Chapter 46
How was I supposed to live without him? Could I? Fuck, this wasn’t right.
Set me free, the dark magic within me purred. I’ll return him to you.
Without question, I released the shadows. They trickled from beneath my fingernails. “Do it.”
A laugh befitting a Lore rattled through my limbs. With pleasure.
In a single thrashing motion, the black fog crammed itself down his throat.
I watched in stunned panic as it burrowed beneath his chest and wrapped around his heart, tangling around the hunk of flesh.
The shadows sewed themselves together like spider legs threading a web until all that was left was darkness.
Seconds ticked by. Then minutes.
Still, I waited for those emerald eyes to fall on me, for life to appear in them once again.
To hear him say my name in his silken tone.
To have his arms raise to pull me in. But nothing came.
The darkness inside me sat silent, unresponsive to my calls.
It’d lied. Abandoned me in my time of need.
And so, I laid myself at his side—fingers lacing through his—and rested my head in the now-cold puddle on his chest.
“I love you.” I cast my gaze to the clouds. “I’ll follow you into the dark.”
If this was to be his grave, then it would be mine too.
I lay there, curled against his cold body, with zero concern for what nightmares might find me in the open.
Let them come and rip my soul from this mortal coil; set me free to find wherever Cillian’s soul had gone.
For a moment I considered calling out to whatever lingered in the dense trees ahead.
Endless hunger hid within the Odious Forest. I simply needed to call out to it.
To beg those monsters to come and end me.
But no words formed. Only silent tears and the all-consuming void inside.
Fate was a cruel mistress, and I’d fallen victim to her will.
But death, my death, would be my choice alone.
I sat, swallowing the panic trying to shove my voice back down my throat.
Face raised to the now crying sky, I licked my lips.
Hands cupped around my mouth, I let my head fall back. “Come and get me!”
The silence that settled around me disturbed my spirit. This was it. My last glimpse. My last—
Gentle and soft, the hand in mine began to tighten. My gaze swept frantically across Cillian’s motionless frame. At first, I feared I’d imagined it, but then a single tap of his pointer finger.
“Cillian?” I cupped his cheeks, his eyes fluttering behind closed lids.
My attention swept to his chest, on the healing flesh around his now beating heart, and it hit me like a tidal wave.
I … I’d done it. He was alive! I kissed his brow, his lips, his chin, his neck.
Though clearly in no position to stand, let alone walk, he was alive!
“Don’t worry, I’m taking you home,” I said, to which his lip twitched.
Elemental magic came to my aid, the hard ground rearing up and laying him in my arms, now reinforced by tendrils of light pressed up against my bones.
But of course, nothing was ever easy in the Shroud, and the treetops in the distance began to shudder.
Something had heard my cry and aimed to answer.
And with haste. But I had what I came for, precious cargo tucked safely against my chest as he’d done countless times for me.
And I would never, never lose him again.
Each step took us closer to the bridge, to Fhírinne and to safety.
All the while, banshee-like cries raised in the distance.
I could feel it in my bones. The Lores knew.
Their queen had been slain, and they sought vengeance.
Little did they know I’d enact vengeance on my own heart forevermore for what I’d done to Lynn.
Though, as I beheld the limp frame in my arms, I knew I wouldn’t walk that road alone.
Fate, it seemed, had one grace left to spare.
My love: returned to me.
My fingers twirled a charcoal sliver about in the amber lamplight.
I studied my recent drawing until my eyes could handle it no more and turned my attention to the redwoods.
Cillian hadn’t awoken. Alive … but barely.
I hadn’t the heart to see him in such a state: empty and vacant.
Celine insisted he had to heal on his own terms, that returning to one’s body after death couldn’t be rushed, but a part of me didn’t believe her.
She held fear in her eyes, which told me it was entirely possible he might not wake at all.
But I knew him. He would come back to me. He would.
I hadn’t returned to Fhírinne since we’d laid Lynn to rest. Wouldn’t.
Not until Cillian could join me. Instead, I’d taken newfound solace in the garden.
There, at least, I could stare into space.
Undisturbed. Naturally, Roxie and Gia checked in often.
At first, they tried to pry, to get me to open up about what’d happened in the Shroud, but come the third day, they took the hint.
Emptiness: Grief was pure emptiness. And anger.
I sighed as I lay back on the gazebo bench to look up into the twisted vines above.
One eye pinched shut, I twisted my finger about, sending leaves swirling overhead, lining them up against the constellation in the midnight sky: Leo.
Cillian. A snap and flames burst to life, reflecting a memory that seemed like lifetimes ago now.
“I miss you,” I whispered to the air. “Come back to me.”
A leaf veered off from the rest overhead, fluttering behind me without my permission. I reeled, fire cupped in my fists on instinct, hurled it back, and—
“Whoa now,” a deep voice cut through as he stepped into the lantern’s light. “I don’t think I would stand a chance against your magic on my best day, but especially not today.”
“Cillian?” I dove into his arms, sobbing against his neck. “You’re here. You’re really here!”
“I’m never leaving you again. I promise.”
“Where … How … I don’t understand …”
He motioned for me to sit, and I walked in time with his slow steps; helped him find his place first before settling at his side and lacing my fingers through his. “What happened?” I asked. “Tell me everything.”
He bit his lip. Considered for a time, and then turned to face me.
“Deception found me. He’d waited until I was weak and tired from the waves of lower creatures he sent to attack.
Next thing I knew, I was in some dungeon.
Locked away Gods knows where. And I swear I …
I could hear your screams. Like you were right there next to me and … then everything went black.”
Rage simmered in my veins. “I was there.”
“Wait … they caught you? But how? You had the upper hand; Bethesda didn’t know you were coming!”
“Lynn …” I corrected.
His shoulder went rigid. “What?”
“Lynn … not Bethesda.” A gloss settled over his eyes, and I allowed him time to process. To let it sink in before I continued.
“It was her, the whole time,” I continued. “The coven Gia had found herself in … Lynn. The Lores’ queen … Lynn.”
“But, why?” he murmured so low I almost didn’t register it.
“She said I’d abandoned her.” Tears welled. “And I did. I—I died. Didn’t take care of myself well enough to stick around for her, for Fagan, for you. I was a horrible mother! I turned her into the monster she became. Me! It was all my—”
His arms cemented around me and he pushed my head against his chest, rocking me.
A sob rattled through me in the silence, but he only held me tighter.
That gesture, the comfort said all the things he wanted to without a single word.
And I think I knew, deep down, that I couldn’t have prevented the sickness that had taken me.
Death’s mind couldn’t be changed once it was set, unless you were willing to pay the cost to defy him.
But blaming myself was a far easier explanation than the truth.
In the end, it didn’t matter how she’d become the monster.
Or even why. What was done was done. And now?
Now we’d rebuild, honor the memory of who she was before the darkness had claimed her.
Bethesda was no more her than I was Fiorenza. Another life. Another time.
An unsound mind, returned to peace.