Chapter 25 Rhianelle
“Svenn,” I croak. “Svenn, please. Please answer me.”
Nothing.
My legs tremble and my throat is raw from calling his name over and over and over.
I stumble past a soul sitting in the sand, staring at his hands. I pass another running in circles, chasing something that isn’t there.
None of them are him.
“Svenn!”
My voice breaks.
A figure appears through the haze ahead. Tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered. My heart leaps.
“Svenn!” I run toward him, stumbling, nearly falling. “Svenn, I—”
The figure turns. But it’s not him. I fall to my knees in the ash-sand. How many false hopes has this realm dangled before me?
“Get up,” I tell myself. My legs won’t listen. They’re shaking too hard, exhausted beyond anything I’ve ever felt.
But I have to keep going. Because he’s here.
Svenn’s here and he’s waiting for me. I promised I would find him.
I think about our wedding and the way he looked at me like I was every sunrise and sunset wrapped into one. He spoke my name like a prayer. In the cottage, he braided my hair and held me when I cried.
I think about the forge. His hands, strong and sure, teaching me to shape metal. The heat of the flames reflected in his eyes and the almost-kiss that I ran from because I didn’t remember who he was.
But I know now.
I know that he’s my husband. My forever. I’m not leaving this realm without him.
“I love you,” I whisper into the ash. “I love you, Svenn. I love you, and I’m coming. I’m coming for you.”
I push myself up. My whole body protests but I stand. One foot in front of the other. That’s all I need to do.
Just keep moving—
The wind hits like a wall. I’m thrown backward, landing hard in the sand. Ash fills my mouth, my nose, my eyes. I cough, spit, try to breathe.
The wind is a storm now. A desert storm that comes from nowhere, from everywhere. The gray sand rises in massive clouds, obscuring everything. I can’t see the other souls or anything else.
“Svenn!” I scream into the wind. This is Death’s doing. I know it.
He’s trying to stop me and make me give up. I won’t.
I crawl forward on my hands and knees, my face pressed close to the ground where the wind is slightly less vicious. The sand scrapes my palms, my knees, but I don’t stop.
One hand forward. One knee forward. One hand forward. One knee forward.
“I’m coming to get you, Svenn,” I gasp. “Just wait. Just—”
The wind intensifies. It pushes against me, trying to drive me backward and make me retreat. I push harder.
My lungs burn and my eyes water from the ash and wind. I claw desperately to keep moving.
“You can stop this anytime,” Death’s voice says, somehow clear despite the storm.
He’s walking beside me again, completely unaffected by the wind.
His hair doesn’t even move. “Just say the word. Give up. I’ll take you back.
You can return to your life. Your friends, your family, and your people need you. ”
For one terrible moment, I see them all. My uncle. Landon and the others waiting beside Svenn’s body. Coral. The kingdom I swore to protect.
Then I drag myself forward another inch.
Death crouches beside me, his voice dropping low. “You’ll die here. You’ll break, and your mind will fracture. You’ll become like them.”
He gestures toward the wandering souls I can barely see through the storm. “Empty and lost, searching forever but never finding.”
“Then I’ll search forever,” I say.
The wind stops. I collapse forward, gasping, my whole body trembling.
Then the rain begins. Each drop feels like ice against my skin, like tiny knives cutting into me. I’m soaked in seconds. Shivering. My teeth chatter so hard I think they might crack.
But I push myself up and start crawling again.
“Stubborn,” Death observes, still walking beside me. “I’ll give you that.”
“I don’t care what you call me, as long as I find him,” I manage through chattering teeth.
The rain gets colder and turns to hail. Chunks of ice fall from that empty sky, bruising my back, my shoulders, my head. I curl forward, protecting my skull, and keep crawling.
One hand. One knee. One hand. One knee.
All that matters is forward.
“Why?” Death asks, and for the first time, he sounds genuinely curious. “Why push yourself like this? Why suffer for someone who’s already gone?”
“Because he’s not gone,” I say. I force myself to lift my head. “Not while I remember him. Not while I love him.”
“Love,” Death scoffs. “Love fades. Love dies. I’ve seen it a million times. A billion times. Love is meaningless.”
“Then you’ve never been loved,” I say, and I look up at him. “Not the way he loves me. Not the way I love him.”
Something flickers across Death’s face. Surprise? Hurt? It’s gone too quickly to tell.
The hail stops. Lightning cracks across the gray sky, blinding white against the emptiness. Thunder follows, so loud it shakes my bones.
A bolt strikes the sand ten feet ahead of me. The sand explodes, showering me with hot ash and glass shards.
“I have an eternity to break you,” Death says, his voice darkening. “I’ll make you suffer until you realize how futile this is.”
Lightning strikes all around me now. A forest of white fire, hemming me in.
“You think love is enough?” Death continues. “You think determination is enough? I’ve watched lovers search for each other across centuries and never meet. I’ve watched parents search for children until they forget their own names. I’ve watched—”
“Maybe it isn’t enough,” I say, and my voice shakes. “But it’s all I have. And I am not going to stop.”
The lightning strikes come faster now and closer, forming a cage of white fire around me. Heat presses against my face, but I hold my ground. I have already survived losing him. Fire cannot frighten me now.
I keep my eyes fixed ahead, searching between every flash for a glimpse of dark hair or black wings. The thunder shakes the ground beneath me, but it cannot shake his name from my mind.
