Chapter 46 - Horizon of Eternity
My feet hit solid ground and I opened my eyes to darkness. Water gently swirled around my body, but my heart did not beat.
I was in the place West of the Moon and East of the Sun.
Suddenly Ganora parted through the dark waters as if she were stepping through gossamer curtains. Somehow we were the same size.
“A thousand choices through the centuries led you to accept the Man of the Mountain’s gift in its entirety.” She tilted her head. “And so you have completely surrendered to me.”
Trails of crimson swirled from the cut on my palm like ink blots on a contract. “Name your terms, Queen of the Giants.”
“For your sacrifice, your beloved shall walk free.” Her voice was low and powerful, adding to the weight of the water with each word. “Though you have not laid down your life to take his place…”
What was she saying? Was she not using me as a weapon to free her sister?
“…you will take mine,” she said. “You will take my power and my eternity. And Daigen’s. And Fraleigh’s.”
I slowly shook my head. This was no bargain. “There must be more.”
Ganora’s mouth formed a tight line. “When the Alastar comes to Nordingaard, surrender yourself. You will go under the collar in Fraleigh’s place.”
My hand flew up to my neck. I was prepared to face eternal servitude to the Queen of the Giants, not the man I destroyed. “No, I can still free Fraleigh without it. With all the power you promise, I can convince—”
“No you can’t!” Ganora snapped her teeth. “You know an Alastar would never let her go unless he had something more powerful to take! If the Man of the Mountain takes her power back and makes her mortal, the Hytons will keep her enslaved until she dies!”
I shook my head. I could not chain myself to the monster I could not slay. I could not face General Hyton after what he proposed, nor Derrick after I had broken his heart.
“You cannot back out now, Serafina,” Ganora said. “This was the Man of the Mountain’s plan from the beginning. I listened to his whispers and forced just the right circumstances to poise you to make this bargain.”
The chill of her power prickled my neck again, just like when she had strangled me in front of desperate Riyan. She was never taking revenge for her fallen giants, or waiting for her perfect weapon to return to her…
“I never cared about the boy,” Ganora said with a hollow laugh that crackled with desperation. “He was just the only way to get to you—the only way to free my sister, to free all of us!”
Ribbons of color swirled around me in the darkness, each an image of a choice made that led me to the bottom of the thousand-year-old grave. Riyan falling to his knees as Ganora choked me. Grigory Thornebow’s poison arrow that led me to the healing spring. The Man of the Mountain ordering Fraleigh to refuse to help me at her golden palace. Riyan brushing a hair away from my face as I slept next to him. A voice like satin saying “I choose Serafina Ravenwood” amongst a group of suitors.
My chest rattled with a sob, but the final vision that flashed before me sent a chill down my spine.
It was Daigen, his violet eyes twinkling as he led Astrid by the hand through the foggy mountain pass to the well.
If my heart were beating, it would have broken.
The Man of the Mountain had said a series of choices made before I was even born led me to eternity. He never said those choices were for my benefit.
I knew I should have never trusted Daigen. He helped me, he trained me, but I never realized he was just feeding a lamb to lead it to slaughter.
I was so desperate to get Riyan back that I had fallen right into the trap they had all laid.
“And I am tired.” Ganora’s voice broke as she clutched her chest. Suddenly she was not a queen, but a child. “It’s been centuries and…I just want to go home.”
I bit my tongue and looked up, finding the pinhole of light at the top of the chasm—the moon at midnight. Memories of Riyan’s laughter filled my ears. I remembered his strong arms wrapping around my body. I smelled nectar and wheat in the crook of his neck.
I smiled despite myself. As long as Riyan was breathing, darkness would never touch me…even if I knelt before Alastar XII as his slave.
A calm wave of finality washed over me. My white flame twisted, weaving my words into the infinite threads of eternity as I spoke. “What is done is done. I will take what you give and give what you must take.”
Ganora gave me a grim nod and held out her left hand. A matching gash appeared on her own palm and released a delicate swirl of blood into the dark water.
She grasped my palm. Cobalt flames surged through my veins. My stomach dropped like I had just fallen and the coldest fear I had ever experienced dragged through me.
My left arm vibrated as I gripped Ganora’s hand and all the fear twisted into icy rage. Her power lit me up with blue light that burned the clothes from my skin. Though I was naked and vulnerable, I felt like I could crack the earth, tear down the heavens, and fold a storm in my hands.
On the other end of that thread of eternity, Ganora’s hair brightened from cold white to warm blonde and her grey skin blossomed into pink.
Suddenly I was no longer holding the hand of the Queen of the Giants, but instead a young teenage girl. Had I not known any better, I would have thought she was just a first-year student at Ashmore.
“The bargain is in your blood,” Ganora said, her voice sweet and childlike. “Free my sister as you have freed me.”
My veins glowed with the bond of the bargain. Ganora looked up and raised her small arm, pressing against some kind of perimeter.
A male voice I did not recognize broke through the fabric between worlds. He spoke in Old Tongue, but the confines of language did not hinder understanding in the place West of the Moon and East of the Sun.
He was calling his daughter home.
