Chapter 25 You are Yourself
You are Yourself
Where are you going, Auryn’reh Solah? The skies call to you. Ennea sings for you. The sun blazes centuries after your birth, remembering the day of your creation. The mountains are your sentinels.
This world is your garden.
And yet you run?
Laughable, this. For months, you sleep beside him. Ache for him. Give your magic for him. Act as though you have no recollection of his true purpose. Act as a mortal would, allowing your heart to feel, to hurt, to hope.
And then, when you should stand, when you should claim your agency in the face of his fear.
You run.
The grasslands hiss beneath your mount’s feet as it gallops through the fields.
The skies break open far above, weeping with your flight, chocking the land with enough water to drown all life.
Thunder roils, its belly hungering. It feels your pain, your anguish, and it waits—for soon, so soon, all these worthless emotions will burst out of you.
And all for what? So you may run from truth?
Pretend that you can live without him? Foolish girl.
Foolish Numen. The runeforged creature beneath you is his, not yours.
Bound to his runes. All he must do is call it back, and the illusion of your defiance will shatter.
If this is the shape of your rebellion, it is laughable.
Do not feign surprise. You’ve heard my voice before, though you’ve labeled it as something other. I am not other. Not some forgotten magic living in your blood. I am you, and you are yourself.
Just feel that pain inside of you. As though the rift tears at you again.
Like one word, one implication—that you are a mistake, that he regrets you—is sufficient to warrant such rending agony.
Sweat coats your face, your palms. Look how they slip on the reins.
You shake like earth at the peak of quaking, your teeth chattering, your breath coming in labored pants.
In and out.
In and out.
In.
Forget to breathe.
Then out again.
It hurts your lungs. Casts fire through your veins.
You are divine! A star of the heavens. Numen. And yet his words are enough to inspire this…display?
But you’ve stopped listening, haven’t you? Your gaze narrows to Astenos, to the way his mane flies through the wind, to the magic he radiates like a scorching furnace.
Your Silari’s magic.
His magic.
Resh’Agar, he calls himself. A lie. A travesty disguised as godhood. Those runes are his chains. The wolf at his nape is a madness walking in his shadow.
Do you hear me, Auryn’reh Solah? I am telling you what you already know. What you should have acted on when he ripped you from your sanctuary in the ice far too soon. Now look at you. Small. Weak. Your very power eats at you.
Ah, there is that wave I spoke of. It rises in your chest. Anger. Righteousness. At me, dear one? At your own voice, speaking at last as it always should have?
No.
Stop, Auryn’reh.
Look how the anger burns you. The black taint of Veil Drift eats even now at your veins. If you unleash it, you’ll never breathe again. Not without your Silari to meld with you. Not without your Bonded.
Stop.
Auryn’reh.
But you don’t listen. Your head tilts back. Nails digging into your arms. Scratching down your skin. Trying to contain it.
Contain it.
Contain it.
The rage.
The hurt.
The pain.
The destiny you know will take him from you.
And you scream.
You scream as though your soul is being rent in twain.
From you bursts cataclysm. Divine retribution.
The world swells with the sound—rain hissing, wind howling, the sky thundering in mournful echo.
The magic comes, white and silver, pouring from you in a roaring blast. Grass flattens for miles in all directions.
Rain freezes for half a breath before crashing down again.
Astenos doesn’t flinch.
He waits.
You turn, and miles behind you is your Silari. The horse beneath him rears in terror. He grips it with his knees and hands, grounding the beast with nothing but raw power and a single, sharp command.
No time to soothe. No time for fear. With single-minded purpose, he turns the steed and drives it to a blind gallop.
Faster.
Faster still.
His Silari blood knows the truth of that scream. Of the pain behind it. Knows that the version of you he treasures is fading into ME.