became sluggish and forced as my joints froze.
My desire for the warm hearth and his icy eyes overtook me. I kept trying to push it away, but soon it was the only thing I could think of. Those sapphire irises—and the warmth they concealed. The warmth I ached for.
“He wouldn’t care if you died,” I said, and let my breath claw at my cracking nostrils. The moisture burned. And yet still, even with my unfettered hatred for him, there was a desire and longing for his touch. But only because it would bring warmth. Physical warmth, and nothing else.
It mattered not. He wouldn’t come, even if I called. Should I stand at the top of the highest tree, he wouldn’t heed a single word no matter how luridly I said his name. Not out here. He’s dancing across the horizon, preparing to piss on my icy grave.
Another bitter gale bit into me, deep into my clothes. Now, the cloak that once kept away the cold was nothing more than a thin bit of cloth. The leather froze and bit into my skin. And it ached. Oh, how it ached.
I cried a little, but the measly tears crystalized instantly. When I picked them away, my skin cracked and wept.
I wouldn’t want him to come. To see me like this. Weeping. Pitiful. Dying.
Yet my chest still ached with a need for arms to hold me through this.
When I shuddered, the ice across my cloak fell. Every time I shook it away, it seemed to frost further. The snow came up to my knees now, the frigid air so intense I could smell nothing but blood.
This horrible place would be my grave. I was going to die.
After the next staggered step through the bank, I pressed my lids shut, my iced lashes nicking the tender skin and imagined my corpse lying along the snow. Frozen, unmoving in an unmarked grave somewhere in the forest, never to be found.
If Aelen were here, he'd bury me. Though his mind was an enigma, I knew he'd do me that kindness. Perhaps give me the same respect the I'phri gave, and lay me into the roots.
My eyes burned with frigid tears.
Maybe he'd even come visit me.
“Aelen,” I whispered. “Aelen,” I called louder. The trees shivered, their few needles twisting against the unsettled shadows beneath them. Were the shadows moving? Did the curse follow me?
“Aelen,” I screamed, terror wrapping around me like a vice.
“What cabin do you seek to lock me in out here?” he asked from behind.
I didn’t believe it and spun to confirm, but the sight was more shocking than expected. He wore his normal leathers with an added ebony cloak as he reclined against a trunk.
I was hallucinating. Somewhere in the fall, I must have hit my head far harder than I thought, because there’s no way Aelen was in the middle of the forest.
I turned and continued.
“And where are you going?” he called, jogging to my side.
“You’re not real. I’m imagining you in my death throes.” But my voice caught in my throat.
“Is that correct?”
“Yes, because if you were really Aelen, you’d be throttling me.”
He stepped before me, blocking my path. “One can be angry, and keep their hands to themselves. Something you wouldn’t know of.”
Why couldn't my mind conjure him with kindness and a shovel?
“Be quiet,” I grumbled, stepping around him. I was ever so slightly afraid if I tried to walk through him, I’d fall deeper into whatever confused state the fall and cold had put me in. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be.
But how I wished he were.
“You call me and then tell me to leave. Explain to me how that makes sense.”
“I'm dying and going to be buried alone in the fucking snow!” The words hung between us more than the hanging icicles. It was a wall of cruel cold.
“You didn’t want to die alone.”
I swallowed and ignored him. Why would my subconscious not let me have peace?
I marched forward, pressing past my frozen limbs. But after moving through a particularly thick patch of snow and losing my footing, the illusion offered me a hand, and I spun toward him angrily. “Get out of my way. I need to make sure Mourn is safe.”
“Mourn is fine!” he spat. “For Singer’s sake, he’s back by Ilyatria, but you are freezing to death as we speak.”
I swatted him away in a tired movement and yanked myself to my feet, struggling against my stiff joints but forcing them all the same. “I’m tired of this. Make yourself scarce. Even in my mind, you’re an arrogant bastard. I thought you'd show up with a warm blanket and bury me among the roots.”
I gasped in an aching breath. "I thought you'd give my death meaning."
He frowned, and his eyes flashed as he encroached and forced me against the nearest tree. His fingers snatched my wrist and pinned it to the trunk, his lips hanging just before mine. "You drive me mad."
He'd grabbed me. I could feel him. Either I’ve lost my mind, or this was Aelen.
“Tell me more about how an illusion could do this.” Something beyond anger swam in his eyes, with his irises almost vibrating in his skull. He pressed his body closer to mine, his pelvis shifting against me. “Or this.”
My body shook, and my hands refused to work, despite my poor attempts to claw him away. His brows drew together, and he wrapped his hands around mine. “You’re freezing, don’t fight me.”
“How did you find me? How did you get out here?” But the words slurred, my lips freezing together.
He didn’t respond, instead undoing his cloak’s clasp and slipping it around my shoulders. “The curse is strong here; keep your warmth close to you. There’s no life left.” He blinked and brushed away the ice on his dark lashes. “It was only a matter of time until I found you. I was worried.”
He let out a long breath, the mist hanging between us. "I still am."
My teeth chattered. “Why?”
He tucked a rather frozen lock behind my ear before tugging the hood up. It encased me briefly from the onslaught of the brutal winter, but not as much as his hands did. They flushed with heat, and he laid them across my chest beneath the cloak. I didn’t push him away. I should have, but I didn’t.
“You know why.”
If he cared so much, why would he keep me on the edge of death? Why lock me away from the one thing that could save me?
Anger coursed through me, vile and bitter. “How dare you? You locked me in a goddamn house!”
His fingers flittered across my waist, searching. “Because I was worried about you, your life, and your safety. Your father is in control of divine power, and already once nearly killed you. It’s too dangerous—”
“You’ve never listened to a single word I’ve said. It’s dangerous, but so is this godforsaken pact you seem to forget about. If the cold won't take me, that will!”
He shrank away. The pain that flashed across features was raw, unbridled. I’d wounded him.
“I’m sorry,” he yelled.
I shoved him away, and he fell back a step. “Sorry isn’t good enough, Aelen. I’m on the verge of death!”
As soon as the words came out, the blooming pain ripped across me. The cold must have kept it at bay, but as my limbs thawed, it returned with a vengeance. It bloomed deep into my gut, and as a scream ripped from my throat. I fell to my knees, blood dripping from my tongue.
I rushed to my feet and tried to move, find somewhere to die peacefully, but my foot caught on a branch, and it threw me, not to my knees but enough to send me reeling. In an instant, my stomach gave and languished. The shooting agony spilled up my throat, and I heaved onto the fresh snow.
But the sick that greeted me somehow increased my illness tenfold. It wasn’t tinged in crimson, it was crimson. Bright, bold flecks of blood pooled around pieces of clot.
“Lorelana,” he gasped from over my shoulder. Had he ever used my name before? A single time? I searched for that memory, but it was lost to me, as my head spun and the world drifted away.
I couldn’t speak. He propped me up against the nearest trunk, placing my hands in my lap. After I caught my breath and reality returned, we stared at each other in silence.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were getting so ill?”
“You knew. I said I was sick.”
“But not that you were vomiting parts of your entrails.”
Is that what that is?