Chapter 4 #2
“Everyone says they’d travel to the ends of the earth for someone they love, but it’s an easy thing to claim when you know you’ll never have to.
But here you are...” She tipped a nod at him.
“Taking not a leap but an entire flight of faith, with no promise you’ll get what you need or even be able to return to the life you left behind.
You’re still so young. You don’t have to tell me why you’re here, but you should at least be honest with yourself.
Because when you find her, she will expect that same honesty, and she deserves it. ”
He hadn’t anticipated being read like a damn book, but he should have. Elloven had seen to the heart of him within seconds of their acquaintance. It shouldn’t be a surprise her mother was just as shrewd. “That wasn’t a question.”
“No.” She chuckled and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Not for me anyway.”
“Right.” Jesstin cleared his throat and moved again, unable to get comfortable. “Should we...”
Shioven held her hands palms up. “I could speak until the dawn broke and would still never get to the whole of it. But if I show you... You’ll know enough.
You’ll have everything you need. With it, when you find my daughter, you can protect her as I never could.
Not even Esmeray, in her misguided...” Shioven hung her head with the unfinished thought.
“Will you put your hands over mine? Will you receive this message, for Aelloven?”
Jesstin had no idea what she was actually asking but nodded.
She gestured for him to add his hands to hers but then withdrew them. “Have you heard of... Do you know what I mean when I say the word Meduwyn?”
He’d heard it but wasn’t placing where. He shrugged, trying not to take his impatience out on her.
Everyone harped about time but treated it carelessly.
It didn’t help that being so near Shioven was a dangerous trip to an explosive, confusing time in his life, where the answer to her not-quite-question lived.
“How about Ilynglass?” she asked.
Jesstin grunted. “I’m familiar with the myth.”
“It’s no myth,” she said. “It all began there. Many years ago, it ended there, when every door leading to that world slammed shut, including the one that allowed the dead to travel from the Infinitum to the Halls of Ilyn. Now, those who would reopen them all are close to the answer, but if they find it... If they succeed, it won’t be a joyful reunion with the past. It will be the beginning of the end.
And Aelloven? She’s the result of years and years of desperation to reunite the worlds.
She’s not special... To us she is, but not in a mystical way.
She just has the exact perfect mix of heritage, and they’ve waited a long time for it.
Now I don’t care about all that, Jesstin.
I only care that my daughter never falls into their hands again.
So when you save her, you get her far, far away from the curias.
You’ll see why soon enough.” Her hands hovered back in the air.
“There’s nothing to fear. No shock, no pain.
You’ll close your eyes...” She waited for him to obey.
“Slide your palms gently over mine.” Her smooth, warm hands traced his.
“And witness the lengths fanatics will go to for time and chaos.”
Elloven hadn’t been out for long before she was conscious again, wide awake.
The sleep serums were maddeningly inconsistent, as was often the case with anything purchased from the markets.
One might get one drop of insanely potent serum in one try, and no effect at all in the next.
It was especially frustrating when they were so hard to come by.
But the shrieks had stopped. That was something, at least.
She stretched her legs, careful to navigate around the cot’s exposed edge, but she wasn’t on the cot anymore. She was slumped in a chair large enough for someone three times her size. The last time she’d sat in something so ridiculous was—
Elloven sagged. It was only a dream, but this one wasn’t real, and she was still struggling to understand why her mind would deliberately inflict such pointless pain—when she was still suffering so much—when she heard the only sound her heart had ever responded to.
“Elloven?”
She saw the dusty tips of his boots before she saw him, but oh, did she feel him. His aura, primeval and teeming with vitality, was like standing in the sunshine after weeks of rain.
Jesstin crashed to his knees at the knobby base of her unwieldy chair. “Is it really you?” His laugh was a mess of desperate sounds, but the one she clung to was hope. “Are you really here?”
He had come. Weeks later, but he’d come. The Night Soul wasn’t just a dream of a dream, and not even death had broken their link to each other.
Elloven couldn’t answer. