Chapter 28
Torver has never seen Winander look so frightened.
“No, no…” The man shakes his blond head, stepping backward and coming up against the creature’s mighty skull. “Do you know what you’re saying? I can’t do that! I can’t reanimate the Beast—it’s the Beast!”
“It will be fiiiiiiine!” Torver is almost cackling.
“Didn’t you hear Dunmail? I’m the dragon rider!
It won’t hurt you, because I’ll tell it not to!
I’ll do that…bonding thing with it and we can ride it to the Wen!
We can rescue Lavellin, defeat Dunmail, and if the fae invade—we can defeat them too! ”
Winander shakes his head again, his hair flopping with the motion. “But—”
Torver groans, wants to take Winander by the shoulders and shake him until he understands. Understands how vitally, desperately, gut-wrenchingly important it is that he do this.
“It’s perfect,” Torver keens the words. “Please.”
Bassen steps in front of him, her dark eyes soft. “Torv, no—you’re not thinking straight—”
Torver ignores her, pushes past and takes Winander by the elbow, leading him hurriedly to the front of the Beast’s great skull. Where they can look into the hollow sockets of its eyes.
He picks up Winander’s arm and slaps his hand to the bones, as if that can make his magic work.
“Come on!” Torver begs. “Winander, you can do it, it’s perfect! Please! You have to do it!”
Winander wrests control of his limbs from Torver. “I can’t! Torver, think about it… I’ll die.”
Torver stops.
Silence.
Then, “What?”
“Everlasting health, no aging…that’s my consequence for not using my magic.
If I use it, then I won’t suffer its consequence any more.
Torver, I’m ninety-seven, don’t you remember?
That’s probably the only reason Dunmail left me here with it!
Conise knows—knew—exactly who I was, and she knew I can’t risk using my magic. ”
Torver blinks. Behind him there is a shuffling of fabric and he knows that Bassen is folding her arms. Torver’s mouth opens but nothing comes out.
If Winander has his consequence suddenly sated… How can Torver ask the man to potentially end his own life?
But on the other hand, Winander has lived for ninety-seven years—who is he to deny the rescue of Lavellin—the deliverance of the whole Kingdom from the oppressive grip of the Meddera? From the secret power of the Forever King? Why is his life so important—
A movement from the corner of his eye pulls him from his spiralling thoughts. Bassen takes Winander in her arms and he curves his spine for her, leans down and buries his face in her hair.
Torver realises it’s not just Winander’s life, it’s Bassen’s. She’s never had anyone like this before. The guilt of his own cruelty burns and the realisation that he wants Winander to proceed regardless—that burns even more.
Every passing second is a second in which Dunmail has Lavellin shackled in iron and Torver wants to scream.
Clenched fists shaking, he watches as Winander emerges from Bassen’s embrace. He holds her hand with a white-knuckle grip, and shakes his head.
“Torver’s right,” Winander murmurs, the torchlight flickering on his skin.
Bassen shudders, her eyes glinting with a sheen of tears.
“N-no,” she stammers, looking between Winander and Torver frantically. “Most people die before they reach ninety-seven! You’ve never had such an old body before, Win. What if you can’t be that old? What if your heart just stops, I—”
Bassen cuts herself off, pulling him into another embrace, tighter this time.
“I know you’re scared,” Torver wrings his hands, bile rising in his throat because he hates this but Lavellin needs him. Lavellin, Lavellin, Lavellin— “But this is the only way. We need to do it and we need to do it now.”
He locks eyes with Winander, tries to silently communicate his guilt, his sorrow. His hope that Winander won’t be killed by it. His hope that Bassen will forgive him if he is.
She buries her head into Winander’s shoulder.
Not begging—but resigned. Breathing in his scent while he places his hand on her back, rubs his thumb across her shoulder blade.
Only a split-second passes, but for Torver, it feels like an eternity, stretched out into eons in which Lavellin’s skin is burned away, it chokes on hot smoke, it’s beaten with iron bars and—
“It won’t be easy, Torver,” Winander warns him softly.
Torver looks up.
“Even if I can bring the Beast back,” Winander thumbs Bassen’s shoulder blade faster. “Dunmail is powerful. He’s from before human magic was limited, so who knows what else he can do? Plus he’s guarded by the Meddera, plus plus the Meddera are protected by the Enforcers.”