A woman’s hand reached through the invisible barrier. Ganora’s pink cheeks rose with her smile as she grasped the hand.
Slowly, the hand pulled Ganora through the perimeter until she disappeared in the darkness.
A shiver crawled down my spine. That was her… Death.
My chest shook with the weight of Ganora’s eternity coming to an end, but then I heard a familiar tune in my ears.
“Still with me somehow.”
The voice was not Riyan’s, but a feminine voice I had heard before. I took a step through the darkness, following the song in my blood, until I found a girl with twin braids kneeling next to the body of a giant sleeping man with golden hair.
Astrid’s body was more transparent than Riyan’s. We were all nude, but no embarrassment plunged through me. The mortal rules of modesty could not reach us.
“Astrid,” I said gently, “I am going to bring him home.”
Even though I was talking to her mind, frozen in place from when she was seventeen, Astrid looked up at me with two-decades worth of heartbreak. “He never came back.”
I gave Astrid a soft smile. “No, but I will. I promised Riyan I would take care of you.”
Astrid’s brows knitted. “A promise…” She looked down at Riyan’s sleeping body. “I climbed the mountain for Ragnar. He promised me we would be a family.”
I knelt beside her. “You can still be a family. Once Riyan enters the world of the living, I will make sure you can join him.”
If I could not be with Riyan once I went under the collar, he at least deserved to have his mother with him.
Astrid’s lip trembled only once. “I never got to hold my baby, and even now…”
She tried to wrap her arms around Riyan’s massive chest, but her limbs passed through—completely transparent.
She sat on her knees and looked down at Riyan. “But as much as my heart sang for Ragnar, I loved my baby since the first punch in my womb. I would have climbed a dozen more mountains if it led him to a love like yours.”
The image of Daigen leading her to the Man of the Mountain’s grave flashed through my mind. He destroyed her to get Fraleigh back.
If I were Fraleigh…I would have done much worse to him than merely curse him with a hideous face.
My mouth formed a fine line. “Even after Daigen tricked you?”
She looked past Riyan into the vast darkness. “I am not even angry with him anymore. Each time he visits, he promises me it will all work out…but I am tired of promises.”
Bitterness coated my tongue, but I at least would keep true to my word. “Daigen sends his regards.”
Astrid smiled. “Tell that monster to eat shit.”
Then the spirit of her mind faded into the swirling darkness.
Riyan and I were alone, together at last.
I ran my hand down the side of his sleeping face, tracing the contours of his temple and his cheekbone. My power and Ganora’s twisted in my veins as I kissed his forehead. “Please, wake up.”
The darkness of the well swirled with ribbons of white light.
I knelt by his arm and placed my hands over his heart. I closed my eyes. The flames around the diamond in my heart danced, filling every part of my body with the white light of truth.
“Riyan.” My voice thrummed with power as the magic in his body answered my call. “You were always more than a beast or a monster. You are a man—the fastest, strongest, and most wonderful man alive, worth more to me than any power I could ever hold.”
Riyan’s heartbeat awakened underneath my hands. Each of his veins lit up like its own line in a love song.
“No longer shall fear overtake you,” I said with a smile. “No more shall your body betray you. Return to the flesh that was always yours. Become the man you were supposed to be.”
My magic flowed from my hands and into his heart. His heart pumped white light with each beat, erasing Ganora’s curse from his blood. My hands sank lower as his body compressed.
I opened my eyes. The Riyan that slept below me was no longer giant…but instead the size of his father. He was still tall, but no one would ever again mistake him for anything but what he was—a man. A good man.
His chest rose with a deep breath. His eyelashes fluttered, and the moment his twilight eyes met mine, sunspots danced in my chest.
“Sera?” He sat up, his right hand finding my left.
I nodded as my smile stretched my cheeks. The sunspots grew bigger until they tickled my ribs.
Riyan looked down at me and shook his head. “You are not supposed to be here. You were supposed to find happiness without me. You were supposed to—”
“I chose you. ” I smiled, feeling light and powerful all at once. “I finally got to choose you.”
My chest shook and I could not contain the sunlight any longer. A laugh bounced with my breath. Then it grew, louder and happier, until Riyan smiled wide enough that his dimple appeared.
He raised his hands, examining them, and then his eyes flicked back up to my face. His palms rested against my jaw. He had never held my face before—finally he was a perfect fit.
Riyan laughed, just once, before lifting my face. His eyes were luminous with my white light as I gently brushed a strand of hair from the middle of his forehead. The heartbeat in his wrists gently pulsed against my neck. My eyes fell to the curved lines of his lips and my heart pounded.
He was real. We were real.
Then his lips met mine and I was whole again.
I kissed him back, drinking him in as I wrapped my arms around his neck. My chest pressed into his. Our hearts pounded against each other, crying to join together again.
I pulled away with a small gasp. For a few heartbeats, we held each other with our lips a breath apart.
“ Forge a new blood bond, ” the Man of the Mountain whispered in my mind, “ the eternal bargain must be in his blood too. ”
A shiver of ancient power passed through my body and I suddenly understood why we could not refuse a direct order from the Man of the Mountain.
