Chapter 28
twenty-eight
“You lied to me.”
He said nothing, but lifted my broken hand to his lips, where blue licked out from his fingers. The magic ate away the bloodied mess until nothing but pink scar tissue remained.
“Say something, goddamn you,” I screamed.
“Nothing I can say will be enough.”
“You’re not even trying.”
He blinked, spreading tears until they dripped down his sickly flesh. “I am seeking them, but the only thing I find is pain driven into your perfection.”
“Pain you left,” I screamed until my throat was hoarse. “Pain that you branded into my soul. You’re not mortal, you’re not alive, you’re a lie. Were you the demon too that branded my death?”
Silence.
“You were—are.”
I grappled with the tsunami of information and the pain that came with it.
The reality of what he was, is, and had done to me.
Though he had the same features, they were barely hanging onto him, similarly mottled and decayed as the dragons that roamed the sky—the ones he would command to bring me back home.
“Take this off me,” I said, my voice rising with every syllable. “Remove your pact from me.”
“I cannot.”
I stepped forward, but he didn’t retreat. “No, you’re choosing not to!”
“Had I been able to, I would have removed it from you long ago. I cannot remove the mark from your skin until you fulfill its parameters.”
Heat flushed through my face, and I wrapped my fingers around his neck, pushing him back against the mirrored wall. He didn’t fight me. He could have. It would have been easy. With me unarmed, he could have killed me, but he didn’t. Instead, he cowered against the wall and gave me the high ground.
I relished in it, tightening my grip.
“Does choking me ease what’s inside?”
“What, the pain you wrought and left? The lies you spewed—I don’t know which parts of you are real.”
“The love—”
“Don’t you dare. You laughed at me. To you, I’m a toy; this has all been nothing but a game.
You played me for a fool, and won.” I sucked in the tears that threatened to spill and swept away the promise of their wetness.
“Take your victory, goddamnit and choke on it. Choke until you fall to your divine forsaken knees and send me back.”
“Back where?” He spat the words through a quick inhale, fighting against my ever-tightening fingers.
“To Eltidian. To kill my father, the thing you put a mark on me to make me do. You will command those dragons to take me across that river, and back from whence I came, NOW.”
“No.” The word came out on a long exhale, almost hidden but unwavering. “If you leave, I’ve nothing left.”
My hand dropped away. I searched for any hint of deceit in his piercing blue, but found none.
Why now? Why, after all this, did he decide now to be honest? Why couldn’t it be when I was lying in his arms, or sharing a thousand breakfasts? Why was he drowning in an ocean of lies until now?
“It’s too late,” I yelled, unsuccessfully trying to hide the break in my voice.
I pushed him hard, slamming him back into the mirror until it shattered around him.
The shards fell like crystalline snowflakes, and I bolted from the maze.
The shadows followed, snaking across every glass and dimming my reflection as I fled.
How had I never connected that they were him?
They followed me as I flew through the city until my feet left a flurry of boot prints in the fresh snow. They snaked and trailed every last footfall, echoing as they flashed across every branch and tree.
Lorelana, don’t leave
Lorelana, don’t go
Lorelana
Lorelana
It never ceased as thick flakes pelted my wet cheeks.
But I couldn’t feel the icy burn or hear the crunching beyond my drumming heart, and the echoing shadows.
Somewhere, deep in the thick of the trees, it meshed with sobs that wrenched from within me, in the place where I had shoved them repeatedly and ignored.
And I wept. I wouldn’t allow myself to stop running, but I let the tears fall freely and I let the sobs crash over me, wave after wave.
Pain after pain.
Tear after tear.
I hoped they would slow before I met Mourn, but when I swung into the brambled grove with the stables, I cried harder, too fast to freeze against my exposed skin.
If I were a lesser woman, or even greater, I might fall to my knees in the snowbanks.
Let the blizzard overtake me and freeze my body and mind until it was too numb to think, too empty to remember.
I’d trusted him and given him myself in its entirety. And for what? Lies. Deceit. Infinite mistruths and carefully crafted stories and tales. Just enough to keep me holding on and to make me love—
No. I couldn’t think about that. Otherwise, I might throw myself into the river and say to hell with it all.
