Chapter 19 #2
The gravesingers bent over Jessamine’s still form, black sludge leaking out of their mouths and dripping down onto her body. There wasn’t much left of her that was visible as they slowly and forcefully sank her into the darkness that had bound them for centuries.
Wading into them, he slapped at their hands the moment they reached for him, too. They would love to drag him down into those depths. To drown him in memories so they could do whatever they were doing to her without someone else bothering them.
He conjured a blade in his hand and hacked at them. They hissed out screeches that made his ears ache, but he didn’t care. There were thirty of them, but they were chained.
“You are bound to me,” he snarled. “Bound and broken and bleeding, just as you made me for centuries. I did not give you permission to touch her, and so I will take her back from you.”
A few of them let out shrieks of anger. As though their anger and rage had given them a voice they hadn’t used in a very long time. They did not agree that she was his to keep. They wanted her for themselves, and for the first time in nearly 175 years, he could almost understand them.
They wanted to share their knowledge with her. They wanted her to kill him.
“Your wants and desires are the same as they always were. Selfish and unthinking. You do not see the future or what you ask, only that it will serve you in the shortest amount of time.” He grabbed one by the throat, drawing the blade through her neck and dropping her back onto the ground.
The spirit would heal soon enough, but at least there was one less gravesinger reaching for him.
Finally, he made it to Jessamine’s side. He shrugged off a few hands that grabbed for his shoulders, turning on them with bared teeth. “I will cut off your hands if you touch me or her again.”
They retreated, but not very far. As though they were waiting to see if they had completed what they had started.
He scooped his arm underneath Jessamine’s neck, drawing her up so he could force her to wake. “Listen to me, nightmare. You are not where you think you are.”
She stirred, but only slightly, in his grip.
A sense of urgency built in his chest. As though he only had a few moments, and time was running out.
With his free hand, he wiped the darkness away from her face, taking his time to make sure that every speck of that black sludge was gone before he leaned down and exhaled into her lungs. He then massaged her chest and did it again, over and over, until she drew in a gasping breath of her own.
Jessamine’s dark eyes widened, and she flailed in his grip until she realized who it was that held her.
“Elric,” she wheezed. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving you.”
He took in her confusion and wondered if he had said something wrong. Of course he was here to save her. She had been drowning in the darkness that was given to her by the gravesingers, but… her expression said that she hadn’t been.
“They were helping me,” she whispered. “They said I was sick and that if they didn’t help me, it would only continue to grow worse. They were pouring some of their magic into mine, hoping that we could banish whatever Ajax had done.”
“They were drowning you.”
She shook her head. “But I wasn’t dying.”
None of this made any sense. He brushed his fingers under her eyes, which had started to bleed red again.
“Jessamine, you are in my realm now. Surrounded by the remaining gravesinger souls, who now have features where they never have before. They were stealing your magic. Draining you of it. They are using it to make themselves stronger.”
To what end, he had no idea. They didn’t need to be stronger. They were dead, and nothing could ever change that. As far as he knew, people did not come back from this realm. Not when their body had already decomposed.
But then she lifted a bloody hand and touched his face. The ink that clung to her fingers dripped down his neck and into his shirt, where it froze against his collarbone. “Elric, I need you to trust me. They weren’t hurting me. They were just… sharing.”
“Sharing what?”
She shrugged. “Golden light.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, nightmare.
I don’t know what’s happening to you and I am afraid of what they are doing.
Witches are selfish at their core. There is nothing wrong with that, but you cannot trust them.
No matter what they tell you.” He drew her closer, pressing their foreheads together when what he wanted was to crawl inside her body to keep her safe. “I don’t know what to do.”
Her fingers slid around the base of his neck, holding on to him just as tightly. “I don’t know what to do either, but I think we have to trust them. They know what’s happening to me, Elric. They said it.”
“They cannot speak.”
“To you,” she replied. “They cannot speak to you, but they can speak to me. They told me to trust them, that they want to help, and I do trust them, Elric. I don’t think they want to hurt me.”
“All they’ve ever done is hurt me,” he murmured. “And they all know very well that the greatest way to do that would be to take you away from me.”
“They could never take me from you. I wouldn’t let them.”
And yet, all he could wonder was whether she had that control.
Elric gathered her up in his arms and stood. “We will talk about this later, Jessamine. But for now, let’s just get you home.”