12. Chapter 12 #3
He ran his fingers through my hair, and I hummed gently in satisfaction, before he let his fingers scratch over the side of my head where it still grew back, each hair barely two inches long.
“Better?” I asked.
Erix sighed and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Yes.”
While I could tell he didn’t lie, a pang of doubt echoed in my mind, telling me there was more that was left unsaid.
Being with him like this had been like a sip of water after a long trek through the blistering heat.
I wanted to have him like this, to offer him solace from his madness, but I feared that he planned to turn to pain instead of my touch again.
I sat up, straddling his hips so I could look down at him.
He winced as I did so, and I frowned, only to realize I was sitting on his freshly bandaged thigh.
I shimmied down so as not to hurt him and ran my fingers over the cloth around his leg.
This must be another wound he had inflicted on himself—likely during one of his many solo hunts, or on one of the nights where I tossed fitfully on our sleeping mats in his absence.
A bubble of anger from the well living in my gut rose up to burst in my chest. For a moment, I wanted to snap at Erix—to remind him that he had promised me he wouldn’t turn to pain to keep the voices and visions at bay.
He had agreed to let me shoulder some of the madness and soothe him with my touch.
I swallowed those thoughts down though, as my frustration turned inward on myself.
If I couldn’t save Erix from his madness, it would be one more failure to my name.
I hadn’t been able to save Kelvadan, but I had hoped I would be enough to save at least one person—Erix, to whom my soul was bound so closely that we were nearly one. But as skilled as I was at surviving in the desert, I still seemed doomed to fail at extending the same fortune to those around me.
I was a curse. It was why my parents had left me.
Erix reached up and cupped my face, seeming to sense the path my thoughts had taken. He held my cheeks firmly, making me meet his glowing silver eyes.
“My madness is not yours to bear,” he insisted. “You have already helped me carry the burdens of my heritage more than you could ever know.”
My eyes burned as I nodded, even as I wanted to insist that it was not enough. Nothing I had done was enough to save those I loved. Still, I leaned into the gentle touch of his hands on my cheeks, their warmth a comforting pressure against the rush of my thoughts.
“I need you to promise me one more thing, though.”
“Anything.”
His lips twitched at that, although his eyes remained serious. He removed one hand from my face, reaching down toward his pants that remained bunched around his knees. A faint clack signaled that he dug into his pocket, before he held out before me the two glittering halves of the Heart.
“I need you to take it. I need you to promise me that you will take it to the temple at the ocean and learn how to heal it, no matter what happens.”
My stomach twisted uncomfortably. “We’re taking it together.”
Erix’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I’m seeing Kelvar more nights than not these days. I can barely think straight.” he admitted. “I shouldn’t be the one to carry something so important.”
I scowled at the shattered gem in his hand.
Defiantly, I reached forward and plucked just one half from his open palm and held it to my chest. Taking both would feel like saying that I believed his madness would take him completely before we reached the ocean.
The look in his eyes told me he feared exactly that, but I would not let him resign himself to that fate. Not while I still drew breath.
“I will help you,” I promised. “I’ll carry one half, but you must carry the other. We will bear it together.”
Erix’s lips pressed together and he stared at me for a long moment before nodding and putting the other half back in his pocket. It wasn’t enough to completely soothe the unease roiling in my belly, but it would have to be enough.
Then, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to his chest once more, tucking my head beneath his chin.
He breathed in as if to speak, only to pause. I held my own breath, trying to wait patiently for his words to finally come.
“Do you ever regret that the desert has bonded us so?”
I stiffened in his hold. “Do you?”
He shook his head, even as the cold seeping through my veins chased away the sleepy warmth of my fading pleasure.
“I don’t understand it, and sometimes that scares me,” he admitted.
“Why would we be joined in the same way it was said Kelvar and Alyx were? At first, I thought it might be my salvation—that the tether between us gave us both a way to calm our power. But now I worry it will do the opposite… That it will drag you into the grip of insanity with me.”
I reached up and stroked his jaw. “I would rather face madness with you than endure sanity alone.”
Erix smiled sadly and squeezed me tighter. The hard edges of the Heart clutched to my chest dug into my skin, but I ignored them in favor of his warmth.