Chapter 19 #2
“I’m dying.” That wasn’t for him, but for me. To truly sink the knife in that I wouldn’t get better. “Quicker than I thought. Just kill me now—I know you want to.”
He gritted his teeth. “I can’t. Stop being so dramatic,” he said. He peeled off his gloves and took my pact bound hand, removing my glove too.
"We'll both freeze!"
"I'll be quick." He steadied my shoulders against the trunk once more, flipping my palm up and cupping it in his large hands.
They warmed, at first a spark but soon became a steady flame, increasing with every passing second with iridescent light peeking out from between his fingers.
It grew brighter and hotter until it was a sun in his hands.
A miniature star.
“What—”
But he shushed me and continued to work.
The pain that roiled inside quieted from a scream to a whisper. The brighter his hands became, the further the anguish slipped until it was nothing but a ghost.
The sharp knife that dug into my abdomen dulled to the graze of a blade’s handle.
“Is that for the pain?” I swallowed against my wind torn throat. "A healing spell?"
“No. It’s a temporary bandage to keep the pact at bay, but it won’t last forever. I can’t fix that in this…” he trailed off while his eyes never left my hand.
"In this what?"
He ran his forefinger across the back of my hand before gingerly tugging my glove back on. “You will need to see the leader of the I’phri. He—” he stumbled over the word as if it was painful to speak. “Can aid you. Set in place a more permanent bandage to allow you more time.”
“He would just do that?”
His eyes rattled with uncertainty, and he quickly added, “Perhaps. It would take a lot of convincing.”
He rose, but wavered and gasped for air, quickly turning in a poor attempt to conceal it. Why was the strong, resolute dragon trainer suddenly ill? He left no time to ponder, wrapping his arms beneath me and lifting me to his chest. I gasped and protested, but he carried on despite it all.
“I can walk! I wanted to fix this myself.”
“Is that why you’re vomiting blood in the middle of a forest? Because you’re fine and don’t need my help?”
“I was going to go past the gorge with Mourn, and deal with the pact alone. Finish this myself.”
He didn’t bother to acknowledge that with so much as a glance. “You’re not ready.”
“How can you know that? You don’t know everything! I worked and trained and—”
“Your bowels are turning to liquid and seeping from your throat. If I hadn’t come, you’d be a frozen corpse. You’ll have to trust me when I say you’re not ready.”
I should have fought—but I was tired. Exhausted with arguing. So I merely laid my cheek against his leather plate and sighed. He mirrored it with a similar huff, and I enjoyed it too much when his humid breath caressed my cheeks.
“I’m tired of fighting.”
His arms tensed beneath me. “Then don’t. No one said you had to.”
I relaxed further against him, enjoying the thrumming in my ears and sudden rush of warmth between my legs. I don’t have to fight.
“The pact is the only thing holding me back. If I wasn't so sick I'd be ready,” I mused to myself.
“No, you’re not ready because you’ve no idea what your father is capable of. He’s beyond what a mere mortal can do.”
“I know, that’s why I’ve been training Mourn. I need more than a blade.”
“No, you don’t understand. It’s worse, it’s so much worse.” His following sigh left a swirling mist that clouded the darkened trees before us. “I’d like to show you something.”
The long quiet was broken by the whispering wind through the trees, their subsequent shudder, and the rhythmic crunching of Aelen’s boots. It provided something to focus on besides his bright eyes or the lingering desire for more of his comforting touch.
“You talk about my father often, but never your own.”
He didn’t bother to glance at me. “There isn’t much to say.”
“How did you feel about him? Were you two close?”
“No.”
I pressed, hoping to get anything out of him. I’d never seen him so reluctant to discuss something. “But what do you think of him? What’s he like?”
“Horrible man, really. Heathen of the highest order.”
“Before you said you didn’t like him but—”
He ground his teeth, the abrasive scraping like a tombstone being chiseled. “An understatement. Loathe. Entirely.”
“Would you kill him, if given the chance?”
His face distorted. “I have to believe I would.”
An odd phrasing. My mind kept ticking back to his previous discomfort talking about the leader—the one the I’phri riders spoke of and called haughty.
What was the possibility that was his father?
Aelen seemed the type to hate a haughty bastard.
I had to choose each word carefully, and not press too much or I’d risk him shutting me out entirely.
“How can you despise your own flesh and blood, but not me?”
“Don’t you know I’ve tried? I know what you are: the daughter of my enemy. And yet, despite every attempt of mine to loathe you…” he trailed off and shook his head. “How has that worked out for us?”
“Poorly.”
“What a shit word. I’ve never failed at something so greatly. The child of my bane, and yet you continually draw me into your trap.”
“It makes me wonder if you’d like to be trapped.”
The corners of his lips lifted. “Perhaps.” The trees swayed around us in a violent gale, and in that din, he mumbled something I doubted he knew I could hear. “I can think of worse prisons.”
I bit my tongue to avoid mirroring his smile.
Luckily, he averted his eyes when he gently lowered me into a bank of untouched snow. “Do you think you can walk?”
“Of course,” I replied without considering it. I jumped up, but just about toppled over. He was quick to steady me, and his hands gripped me tightly. They also lingered longer than necessary, still holding me despite my firm footing.
“I’m alright.”
“Are you certain?”
His earnestness grated on something deep within me, but as I had done a million times before, I ignored it and took my hands back. But as we moved through the forest, he slowed his gait and didn’t let me fall more than a few steps behind.
I ran my fingers across the passing trunks and relished that the bark didn’t move beneath them. “Why isn’t the forest attacking us?”