Bassen inhales loudly, wipes her hand over her face as she looks up at Winander with wet, tear-filled eyes.
“You’re right.” Her voice is small. Her gaze shifts to Torver.
“And you’re right, too… We can’t just pretend that this didn’t happen.
That we didn’t find out that Dunmail never died.
That he manufactured the legend of the Beast to control the Kingdom, to enforce laws that keep us isolated.
That he made himself a god so he didn’t have to submit to the real ones.
The ones that are still out there somewhere. ”
Winander’s jaw goes tight and his expression shifts. He looks at Bassen for a long moment.
“I love you.” Winander’s voice is so quiet that Torver knows he wasn’t meant to hear it. Winander raises his calloused hand and softly brushes a lock of Bassen’s brown hair behind her ear.
“I love you too,” she whispers.
He wants to hurry them, get them to stop this—but he holds himself back with all the remaining strength in him.
It’s all he can do not shake like a leaf while they say what could be their final goodbye.
Torver steps away, gives them privacy. He feels sick, clenches and unclenches his sweating fists, feeling his blood fizz and edd because Beast below, Beast beside him—can’t they hurry up?
After minutes that feel like decades, he hears words spoken at a normal volume, like the concluding of a debate.
Winander’s voice is mournful when Torver turns to look. In time to see him lean down and press his lips to Bassen’s forehead.
Winander stands tall when he finally looks at Torver, beckons him close with a waft of his calloused hand.
“It’s the only way.” His voice, rolling in his country accent, is resolute.
“It’s the only way to defeat them,” Torver repeats, half for himself, his leg bouncing up and down where he’s tapping it on the mud. The guilt simmers.
Bassen makes a low sound, her face slack with grief.
“Defeat,” she says, voice thick. “You keep using that word—defeat.”
Bassen looks into Torver’s eyes and her brows are carved in upward lines.
“Torver, do you realise what you’re saying when you say defeat?” she says. “You’re talking about killing people.”
His mouth opens. Then it shuts.
“Maybe you’re right about us…needing to do this.” She wrings her hands. “But before we do, I just need to know that you know that.”
The cavern feels large, cold. His hand instinctively moves to his mottled finger. It twitches, stringless. A voice in his head calls him stupid, stupid boy.
He pushes the words away.
“I have a purpose.” His words come out slow as he realises their truth.
“I thought the gods had cursed me, and that made me unlovable. But they didn’t, and I’m not.
They gave me a power I couldn’t understand and now, I have the chance to use it.
Not just to rescue Lavellin, but to destroy the hierarchy that has killed and controlled this whole Kingdom for a thousand years. We have to do this. Don’t we?”
Bassen nods, her teeth gripping her bottom lip until it looks red and sore.
“I understand.” She steps away from Winander and takes Torver’s hands in hers. “But death is…heavy. Killing people is a weight you can’t ever shake.”
Torver nods, not really listening. His mind has turned once more to Lavellin, the urge to hurry rattling through his veins.
“It’s horrible,” he admits quickly. “But it’s our only option. And it might not be that bad. How would you know? You’ve only killed plants and animals.”
Bassen doesn’t reply at first, only grimaces. The sight makes Torver’s head tilt.
“Right?” Torver frowns.
Bassen swallows so hard that it’s audible.
“I had a brother,” she says, her eyes growing red. “When I was a kid.”
Torver stands still. Truly still, for the first time since Lavellin was taken.
“You never told me that.”
“It was an accident,” Bassen says quickly, her eyes glistening anew as a single tear falls. “I didn’t—I was a child, I couldn’t control—”
Torver’s stomach bottoms out. Bassen sniffs with great force and wipes her eyes with her sleeve with a viciousness that makes him flinch. Winander steps quickly to her side, taking her small hand in his.
Torver opens his mouth, but she cuts him off.
“I just don’t want you to feel how I feel every day,” she rasps. “Not if you have a choice.”
Tover’s lungs begin to ache and he realises that he’s holding his breath.
The noise of his clearing throat echoes in the cavern.
