36. Chapter 36
Hours later, Vaelin slipped quietly back into the building, a pleasant warmth filling the room despite the cracks in the ruined walls of the structure. Evric must have risen to stoke the fires at some point in the night.
As he shook the sand off his clothing, Aurelia slipped out of the small bedroom wrinkling her nose. “I can feel the cold billowing off of you.”
“Sorry,” he grunted, shrugging his cloak off and offering it to her. She took it wordlessly, fastening it over her own as a second layer. She flipped the hood over her head, glancing at the door to the bedroom and back to Vaelin, who was staring at it intently.
She reached for his forearm, squeezing it gently. “Don’t let your past write your future, Vaelin. You don’t deserve to be alone.”
He stood there, staring at the open door long after Aurelia had stepped out into the cold for her own watch. Nothing had changed in the last several hours. She was still human, short-lived and fragile relative to his near-immortality. And yet…
Don’t pull away again.
He waded into the darkened room, lit only by the flickering firelight.
Moving on silent feet, he shrugged off his jerkin and unbuckled his sword belt, lowering himself to the empty bedroll next to Isla’s.
He traced the lines of her face with his eyes, as he so often did, and she shifted to face him, as though drawn to him even in sleep.
His heart kicked, warmth blooming in his chest. He ached to pull her close, to seal his lips to hers, to run his hands over the dips and curves of her body.
But she needed her rest, and this was not the time, nor the place.
He closed his eyes, her earthy, sage scent filling his nose, and willed his thrumming pulse to calm.
Despite the desire that flooded his veins, he was yet again struck by the peace he felt lying next to her, as though some storm in his soul calmed in her presence.
He glanced at her again, as if to assure himself she was still there, still safe.
He sighed heavily, allowing his eyes to close, finally surrendering himself to the pull of sleep.
She woke in the middle of the night, finding herself curled up next to Vaelin. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised. There was no feeling of awkwardness or embarrassment, and it had nothing to do with the fact that they were both fully clothed.
For a moment, she just lay there, basking in the warmth of the dying fire and of his body against hers, where she had pressed her own against his in sleep.
She watched his chest rise and fall evenly beneath her palm, and wondered how many had seen him this way — soft, and relaxed. He was so rarely relaxed.
Perhaps many people had. After all, he had lived well over a hundred years.
She had been momentarily stunned at that realization earlier, and then even more surprised to find that…
she didn’t care. It didn’t change how she felt about him, though it was clear to her that the realization had affected him.
Perhaps he saw her as little more than a child.
She wasn’t — not by human standards. Nearing her third decade, she was well into adulthood.
So much so, in fact, that many likely considered her an old maid by now, destined to never marry — the village healer, an aging recluse.
She’d had her fair share of relationships over the past decade or so, but none held a candle to whatever was brewing between her and Vaelin.
Her eyes traced his face, the features that had become so familiar to her, now barely visible in the dying light of the fire.
He didn’t look old. His skin was smooth, the barely-there fine lines at the corners of his eyes only visible when he truly smiled, along with his dimple.
No greys streaked his dark hair, nor his beard.
Her eyes dropped again to where her hand rested against him, to where the top few buttons on his tunic lay unbuttoned, revealing a glimpse of his muscular chest, over his powerful shoulders.
Her lip quirked. He certainly wasn’t weakening as was typical of old age.
She bit her lip, shifting as heat flashed through her. Not now.
A whisper seemed to drift in on the wind, pulling her attention away from Vaelin’s sleeping form.
She lifted her head gently, so as not to wake him, straining to hear against the winds that still battered the walls.
Maybe it had only been that — the wind. She looked back to Vaelin, his chest still rising and falling in the even rhythm of sleep.
Isla.
There again, she heard it. She shook her head abruptly, as though a sandfly had flown into her ear, faintly aware of a dull ringing in her head.
She blinked, feeling like a light blanket had been thrown over her.
The whisper threaded through the room again, wrapping around Isla like a lover, stoking a spark that thread of familiarity in her, as it had in the caves.
Slowly, she sat up, carefully extracting herself from her bedroll.
On silent feet, she collected her cloak and stepped into her boots, pleasantly warm from the fire.
Isla.
She tilted her head, her mind feeling fuzzy with sleep. It was definitely coming from outside. As if in a daze, she slipped from the bedroom, stilling for a moment as she listened.
We’re waiting for you.
Somewhere, in the recesses of her mind, something screamed, scraping for purchase, begging for her attention.
But it was negligible, so quiet and muffled, she couldn’t be bothered with it.
The voice was sweet and seductive, and reminded her of home.
Isla moved silently past Evric’s sleeping form as if in a dream, a small smile curving her lips, and stepped into the sands.
Vaelin had awoken suddenly, all traces of fatigue replaced with adrenaline, as though his body had been doused with flames.
His eyes darted around the room, adjusting quickly to the darkness, landing on Isla’s empty bedroll.
He was up and moving in a heartbeat, stalking into the main room, slamming the rotted bedroom door so hard one of the hinges snapped.
Evric sat up, kicking his bedroll off. “What’s wrong?”
“Isla’s gone,” Vaelin said, his voice cracking like a whip. He felt like a wild animal as panic surged in his veins, pulse straining against his neck. He was hot and cold all at once, his blood an inferno. The sands on the ground within the building stirred as his magic flared.