But just as Fraleigh once said, my sacrifice was a gift. After his father had ordered him to walk at the hem of Death’s robes for years, I could give Riyan an eternity away from her black shroud.
I dragged my eyes up to Riyan’s. “Ganora is gone. I took her power and reversed her curse on you.” I swallowed. “I am just like Fraleigh now. Ageless. Deathless.”
He smiled. “You will never die?”
How could I tell him the terms of my bargain? He would never forgive me when he found out. “Yes, but there are…conditions. I can marry you again, make my own blood bond enchantment, and you can be deathless too. But you do not have to be with me. As soon as we get out of here, you can live your own eternal life—”
Riyan grabbed my chin and lifted it so my eyes met his. “I do not care what the conditions are. Whether it’s for an eternity or just one day, I want you.”
My heart swelled. His lips said, “I want you,” but the way his voice broke said, “ I need you. ”
And I would be with him as much as I could.
I kissed him. The fingers of his right hand laced with my left. The scar on his palm opened up to meet mine.
Our blood mixed. Power surged through my veins into his. Our hearts lit up with white light as they raced.
My blood bond was not painful, it was pure. The sun and moon joined in an eclipse of eternal devotion. There was no Serafina and Riyan, there was only us.
Our tears had fallen, our blood had flowed…
“ And when Alastar comes to the fortress, ” the Man of the Mountain whispered in my mind. “ You both shall become Death’s greatest foe. ”
I broke our kiss as my stomach dropped. Our blood bond glowed in both our chests, bright as a new day.
A life for a life given in love—as soon as I knelt before Derrick, Riyan would greet the horizon of eternity.
The water rumbled and swirled around us as we rose through the well. I looked up—the moon in the center of the sky grew closer.
Riyan’s arm hooked under my legs and he held me close. My arms wrapped around his neck as we pushed through the surface of the well.
We rose from the churning rainbow water like we were floating. His hair and face were soaked and so were mine. The cold mountain air whipped around our bare bodies, but my magic kept me warm.
He took his first step out of the well. He stood in the snow, holding me tightly against him like he would never let me go again.
My heart thudded as I looked up at him. The light of the full moon blanketed every ridge and contour of his body in a soft glow.
A slight flush spread across his cheeks and the strong bridge of his nose. I pressed my hand in the center of his chest and sent a soft push of magic to keep him warm.
Riyan turned his head and his breath stilled as his eyes met mine. Whatever haze in the dark chasm between worlds that had erased the concept of modesty was gone. Riyan’s gaze roved down every curve and dip of my body that my wet hair had not clung to.
His fingertips grazed the side of my breast and my cheeks heated. My hand curled over his chest as his heart began to pound. He gripped the soft flesh of my thigh but then loosened his hold like he thought better of it.
“We, uh…” His voice broke as his gaze dropped from my eyes to the curve of my hip. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “We need to get off this mountain before you freeze.”
I looked up at him through my eyelashes. “Do I look cold to you?”
He glanced at my breasts but then closed his eyes and shook his head. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you some clothes.”
He stepped through the snow, but desire still built within me, the pressure raging against the power I had inherited from Ganora. Anger, lust, and fear of the unknown all clashed in my body, begging for a release.
Traitorous Daigen had said he would wait for me on the other side of the pass. The peak of the mountain was our only sanctuary before my bargain demanded payment.
I did not want to corrupt what Riyan and I had with that bargain, not yet. For the small amount of time I was still free, still completely his, I wanted to surrender every bit of myself to him.
I kissed Riyan’s neck and he stopped in his tracks. His pulse quickened underneath my lips as he shivered.
“Serafina Helia,” he tried to tease, but his voice was tense, “still so damn impatient.”
A low-burning fire warmed the bottom of my stomach. I did not care if we were on top of a mountain with nothing around us but snow and rocks, I wanted something pure, something ours.
I pulled away from his throat and looked into his eyes. “Could we?”
He scanned our sparse surroundings until his eyes settled on a tall rune ahead of us.
Heat spread through my body. Yes, the rune would do.
But a crease formed between Riyan’s brows. “Sera, you deserve a bed—”
I grabbed his strong jaw so his eyes met mine. “You told me before we separated that you would have me the instant you were the size of a normal man.” My eyes flicked down to his chest. “And here you are.”
His cheek pitted like he bit it. He sighed. “I want you…so badly, but I want to make this easy.”
“I never wanted easy. ” My heart pounded against his. The white, pure light of our bond flared, aching to join together. “I wanted what was real. I wanted you. ”
I kissed him—tasting him, savoring him. He kissed me back for a heartbeat before pulling away.
His breath warmed my flushed lips. “Are you sure? After what happened on the Darkest Night?”
“Please.” I sounded vulnerable, but I did not care. I was vulnerable. I was hurt. I was confused. All that was certain was that I loved him and he loved me. “I…I need you too.”
His mouth formed a fine line and he let out a tense breath. His eyes flicked up toward the pass and he leaned forward, about to take a step, when his eyes met mine again.
“Fuck it.” His lips crashed into mine and all my worry melted away. He broke the kiss only to press his forehead against mine. “Anything you want, sweetheart. Today and always.”