37. A Voice in the Void
A Voice in the Void
I’m alone again.
The harpies did me the dubious favor of lifting me out of the hole and leaving me above ground.
The truth settles over me like the surrounding cold, seeping past skin into blood and bone.
I don’t even feel the freezing sting of it.
A fine sheen of snow powders me, accumulating on my clothes.
My body forgets to hurt. It’s enough that my heart hurts.
My mind. My soul. Unforgiving thoughts and memories careen, spin violently through me.
The knowledge of what I am, what I’ve done, what I’ve failed to do . . .
That was perhaps the worst thing of all. Everything I failed to do.
I no longer care what happens to me. Fighting on? Continuing like this now that I know what I am, now that I know what I’ve done? It all feels so pointless. The decade I spent suffering, stumbling through life . . .
I curl into a tight ball, arms hugging my knees.
I could have saved myself and ended the curse that I started . . . or never even cast the fucking spell on myself in the first place.
I could have saved my father and family from their heartache, saved Linnea and her child.
This is perhaps the greatest offense of all.
The sourest poison to swallow. The thing I shall never overcome.
I could have grabbed Ulrika, swept up that sweet baby before she took her fatal tumble into the fire.
The mountains loom over me, casting thick shadows where I curl up on the snow, inches from the jagged hole that delivered me to the harpies and the awful truth, the reality that now holds me in its teeth.
For all I know, the ground beneath me is equally unstable, but I would have to care enough about that, about my life, to get up and move.
My umbrella is long gone, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
Nothing matters. I don’t care if anyone finds me, if any dragon sees me from the sky.
My mouth opens with a thick sob. Turning, I press my face into the snow and scream, blaming myself, hating myself. Me. A witch.
I hear my name like a gnat buzzing, insistent, relentless, intruding on me where I hover in that hazy in-between. A voice in the void. In between sleep and awake. In between mindfulness and nothingness.
“Arden!”
I whimper, trying to dive back into the numbness.
“Arden!”
Closer now. A voice I knew once, in another life, with another me.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the world, against the sound, against him . . . willing myself into the void.
“Arden!” His voice slides through me like honey and I let out a moan as hard hands seize me by the shoulders and lift me, pull me up from my icy shroud. My head lolls weakly on my shoulders. I cry out at the pressure on my wounded arm, my eyes flying open to confront the moon-bathed night.
“Arden! Are you hurt? Sick?”
Tage fills my vision. Beautiful Tage with eyes like black prisms and the velvet touch and the silky hair and the lips. The lips I kissed. The lips that make me forget everything, all the bad things, all the things that should and should not be.
But not anymore.
Even those lips can’t make me forget.
He pulls back his hand from my injured arm. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s not . . . serious.” I don’t know if that’s true, but I know it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore.
He makes a tsking sound that seems to convey his doubt. “Viggo will fix you right up.”
“No,” I murmur.
I can’t go back there. Now more than ever, I can’t be with him. I can’t be with any of them.
Warm fingers brush my cheek gently, poking through my numbness. “Arden.” He says my name so kindly, so tenderly.
“No,” I whimper, pushing his hand off my cheek and taking an unsteady step back from him. I don’t deserve tenderness.
“I’ve been out of my mind with worry.” He touches the side of my hair—as though he can’t not touch me. I resist leaning into the cup of his palm. “Do you know what could have happened to you out here?”
It can’t be worse than the reality of what already happened.
The bitter wind whips the dark strands of his hair, and I resist the urge to push those strands back from his face. To touch him. To feel him. “Do you know all the terrible things that lurk out in these mountains?”
“Yes,” I burst out. “Me! I’m the terrible thing!”
He frowns, his hand falling away from my hair. “What are you talking about? No, you’re not. You’re—”
“I am!” I cry, staggering back from his arms. He doesn’t follow me, already knowing, already sensing that I’m in earnest and that there is something very, very wrong. I hold out a hand as though I might ward him off should he want to touch me again.
“Arden, you’re not—”
“You should have listened to the others and ended me in the village.”
He flinches.
If he’d known the truth about me, then he would have. It’s what he will want to do when he learns the truth about me now. It’s no less than what I deserve after all the pain and grief I put my family through. After I stood by and let Ulrika die . . . after Linnea. Lives ruined. Because of me.
I’ll tell him, of course. Even if I could bring myself to lie to him, to Tage, to the one who has come to mean so much to me in this desert of my life, I could not. I would not lie about this. I am the monster. I told myself dragons were the things to be feared, but all along it’s been me.
“What are you even saying? Did you hit your head? Are you hurt?” His gaze sweeps over me in the dusky air.
If it could only be as simple as a head injury. I take a breath. “I’m a witch.”
He stares. Not even a blink. No reaction at all.
“Did you hear me?” I press, feeling the sharp edge of hysteria biting into me. “I am a witch.”
“Impossible.”
I nod. It is. “It is possible. It is true.”
It’s his turn to shake his head. “Why are you saying this? You’re not making sense.”
“It makes as much sense as anything else in this world.” I stretch my arms wide at my sides.
“It makes as much sense as a random witch cursing me. How likely was that? Not at all, it seems. It was me. I did this to me. Stupid me.” I knock the heel of my palm into the side of my head. “Me. I’m the witch.”
“No,” he says again, but this time there is less conviction in his voice.
“This aura you see?” I stab a finger all around me. “It is not simply because I’m under a witch’s spell. It is my aura because I am a witch.”
His mouth moves, attempting to form words before he finally gets out, “And what? You’ve tricked me, all of us, from the start. Why?”
