41. A Promise That Does Not Survive the Night
a promise that does not survive the night
—THERAEL
She is humming again.
I can hear it from where I am hiding behind one of the ancient stone pillars. The same melodic song she has been singing for centuries.
It used to comfort me. Now it just feels like the slow ticking of a clock I cannot stop, marking the hours until I am erased from her mind once more.
I press my forehead against the cold granite, closing my eyes against the beauty of the courtyard. Out there, the roses are a vibrant, mocking sea of rose-colored velvet, the exact shade of her hair.
I watch her through the shadows of the cloister, her delicate fingers trailing over the petals. They lean toward her, drawn to her warmth, the way I have been since the moment I saw her.
Arteus stirs against my shoulders. His scales whisper across my skin.
“You are watching from the ssshadows again,” he hisses. “Ssshe would welcome you. Ssshe alwaysss doesss.”
“She welcomes a stranger,” I correct. “Not me.”
“You know ssshe ssstill lovesss you.”
I barely resist the urge to roll my eyes.
“She loves the idea of me, Arteus,” I whisper. “She loves the man who tells her stories of a life she cannot recall. But she does not remember the years we have already spent in this courtyard. She does not remember what we had before our world was shattered.”
Arteus winds around me so tightly my vision swims, his cold weight a familiar anchor bringing me back to the present.
She reaches up, tucking a loose strand of that rose-colored hair behind her ear.
She glances toward my pillar, her brow furrowing slightly.
My breath hitches when she waves at me, and I slip further behind the stone.
After a few moments, she goes back to her humming, and I allow myself to breathe again.
“Ssshe misssesss you,” Arteus hisses. “Even if ssshe doesssn’t remember why.”
“That is worse,” I breathe. A single tear runs down my cheek.
I stay pressed against the granite, listening to the song we danced to on our sh?vie?. (Soul-tying ceremony) I can still feel the ghost of her hand in mine and the way the stars leaned down to witness the moment our souls were braided together.
“One day, Rael,” he hisses, his head resting against my collarbone. “One day the curssse will crack.”
I want to believe him. But hope is no longer a luxury I can afford. Not when Sage’s curse is counting down, and I am as powerless to stop it as I am to make her remember my name.
“Come on,” I murmur, pushing off the pillar. “We need to see Tellian.”
A low hiss escapes him.
“If he daresss to do what he did lassst time.” Arteus tenses, his coils constricting around my neck in warning, then lunges forward, halting directly in front of my face.
His eyes, those burning slits of gold, stare directly into mine.
He is so close I can feel the dry heat radiating from his armored skin.
He searches my face, his forked tongue darting out to taste the salt of the tear I have not yet wiped away.
“If he ssspeaksss her name again,” he hisses. “If he usssesss her asss a weapon for hisss jabbsss, I will not heed your command, Therael. I will tear the tongue from hisss mouth before he can finisssh the firssst sssyllable.”
“We need his library,” I remind him. “But if he crosses that line…” I meet his burning eyes. “I will hold him down for you.”
“I will hold you to that, Rael,” he hisses.
He finally relents, his body rippling as he slides back over my shoulder and down my arm.
I take one last look at the courtyard, at the most beautiful rose in the garden, before slipping deeper into the shadows of the archway.
Each step I take away from her feels heavier than the last. Arteus winds tighter around my shoulders in silent comfort.
By the time we reach the library, I have buried the ache deep enough to function. Tellian’s domain sprawls before us, towering shelves stretching into impossible heights, books floating through the air like restless spirits searching for answers they will never find.
And in the center of it all: Tellian himself, surrounded by mountains of open texts, his ink-stained fingers flying across the pages, looking more desperate than I have ever seen him.
“Therael,” he says quietly, his voice hoarse from what sounds like days without sleep, “And Arteus.”
His fingers never stop moving across the pages in front of him.
“Come to see if I have found another miracle?” There’s an edge to his voice that already has Arteus hissing from behind my back. “The first one only bought you forty-eight hours.”
A book snaps shut somewhere in the stacks above us.
I step closer, careful to keep my voice measured so Arteus does not swallow him whole.
“Have you found anything?”
“Define anything.” He glances up, his light blue eyes reflecting the candlelight. “A loophole? No. A workaround? Also no. A way to break a curse cast by someone we have notbeen able to find in over a full epoch?” He turns another page. “Still looking.”
Arteus tightens around my shoulders.
Doesss he get pleassssure out of being a kaesssh?? Arteus spits in my mind. (Prick)
“How long do we have?” I force myself to ask. “Before Sage’s visions get worse? Before he confesses everything to Eden and she—”
“Leaves his territory?” Tellian cuts in. “Triggering his first reaper cycle and dooming them both?”
He removes his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose.
“Not long enough,” he murmurs. “And we cannot just keep them in a cage until we get it figured out.”
Arteus’s head peeks over my shoulder, his eyes locked on Tellian’s throat.
He ssspeaksss of cagessss while sssitting in one of hisss own making.
“He deserves more than a few months of borrowed time.”
“That is something that we both agree on, Therael. But I am not the one who cursed them. I am simply the one tasked with reading the obituary of their happiness before it is even written.”
He gestures to the stacks above us, where thousands of years of history lie unread.
“You want a miracle for Sage? Then you need to realize whatever is coming for our charges does not care about soulbonds or fate. You know that better than anyone, do you not?”
“Watch your tongue, Tellian,” I whisper. My halo bursts into flames. “Or I might forget that I need your library.”
Tellian rises from his chair and cuffs his sleeves.
Arteus’s hood flares wide, his scales shimmering from deep emerald to bright jade. “You ssspoke her name once before, and I let you keep your tongue asss a courtesssy. Do not make me regret my generosssity.”
“This is my library, Arteus. You may threaten me elsewhere if you wish. But not here.”
His eyes flick to me. “Control your mate’s companion, Therael. Or leave.”
Words shimmer beneath his skin. “I am trying to help your charge,” he continues. “But I cannot do that if you tear out my throat every time I state an uncomfortable truth.”
He picks up his glasses and slides them back into place.
“Eden is not Rosea—
The final syllable dies on his tongue, replaced by a loud thud as he is slammed back into the mahogany shelves. Arteus is coiled around Tellian’s neck before I have blinked, his fangs unsheathed, hovering mere millimeters from Tellian’s jugular.
“I warned you.” The library floor fractures beneath us. “I told you what would happen if you used her name as a whetstone for your tongue.”
Tellian’s hands lock around Arteus’s thick, muscular body, his knuckles white as he tries to pull enough air into his lungs to speak.
“Ssshall I do it, Rael?” Arteus hisses. “I promisssed to leave him tonguelessss. I think it isss time to collect.”
I kneel down until we are eye-to-eye, ignoring the way his skin is already beginning to blister from my halo’s proximity.
“You would think,” Arteus rasps, “That you would be sssmarter than thisss with how much you have read about the world. But I find you are no ssssmarter than the mice I sssnack on.”
His fangs press close enough to pierce flesh.
Tellian makes a choked sound as a thin crimson line of blood trails down his throat.
Arteus’s fangs weep venom, each drop hissing where it lands on Tellian’s perfect, unmarred skin.
“Arteus,” I say quietly.
Another drop falls, rolling down Tellian’s neck.
Tellian’s hands scramble uselessly against his scales.
“Arteus,” I say again, firmer this time. “Enough.”
His golden eyes flick to mine, pupils so thin that they have almost disappeared.
“He crosssed the line.”
“I know,” I say. “And he knowsss it too now. Look at him.”
Tellian’s face has gone the mottled violet of a bruise, the words beneath his skin flickering frantically.
“We need him,” I add. “For Sage… for her.”
Arteus holds for one more agonizing second before he finally retracts his fangs with a slick hiss.
He uncoils slowly, letting every scale drag across Tellian’s throat on the way off.
When he finally releases Tellian, he collapses, struggling to get in enough air.
Arteus dips down to eye level. “I am ssstarting to think you like being tied up, Tellian. If that isss the cassse, you need only assssk.”
I study him, my brilliant brother searching through infinite knowledge for answers that refuse to be found. Just like me. And yet, I feel no guilt. In ten thousand years, some things remain sacred, and he chose to trample the only one I have left.
“Keep searching.”
Arteus coils back around my shoulders.
“Kaesssh,” he hisses one last time.
I turn and leave Tellian’s library the same way I entered it: empty-handed and running out of time.
The meadow is quiet when I return.
Sage and Ashán are inside the house, Eden curled against them, sleeping peacefully.
They have no idea what is coming.
I watch the steady rise and fall of their chests, my elauvhe dim so it does not wake them.
The house is thick with the scent of peonies, cucumber, and the honeyed edge of the altheria?.
The life-bloom that only appears when conception is inevitable.
By the end of Sage’s rut, they will be carrying an innocent soul I cannot promise will not be reaped to Aevh?rath before it is able to take its first breath.