38. Who Would Choose To Love A Mortal?
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
The word echoed through me with every step I took away from the rift, growing more insistent with every recitation. As though I didn’t already know. I’d realised it the moment I found Aliza’s room abandoned and decided there and then that I would help her find her way home.
Wrong for me, right for her.
I wanted her happy, whatever the cost to me. If delivering her home was the price I paid for that happiness, then I would spend the rest of my life without her.
Aliza. Joy.
With her, I remembered what joy felt like. Fleeting glimpses of light in a pit of darkness and pain. I hadn’t seen it at first, too lost in grief and anger to pay attention, but she was nothing if not persistent. She’d driven me mad, and in my madness, I’d found the light.
Now the darkness stalked me, pressing ever closer with every step I took away from Fairy Glen. I didn’t bother to light my path as I passed through the rift and into the Blood Gate caverns. Aliza was in a different world now. Did she match each of my steps with one of her own, back to her former life?
A life that had no room for me.
Everything had changed for me during that first flight, when she’d taken my hand, trusting me with that fleeting, precious life of hers. For the first time in centuries, I’d tasted joy. I’d felt alive. Some of it had been the thrill of flight, but there was no denying that it was more to do with the way she’d screamed and screamed, her arms clenched around me as we’d plunged over the cliff, only for that fear to turn to wonder. When she’d loosened her grip, reaching for the clouds, I’d given them to her. I’d give her anything she asked for, even when it went against every ancient instinct I had. Which was precisely why I’d let her go.
It was why I continued my resolute trek through the darkness, alone.
This was what she wanted.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
She didn’t want to live forever. Didn’t want to be tied down by any bond but those she’d already forged in the mortal world. She would not accept the immortal life I’d tentatively offered her. And I… Whatever pain I felt at our parting was merely a taste of what would await me if she’d chosen to stay. If I’d allowed myself to give in to the call inside me. I couldn’t keep her, even if she’d wanted me to. I couldn’t allow myself to care for another human. My already broken heart would shatter to dust when, in a few short years, she left me.
It was better this way. Better to let her go now than to watch time destroy her. To watch as her body bowed and crumbled under the laws of mortality.
Wrong.
“I know!” I snapped, halting in my tracks in an attempt to silence the clanging chorus. My voice echoed around the cavernous space, and several filthy bloodsuckers scuttled higher up the walls. “I know.”
The day was young, and with any luck, she’d be long gone before the sun set and these vermin crept out of their hole to hunt.
I screwed my eyes shut. In the weeks since I’d been awoken from my slumber by the softest of kisses, I’d been unable to close my eyes again, plagued by the last moments of Taryn playing out in my mind. My nightly torture. But now, the image of Aliza, pale and limp, pinned beneath the monster drinking her dry, had burnt itself against the back of my eyelids alongside the other horrors. I’d thought I’d lost her too. I’d held her in my arms and begged her to stay with me. I’d meant it in every sense.
Stay with me. Don’t die. Don’t leave. Don’t marry him. Stay with me.
And now I’d let her go.
My heart pounded a desperate beat, imploring me to heed its call. I couldn’t. I couldn’t take her away from the life she loved. I couldn’t ask her to give up a single thing, not for me. Not when I had nothing to offer but hopelessness. Not when I was too broken to remember who I was without my shroud of agony. Not when I knew she didn’t feel for me the way I did for her.
I’d be content to spend the next handful of decades knowing that, somewhere, she existed, and remembered me with some shred of fondness. After that… after that I didn’t know if I could keep my word. How could I live knowing her life had blazed by, extinguished by the ruthlessness of time?
Wrong.
I let out a roar, raking my fingers through my hair. Letting her go was the right thing to do. It had to be. Because if I was wrong…
Who was I trying to fool? Despite my best efforts, she had broken through my walls of fractured rubble, and she had woken me up, literally and figuratively. Mortal or not, I already cared for her. More than that. It was too late to guard what remained of my heart.
I turned back the way I’d come, stumbling over slick rock in my haste. I had to be certain. I had to tell her, and if I was wrong, as I was almost certain I was, then I had to hear it from her own lips. If I didn’t, I’d never know another moment’s peace.
I was almost at the rift before I realised that the warning toll in my head had silenced the moment I’d changed my mind. The right direction at last.
Something was wrong.
How I knew, I couldn’t say, but I felt it as soon as I set foot in Fairy Glen.
Aliza was nowhere to be seen, and while that made perfect sense, considering the time I’d wasted, it didn’t explain the quickening of my pulse, or the needling of electricity beneath my skin. It didn’t explain why every nerve in my body refocused, searching for a sign.
The birds had ceased their ear-splitting racket. What had silenced them? They certainly hadn’t been diverted by my earlier arrival with Aliza.
Taking a cautious step away from the shadows of the rock, I peered around, searching for anything out of place. I didn’t know the mortal world, but hunting was the same in any terrain, and my instincts told me there was something here for me to see.
The muggy breeze shifted direction, stirring the lock of rogue hair that perpetually fell into my eyes, and I felt it. Magic on the air, dissipating rapidly, but still fresh.
Another sweep of my eyes failed to find another living soul. I ventured further into the open, my body tense, my senses straining. A wink of light caught my attention, drawing me to a patch of grass not far from where I’d kissed Aliza goodbye.
The blades were trampled flat, torn in places, and though that was enough to chill my blood, it was the sight of her phone, abandoned, that sent a rush of ice over my skin. The device was alight, an image of Aliza and I staring up at the grey sky above me. Tentatively, I picked up the phone. There she was, with her head thrown back, her face glowing with laughter. And that was me, staring down at her with a smile I couldn’t remember giving, my eyes soft with adoration. My heart stilled. It was right there, as plain as day in the way I gazed at her. She knew. If she’d seen this, there was no way she couldn’t know.
It didn’t matter.
Slowly, I rose from my crouch, surveying the surrounding area. A slightly trampled trail through the dense grass led to the spot I’d discovered, and stopped. As though she’d disappeared into thin air. Which, I knew with a sinking sense of dread, was exactly what she’d done. The hint of magic on the air, the lack of tracks, the struggle. The dropped phone. Aliza had carried that little rectangle everywhere. She’d almost killed us both to save it. There was no way she’d leave it behind, unless she hadn’t been given a choice. Unless she’d been taken.
I could think of only one person who’d do such a thing.
Stowing the phone in the inside pocket of my cloak, I fought down the storm of questions warring in my mind and conjured an image of the waterside entrance to the Blood Gate, where Saeth awaited my return. The air pressed in, crushing against me as I slipped between worlds.