I shake my head. “It was no trick. I didn’t do it on purpose. I did not realize this of myself until now.”
He snorts his skepticism. “But now you do?”
“Yes. Now I do.” I nod grimly and motion to the hole. “I fell through there, and harpies found me. They . . . live down there. They told me. They knew what I was right away.”
At this announcement, a sudden wariness enters his eyes. “Harpies? You met with . . . harpies?”
The thinness of his voice betrays him. As do his eyes. And body language . . . and the step back he takes, as though needing space from me. That single step speaks volumes—feels like a giant wall just sprang up between us.
“Yes.”
“And they didn’t kill you.” A statement of fact, and I know this damns me in his eyes .
. . as well as giving some credence to what I’m saying.
Harpies don’t spare humans. Or dragons. From all accounts, they are vicious creatures that don’t get along with anyone.
Except now I know that witches are the exception.
“They don’t seem to share your hatred for witchkind,” I explain, wincing. “Apparently, we’re distant kin. They easily marked me as a witch and let me go.” No need to go into further details on how they, in fact, helped me out of the sinkhole.
Several beats of silence throb like the desperate pulse of a bleeding heart between us.
When I can’t take it anymore, I blurt, “You believe me now?” I nod for him, not even waiting for him to answer.
“Yes. You do. I see it in your face . . . in the way you’re stepping away from me like you can’t stand to be in proximity to me anymore.
It’s the truth. It was bad enough when you thought me a mere human—”
“Arden, I—”
I keep talking, my words flowing in a frenzied rush.
“But now I’m this. I am magic . . . I have magic.
Like you.” Even if I’m too ignorant to know how to wield it.
“Only my kind is responsible for pushing your kind to the brink of extinction. We are enemies. Worse than that.” Is there anything worse than that?
This feels like it. The absolute worst. I wave a hand wildly as a new idea comes to me.
“You think your pride hated me before? They wanted me dead before? Now? Well, now . . . they will not hesitate. They will not stop. Not even for you. Give them the chance, and they’ll kill me.
And why should you stop them? I am this!
” I beat my chest with the palm of my hand. “I’m—”
He closes the distance between us, clasps my head in both hands, and crushes his mouth to mine.
It’s not meant to be a gentle kiss.
It’s a kiss meant to punish, to shut me up.
And yet it still feels like a balm to my wounded soul.
His hands on my head, fingers delving into my hair, against my scalp, feel like the only thing keeping me from unraveling. His mouth, warm and sure moving over mine, parting my lips so that his tongue can slide inside to taste, to lick, completely consumes me.
He pulls back enough to mutter against my mouth, his lips still brushing mine as he speaks. “Does this feel like I hate you and want you dead?”
Then he’s kissing me again, hauling me, stumbling, closer against him.
I lean into him, relaxing, relishing the heat of his big body against mine, kissing him back with a scalding sob in my throat. Because I can’t not. Because I’m weak. Because, wrong or right, deserved or undeserved, witch or human, enemies or not, I will always want him.
His hands roam from my head to my back, wrapping around me, folding me into his arms and lifting me off the ground so I no longer lift my chin and strain my neck to meet his mouth. My feet dangling, our faces perfectly level, we kiss like two starved souls.
After moments, a lifetime, he pulls back, his breathing ragged. “Whatever you are, hating you is not possible. And wanting you dead?” His hand smooths over my face as he shakes his head slowly, ruefully. “I would sooner die before I let anything happen to you.”
I suck in a breath, trying not to let his words addle my head. “Whatever I am?” I ask shakily. “There’s no mystery here. No what-if. I am a—”
He shrugs. “If you’re a witch, then you’re a witch.”
“Tage,” I grate out in exasperation, trying not to let myself get swept away by words he cannot possibly mean.
He shrugs again. “I’m a dragon. You’re a witch. I don’t care.”
I can’t breathe. My heart gallops in my chest, threatening to burst free.
His hands flex over me. “You’re you, and I’m me. That’s the only thing that matters.”
A sound, part laugh, part sob, breaks loose from me, and then I’m smothering his lips with mine, kissing him to stop him from talking, from saying anything else that is going to undo me, that will feed me hope.
We kiss and kiss and kiss, hands tearing at clothes, eager to find skin.
A cloud passes over, temporarily blotting out the feeble moonlight.
Tage’s attention veers from me. He looks up swiftly with a curse.
I follow his gaze just in time to see.
No clouds. Bodies sailing overhead. Dragon bodies. At least four. Possibly more. They quickly fall out of view as they move past us, obscured by the trees.
He shoves me from the warm circle of his arms and grabs my hand.
My stomach heaves and sinks. “Is it them? The skelm?”
He doesn’t answer. “Come! Hurry! Before they turn back and land. You need to hide.”
“Me? What about you?”
His head whips around, scanning the landscape as though a solution would present itself. “There’s no hiding me. They saw me . . . if we’re lucky they didn’t notice you plastered to me.”
“There’s nowhere to hide!” I cry, my gaze sliding over snow and trees.
His hand tightens around mine, giving it a squeeze, and I follow his stare. He’s looking at the hole in the ground, my sinkhole.
Our gazes catch and hold with understanding.
“No,” I gasp as he hauls me after him. I resist, struggling, but he’s so much stronger. “No! I’m not leaving you.”
Ignoring my protests, he grasps both my hands and lowers me down into the hole, my legs dangling. “I’ll be fine. Now get down there.”
“What about you?” I demand, my upturned face locking on him.
“I’ll be fine,” he repeats. “Not a word, not a sound from you,” he advises with an optimistic wink that feels like the lie it is . . . and then his hands let go.
I drop.