Svenn.
That is all I hold on to.
“Fascinating,” Death murmurs. “You’re actually going to kill yourself doing this. Your soul will fragment into something that isn’t Rhianelle anymore.”
“Then I’ll be broken,” I gasp. “I’ll be shattered, but I will still find him.”
“What is it about this one soul that makes you do this?” Death quirks his eyebrow. “What makes him worth this suffering?”
I hold Death’s pale gaze. Every part of me aches, but I refuse to look away.
“Because when I forgot him and lost my memories of him, I lost part of myself. When I got those memories back and I remembered loving him, being loved by him, I became whole again.”
Death stares at me for a long moment. “You do not need him to complete yourself. You are your own person, Rhianelle.”
My lips curve into a small smile. “You’re right. But he makes me happy and inspires me to be better. That’s worth everything.”
Death stands.
“You’re mortal, little queen. Even here, your mind can only take so much before it shatters,” he says, and there’s something almost sad in his voice now. “I can do this for years. One year, two—”
“Then start counting. Because I’m not stopping.”
He laughs, resigned. “Very well. Let’s see how long you last.”
The lightning and the rain stop. Everything stops. There is just sudden, oppressive silence.
The emptiness that follows frightens me more than the storm. There is no wind, no thunder, not even the whisper of sand shifting beneath the feet of the dead. The silence is so complete that I can hear my own ragged breathing.
I curl my trembling fingers into the ash. For the first time since entering this realm, fear presses harder than exhaustion.
What if Death is right?
What if I wander until I forget why I came? What if Svenn passes close enough to touch and I no longer remember his face?
“Get up, Your Highness.”
I freeze.
Darstan stands several paces away, broad and familiar in his battered armor. His old shield rests against one shoulder, and his expression holds the same stern patience it always did when I refused to listen to him.
A smile breaks through my exhaustion. “Darstan.”
“You have not come this far to surrender now,” he says.
Lady Siofra steps out from behind him.
“Do not give up, Rhianelle,” she tells me. Her voice is more beautiful than I ever imagined it would be.
I stare at them through burning eyes. They cannot truly be here. My mind must be conjuring the people who have stood beside me through every impossible battle.
“I’m tired,” I admit.
Darstan moves to my side and raises his heavy shield over us, blocking the worst of the blistering sun. “Then rest. Resting is not surrender.”
Siofra kneels and offers me water cupped between her hands. It is cool and clean, though I do not know where she found it in this endless desert. I drink until the ache in my throat eases.
Together, they help me to my feet and lead me toward a great slab of stone rising from the ash-sand. Its shadow is small, but it is enough. Darstan keeps his shield raised until we reach it, sheltering us from the heat.
Siofra sits beside me and draws me into her arms. I cling to her, and Darstan lowers himself on her other side, his shield angled above us like a roof.
“Love is not proven by how much pain you endure,” Siofra tells me softly. “It is proven by returning to it, even when the path is difficult.”
Darstan nods. “Love like yours doesn’t come twice. Hold on to it.”
“Let it be the thing that moves your feet when your legs have forgotten how,” Siofra says quietly.
My eyes close, and I lean into her shoulder. Siofra pulls me closer and wraps an arm around my shoulders. Sometime later, my head slips into her lap. Her fingers move gently through my hair. Darstan sits beside her, his shield still raised above us.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “I just need to sleep for a little while. Promise you’ll stay with me?”
“Always,” Siofra says, her fingers gentle in my hair.
I close my eyes, meaning only to rest for a moment.
I sleep.
For a little while, I sleep.
When I wake, the stone still shelters me from the sun, but Darstan and Siofra are gone.
I sit up too quickly. “Darstan? Siofra?”
Only the empty desert answers. It stretches out around me exactly as it always has, silent and unchanged. I sit alone in the thin shadow of a rock and understand that I conjured them from whatever is left of my mind. My exhausted brain invented the people I needed most to keep me breathing.
This should feel pathetic.
It doesn’t.
Instead, it feels like proof that even here, even broken down to almost nothing, some part of me is still fighting.
A hollow ache opens inside me at Darstan and Siofra’s absence, but the strength they gave me remains. I push myself upright and step back into the heat.
“Svenn!” I call. “Svenn, can you hear me?”
My voice carries across the ash-sand and disappears.
Death appears beside me once more. “Still calling?”
“Svenn!”
“Perhaps he does not want to be found.”
My eyes burn, and grief rises so suddenly that I nearly choke on it.
Death watches me closely. “Perhaps he heard you and chose not to answer. Perhaps death has given him peace from the burdens of loving you.”
The words sink into me like a splinter. My eyes fill and I let them, because there’s no point pretending anymore. Tears spill down my face. For one terrible moment, I want to curl into the sand and weep until there is nothing left inside me.
Instead, I draw another breath and scream his name anyway.
“Svenn!”
Death sighs. “He is gone, Rhianelle.”
“Svenn!”
“He cannot hear you.”
“Svenn!”
My throat tears around his name, but I keep calling. I call until I can barely hear my own voice, until tears and ash blur the entire realm into gray.
Then something moves behind Death. My heart lurches into my throat.
A tall, dark figure steps through the haze. His black hair lashes across his face, and fury burns in eyes I would know in any life.
Death begins to turn.
Svenn’s hand shoots out faster than I can blink. He grabs Death by the throat.