“It’s long since dead here, there’s nothing for the curse to fight. It already stole away any life it could find.”
“It fights?”
He didn’t look back at me. “Poor choice of words on my part. It consumes. That’s why it’s so violent at the passage into Eltidian. It snuffs out any life unfortunate enough to be found in its path.”
“You make it sound like it’s alive.”
“It is.”
A chill separate from the stinging cold passed over me. But as we pressed on, the barren branches became sparser until they opened into a clearing. “Are we almost back to Eltidian?”
“No, we will most certainly need a dragon to return. You can’t walk in this. A few minutes is fine, but anything beyond will freeze you solid.”
I shivered beneath his cloak and tightened it. “So why are you making me trudge through this wasteland?” And the unforgiving ice. I wasn’t dying beneath his enchanted fabric, but it wasn’t comfortable, the frost nipping against my face and frozen lashes.
The stygian night closed around us as he took my hand and finally met my eyes. “This was important to show you. Do you trust me?”
“No.” Yes.
“Without trust, we can do nothing. You’ve been begging me for the truth—for why the dragons despise you, and why my people do too. But when I bring you here, you still deny me?”
His words were a punch to the gut. A sinister knife that twisted. But he wasn’t wrong. He’d saved my life, time and time again. Every time he could have killed me, but chose not to.
Without him, I would’ve bled out into the snow, and yet I still gave him naught.
My tongue lashed with lies faster than my brain could stop it. If I said nothing, did nothing, this is how we’d always remain. Beside each other but with an eternity between us.
He shook his head in a mournful way. When he gazed toward the sky, his eyes didn’t reflect ink; they were painted in sorrow. Pain.
“I should have expected this. If you have no trust in me, we have nothing to discuss.” He turned and started the other way.
My heart picked up where he left off. “Wait!” I screamed, my voice bounding off the twisting trees.
My fingers found the blisteringly cold shard in my pocket. I carried it around everywhere I went, and it had become a part of me. Yet I still hadn’t put it on. Not once.
My fingers shook as I drew the necklace out, his eyes widening as I hooked it around my neck, and dropped it between my breasts.
“I trust you.”
He loosed a sigh that broke the dark with his pale breath, and took my hand, letting his lips graze where my pact lay. “I never thought you’d be ready,” he said, the sound rumbling through his chest. “It’s just through that bend. Prepare yourself. This will be… difficult.”
I nodded and took his hand as he led me through low-lying branches, brushing away the tightness in my chest, like the frost that formed over my shoulders.
The barren trees creaked in the wind, the rustle more of a rattle. They surrounded us in a wide clearing, strangely devoid of the skeletal branches. Aelen released my hand, albeit reluctantly, urging me ahead. “Test the ground.”
The banks around us had thinned out, and only small heaps of snow remained, some of which the wind lifted and thrust into the air. I knocked my foot against the ground, and it reverberated. A thick, hollow sound.
Not soil.
“What is this?” I mused, toeing the snow away. Bright blue and white reflected beneath.
Ice.
“Six changes of the seasons ago, this was a thinly frosted rink. Ten, it was a melted slush. Fifty, it was a lake.”
The math flew in my head, and my calculation almost made me retch into the snow again. “That was only a little over a decade ago.”
“The death comes and it comes quick as it consumes the land.”
“What about the other city?” I demanded. “I saw one when I was up in the air. It was frozen and encased in ice.”
His eyes lidded as he gazed toward his frost-coated leather boots. “Unfortunate.”
“But there were people there!”
He shifted to the edge of the solid lake, shuffling among the thick snow. “Once.”
“But you can’t just let them die!”
He raised his head and straightened. “Stagnyus. The city you saw—that was what they called it. They were the Lacyaris, the keepers of the lake. We tend the forest, they tended the water. There were others, too.” Rapidly freezing tears slipped down his cheeks.
“The I’phra—similar to us but not quite, but tasked just as we are to care for the remains the Singers left. But our domain is gone.”
I gasped, my chest tightening painfully. “The world is ending.”
His face marred with anger, and this time he wasn’t as quick to settle it. “The world has ended, there is nothing left. No forest left to love, no plants left to grow. Now we must focus on keeping the I’phri from the same fate.”
“We have to stop this!”
Rage danced across his features, twisting them until his daggers fell on me. “Fruitless work. We keep the forest and death at bay, and slaughter our own for hardly a reprieve. Soon, there will be nothing left. We will become like the I’phra, and Eltidian will turn into what Stagnyus became. Ice.”
My stance wavered, but I wouldn’t fall. I wouldn’t let myself collapse, not now. “I can’t just let this happen! What kind of monster does this? Slaughters an entire city?”
“You’ve known all along. You pretend to be stupid—but it’s a farce. You know damn well who did this.” He closed the distance between us. “This, all of this bitter destruction, every bit came from the name you sang. The praises you screamed, attended the temple of, and bowed before.”
Please no.
“Your beloved Ovatar.” My knees gave out, but I couldn’t fall, Aelen wrenched me back up. “No, you will not collapse now. Do you know who sold out our people? As nothing more than a petty fucking bargaining chip? Who handed them over on a silver platter?”
I fell, but he didn’t stop me, instead meeting me in the snow. His harsh fingers roved across my cheeks, forcing me to look him in the eyes. “You know who did this,” he yelled, his voice echoing off the barren forest. “Say it. Say it with your pretty little lips. Who did this?”
“Arthvur.” The name was poison, burning on the tip of my tongue. “My father.”
But the flame that burned in him never died, only increasing and spreading to a violent sneer. “Your. Father.”
This entire time, the I’phri weren’t the monsters. We were.