Chapter 11 #2
My sister sucked in a horrified breath. “What did you say?”
I blinked, realizing this was a part of Nelle’s history Ferne didn’t know.
“Marissa locked Nelle in their family’s tithe prison.
Guilt, I expect, at betraying Mom.” Even at that young age, Nelle’s strange powers would have been growing stronger, and I’d say fear of her daughter would have been another reason why Marissa would have done such a desperate and cruel act.
“She would have…been…” the words drifted apart as she calculated how old Nelle would have been. “Seven years old.”
I nodded. “Seven years old and trapped in suffocating darkness, alone.”
“Gods, that’s—”
“Monstrous? Horrendous? Despicable? Is it any worse than what we’re doing? What’s going to happen to Nelle if she survives this sickness?”
Ferne winced. And I sensed her conflict deepening as she chewed on her bottom lip, glancing away.
A moment later, she leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, her brows nudged together above the lace strapped around her forehead, as she gave what I’d said earlier further thought.
“The wyrm’s growing, maturing with her. It would have been a youngling back then.
Only when it reaches adolescence is it allowed out of the burrow to bask in moon rays or sunbeams.”
And right now, we didn’t have either.
“She needs a friend.”
Ferne pushed abruptly off the doorframe. She pulled an anxious, are-you-sure? expression instantly knowing who I was referring to. “I’ve worked with him for the past week. He can’t bite your face off, but he’s going to let you know how he feels.”
I was about to beg her to bring him up here when she answered. “I’ll go get him.”
As Ferne fled down the stairwell, I laid Nelle gently on the leather couch, carefully dragging it outside so as not to jostle her too much.
As I brushed the sticky locks from her forehead, her lashes fluttered shut on a long, whistling breath…and she didn’t take another.
Bleak panic surged in fear that she’d never wake again.
I shook her. “Come on, Nelle, stay with me.” I kept shaking her until she took a breath, parting her lashes to stare at me through slitted, glassy eyes.
She was cold and feverish, and though my instinct was to tuck the blankets around her, I couldn’t.
She needed warmth, but more importantly, she needed every part of her body to be exposed to allow moonlight to bathe her skin and fuel the trapped wyrm.
And yet I couldn’t let her shiver out here in the chilly autumnal night either.
Nelle was going to hate me for this, even more than she usually did, but fucked if that was important right now.
Quickly unzipping my boots, I shucked them off along with my armor, tossing them aside. I was still dusty and grimy and stunk of smoke, but none of that mattered. I gently rolled Nelle to her side and slid onto the couch behind her, stretching out.
Slipping an arm beneath her chest, I pulled her closer so her back was pressed to my front, and nudged a leg under hers, flinching at the feel of her near-freezing limbs, so I could share my body heat with her.
Gently tugged up her nightie so more of her legs were exposed to the moonlight that I prayed to Mother Skalki to let shine down on her.
Please, please, please…
The door to my residence briefly opened, and I heard the approach, quiet on the carpet, then clipped claws on stone.
The wraith-wolf gave me one low warning growl as he rounded the couch, and those strange silver-misty eyes fixed on me, glowering.
He didn’t try to bite or bare his fangs at me.
His attention swung straight to Nelle. He bounded up, wagging his tail, nudging her hand with his moist nose and licking her fingers, but it drew no response, and with a long, mournful whine, he settled down on the balcony floor, curling into a ball to keep her company.
It seemed like an eternity of praying to Skalki before the clouds slowly drifted apart and shafts of pure moonlight shone through their roiling mass.
I held Nelle in my arms as moon rays, soft and eerie, bathed her figure and made the beads of cold sweat that goose-fleshed her skin sparkle.
At first contact, a weary sigh scraped its way from her throat along with a wracking cough that rattled her body.
Her muscles tensed, and then with a slow intake of breath, she relaxed and curved into me.
Over the course of the night, I held her as she shivered. The sound of her struggling for breath, with its cruel rasping edge, had bands of iron tightening my ribs and desperation choking my thoughts.
But I was thinking deeply about what Sirro had told me after we’d left his solar. The way the Horned God had looked at me, and how he’d said it.
We all have to make choices. Some divide us right down the middle, cleave us in two. We have to pick one side or the other. Make one choice over another.
I wondered if he hadn’t been talking so much about me but about himself. It made little sense, but I tucked it away to think about later. Because what Mela had said down in the catacombs beneath Ascendria was a bell tolling loud inside my mind with every beat of my stumbling heart.
Don’t choose.
I had to use one to save the other.
I had to sacrifice one so the other could live.
But what if Mela was right and I didn’t choose? What if I could save them both?
There was no alternative to not using Nelle to save my mother. But only up to a point. There would be a way out of this for Nelle, and I was going to find it for her.
Nelle turned over, angling her cheek to rest in the space between my shoulder and neck, and the tip of her cold nose nudged into my throat. She breathed me in while creeping an arm higher along my upper chest until her palm curled around my neck.
It wasn’t me. It was what I was to her—a tamer—why she sought my comfort, what soothed her.
Nelle deserved freedom.
But she also had a big heart, and I knew if it was me who freed her, even if it was the bindings between us, a bond that would influence her, she’d forgive me.
I wasn’t worthy of forgiveness. I didn’t deserve a girl of fire. She deserved a life where she could soar wherever she wished.
As resolve seeped into me, a peacefulness settled like a mantle around my shoulder, not oppressive but freeing.
I’d free my little bird.
Somehow.
I had no fucking idea how I was going to go about unshackling those chains, and that was something to sort through if she survived the night.
As the hours ticked by and the sun slowly rose, gentle light stretched across the horizon and lit her in a halo of gold, and the shivering eased. When she dragged in her first healthy-sounding breath and let out a soft, contented hum, the tension in my chest broke and I exhaled hard.
My hands tightened around her middle, now warm with heat. I knew I was going to have to let her go, open the door to her cage and allow her to fly free.
As soon as we could save my mother.
And that’s why someone like me never deserved a girl like her.