I had a duty. One that not only my life depended on, but every life in Ilyatria and beyond. I would finish this today.
When I threw myself into the stable doors, I was only followed by the cloud of flakes and the pulsating shadows. That Aelen wasn’t hot on my heels was enough for me.
Mourn raised his head, shaking the shackles, and let the cold sound resonate.
When I approached him, it wasn’t with timid steps but with decisive footfalls and crisp thunks against the planking.
When I grazed his snout with outstretched fingers I knew he wouldn’t take them off.
But we didn’t have time for long-awaited reunions and mournful goodbyes.
No, we had a job to do before Aelen—or Maelindiir found his way here.
After a few quick pats and more tears, I unlatched his restraints and moved aside before he bowled me over.
Despite his eagerness, he stilled once he reached the snow and stared over his shoulder, waiting for me.
I matched that and brushed aside any inhibitions as I placed my hand on his warm scales and screamed.
My voice bellowed through the trees, a mix of sob and song, and laced with every bit of anger, anguish, and unbridled abandon that had festered inside for far too long.
“You will take me home, so I can cleave him limb from limb.” I ignored the fact that when I cried him it wasn’t my father’s face that appeared, but another grimmer, thinner beast. One that would undoubtedly haunt me for the remainder of my life.
Gratefulness warmed my belly. A welcome respite as Mourn waited for me to grip his scales before he stretched his wings. He beat them a few times, letting the powder swirl around us as the blizzard thickened.
The flakes didn’t tickle my cheeks as he took off toward the clouds. They pelted against my exposed skin. As we gained altitude, my stomach rolled, my guts clenching, and I pretended it was from the rough ride. It was the only thing keeping me together.
But once we leveled out and he stopped soaring higher, I realized it was the city, and not the river passing beneath us.
That snapped those thin strings that bound me.
I wrestled for his horns, gripping them until my fingers bled and pulled.
Mourn growled and groaned beneath me, but I didn’t stop.
No, I yanked harder, tugging until my frozen skin cracked and wept crimson.
He snarled, but I didn’t care—I screamed.
My voice carried above the whipping wind, barely a melody, and closer to pure, unadulterated will that seeped from every iced-over pore.
As if every bit of pain had coalesced into the lumen that coursed through my fingers.
They were stained in a sapphire glow that drove Mourn forward to disobey him.
My chest burned, and my hands brightened until their light was blinding. Only then did he turn. At first, it was only a little, but I screamed louder, pushing past the hoarseness and pain. That turned him quicker.
Mourn let out a cry. It began as a whimper but was quickly drowned out by a cacophony.
But it wasn’t the wind. A crash of bells and metallic noise surrounded us, along with the flood of warmth and power.
It licked my skin and nipped like fire, pulling me back.
The air around us condensed into a similar blue fog, a tangible wall to stop my progress.
Mourn let out another somber sound, this one far more shrill. No doubt, whatever magic Aelen was using was excruciating for my dragon. “Don’t hurt him, hurt me!” The surrounding mist lessened and blinked, so briefly, but in that second, I urged my serpent forward.
“Take me home!”
He growled in response, and we dipped on the draft with three powerful wing beats that thrust us forward.
The noise became a deafening wall of shattering, like every mirror in his god-forsaken palace broke at once.
It filled my being and ached in my ears.
It pierced me like a thousand knives all at once.
And then it was gone.
The cold bit in, and the cloak that had once kept me comfortably warm was freezing and empty. The familiar warmth that had surrounded me since my first days in Eltide was gone.
And I was alone.
“He did this to himself,” I whispered, and urged Mourn toward the river.
Despite uttering them in a search for solace, they brought no respite.
I hated the tears that slipped from me, and I swept them away as we crossed the frozen threshold between our worlds.
The frozen riverbed glinted up a bright blue—the same that had overtaken my life and eaten away everything I’d ever known.
But I wouldn’t let it swallow me, and I fought against the need that formed in my belly to turn around. The reality was that no matter how much I wanted to, how angry, betrayed, and lonely I felt. I could never go back.
That path was forever shut.