“Come here.” He pulls her into his arms and holds her tight, like he can squeeze out the weight of what she’s just confessed. He beckons over her shoulder at Winander. “You too, pa.”
The man’s mouth curves into a small smile and he wraps his arms around the both of them.
A part of Torver wants to stand like that forever. But he can’t. There’s no time.
“We don’t have a choice,” he whispers over Bassen’s hair and into Winander’s shoulder.
Bassen’s voice vibrates against him.
“We don’t,” she agrees.
“I’m so sorry about your brother,” Torver breathes. “And I’m sorry about this. But…”
He bites back Lavellin, holds its name behind his teeth.
How can he put his lover ahead of hers?
He burns with guilt, vaguely wishes he could hurt himself, vaguely wishes there was something, anything, he could do. And then—
Torver swings his pack from his shoulders.
He thrusts it onto the floor, onto the mud there, and roots around in the bottom of it, until he finds the ancient wooden box.
It’s well and truly broken from the impact of Eskett throwing him across the chamber.
Still, he lifts the splintered remnants from the muddy pack, the weight of it making his knuckles burn.
He quickly supports it with his other hand, both palms like a platter as he, kneeling, holds the wooden mess up to Winander.
“Take this,” he says, trying to push the pressing urgency from his mind. “Please.”
Winander’s brows furrow. “What is it?”
“It was a box. Root around in the shards, you’ll see what was in it.”
Frowning still, Winander obliges. He separates the shards and splinters, picking them from Torver’s palms until the contents are visible.
The gold that Torver had taken from the temple ruins shines in the torchlight. It’s more wealth than Torver will ever have again but he doesn’t care. Not one bit. He only wants to leave this horrid, cursed cairn behind. To do what needs to be done.
“Torver, what the fuck?” Bassen reaches for his palms and lifts up an ingot. It’s longer than her hand and she holds it up to the light.
“You’re—paying me?” Winander stammers, brushing fragments of wood to the floor.
“Yeah.” Heat rises in Torver’s face. He speaks quickly.
“I got it from the temple. I was going to use it to…well, it doesn't matter now, does it? I don’t need to buy anything with it. I want you to have it. So that when this is over, you don’t have to go back to that retirement village while you de-age again.
You won’t need to work, you can just shave off pieces of gold. ”
“And when,” Bassen intones, “were you going to tell me about this?”
Torver flinches. Guilt piled on guilt.
He thinks of Wast, how he had been courting death by dealing with a corrupt official, how he could have been long dead if Wast had sold him out.
He thinks of his mother, free of him in the Mere. Living happily without him.
How all of it, for years, has been just a list of ways for him to hurt himself. Ruining his finger with his Mere string, binge-drinking in taverns, taking unnecessary risks of being caught with no papers, outsourcing the pain he decided he deserved to violent lovers.
“I promise,” he says. “When this is all over, I will tell you everything.”
“Me too,” she says grimly.
“Me too, if anyone’s interested,” Winander laughs nervously.
One by one, he lifts the golden ingots from Torver’s palms and places them in his own pack. He gives Torver a tense smile. Kisses Bassen tenderly on the lips.
“Let’s do this, then.” Winander’s voice is shaky.
He walks to the looming remains of the Beast, and presses both of his palms flat to the bones of its snout.
The temperature of the air rises. Slowly at first, then faster. Until it burns.
Winander groans as the magic thrums through him.
His groan becomes a scream when a blast of white light emanates suddenly from his hands. Like lightning is striking. The force of it propels Torver and Bassen backward through the air thick with magic.
Torver hears screaming and wet, fleshy sounds. Crunching and slimy slaps. Bassen screams Winander’s name, scrambling on her hands and knees towards the blinding light.
Winander doesn’t reply and the noises of viscera and crunching bone only grow louder, until they make Torver’s ears ring.
When the light fades and Torver is finally able to stand, what he sees takes the breath from his lungs.
The Beast.
His heart is a painful thunder in his chest.
The creature he has spent his life dreaming of is wrought in flesh and scales. Muscles and wings and enormous nostrils, flaring with smoke. She towers over them like a mountainside, like if the fells had eyes to blink. She’s beautiful.
He sees it all.
And Winander—collapsing in a heap.