“Gone,” Evric repeated at the same time as Aurelia re-entered the building, pulling off her cloak.
“What do you mean she’s gone?” she said.
“I mean she’s not here anymore,” Vaelin snapped.
Aurelia shook her head, casting a glance at the door behind her, “But I didn’t see—”
“That much is clear,” Vaelin shot back at her, venomous.
“Easy,” Evric barked. “It’s not her fault.”
“I’m going to find her,” Vaelin said.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Evric admonished. “The storm’s only gotten worse as the night’s gone on. How the fuck are we going to find her?”
“We aren’t,” Vaelin said, ripping his cloak from Aurelia’s outstretched hand. “You’re going to wait here. I’ll bring her back.” He made for the door, his blood singing.
“Thirty minutes,” Evric called after his retreating form. Vaelin halted, his white-knuckled grip on the door frame bordering on painful as he spared his oldest friend a glance. Evric’s eyes burned with a determination he knew well. “You get thirty minutes, before I come after you.”
Beside him, Aurelia hugged her arms around herself, worry bleeding across her face, but she didn’t argue.
Vaelin nodded once, and stepped outside.
Isla followed the voice, ducking her head against the sheets of sand that blew across her face like tiny blades of glass. How she’d ever thought the sand squalls of the last few days had been storms was beyond her.
Isla. Hurry.
Each time the voice called to her, a warmth wrapped around her, a reassurance that she was getting closer.
That spark of familiarity thrummed in her veins as the sandstorm raged around her.
It was dark — the complete, impenetrable dark of the desert.
What seemed like thousands of stars stretched overhead, the only light guiding her.
As she passed beyond the walls of Vathansa, a needling at the back of her neck seemed to warn of a threat, of danger.
But something stronger, louder, encouraged her to keep moving, deeper, farther — towards the voice that beckoned.
The edges of her vision felt blurry, softened somehow like her hearing, the drone of the storm blocking out all other sounds.
Ahead, a powerful tempest of wind blew aside a cloud of sand, revealing a dark figure vaguely resembling the shape of a person.
Its edges were blurred, as though bleeding into the darkness that pooled around it.
Isla cocked her head, drawn toward it as though hypnotized, even as the needling at the base of her neck turned to a claw lodged deep in her spine. And then the figure spoke.
“There you are.”
Oren’s voice clanged through her like a discordant note.
“Oren?” she breathed, anxiety flooding her body, her pulse hammering in her throat.
What the hell was Oren doing here? Had he followed her?
She fought against the deepening sands, trying to quicken her pace, throwing her arms out for balance as they pulled at her boots, trying to draw her down, down…
The figure laughed then, and it was not Oren’s laugh.
It was dark and shadowy, crackling with menace. It was… wrong.
She froze, shaking her head as the buzzing in her ears grew louder. The figure seemed to reach of her and Isla felt herself take a step forward.
“Isla!”
Vaelin’s voice snapped through the winds, its tenor striking a chord deep within her.
She blinked rapidly, recoiling from the figure.
Images slammed into her: a shadow wolf, blood and ichor dripping from its maw, an earsplitting snarl ripping through the mountain clearing, a shadow army cresting the dunes outside The City’s walls.
The eerie figure before her laughed and she backpedaled, tripping over something solid.
Breathing heavily, she scrambled backward, keeping her eyes on the figure.
As she watched, it seemed to melt into swirls of shadow in the blankets of sand that swirled around them, its dark laughter floating away on the winds.
Heart beating loudly in her ears, Isla’s gaze dropped to the solid obstacle she had tripped over. Her mind still felt scattered, as though someone had violently shaken her. Slowly, she recognized the shape of legs, a torso, and a tangled mat of hair.
A body. A person.
Vaelin dropped to his knees beside her, nearly sagging with relief.
Already, she was running practiced hands over limbs swollen and reddened by severe sun scald.
The man’s skin was covered only by strips of shredded clothing that looked to have been torn in some struggle.
His long hair hung in knots, as dirty as the rest of him, face slack with unconsciousness.
Open wounds caked in sand and grime covered his body, an elbow bent at an angle that turned her stomach — the injuries were traumatic and extensive.
Isla’s brain spun in circles, rifling through treatment options and prognoses.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” Vaelin demanded over the roar of the wind, his eyes flashing between her and the enormous form in the sand.
“I heard that voice again,” she yelled to Vaelin over the roar of the wind, as though that was explanation enough, not taking her eyes off the man before her. “We have to get him back to the ruins.”
“Is he alive?” Vaelin asked.
“Barely,” Isla said. “Help me.”
Together, they heaved against the man’s enormous form, rolling him onto his back, revealing tanned skin and dark markings around his eyes. Vaelin snarled, suddenly recoiling as he drew Isla roughly back. She stumbled, glaring at him. “What are you doing?”
“He’s a shifter,” Vaelin said, the words ripping from him like a snarl.
Isla blinked. “You grab his shoulders, I’ll get his ankles. We have to get him back to Vathansa.”
She moved toward the man’s feet. Vaelin grabbed her forearm, but it didn’t invite a shiver of awareness the way it typically did. She looked up into his eyes, a dark anger there she’d never seen. These were the eyes of a warrior, his jaw set in a stubborn line, lips peeling back from his teeth.
“He’s a Shifter. Askeldrathian,” he said again, as though she hadn’t heard him.
Anger flared and she pulled her arm roughly from his grip.
“I don’t care.”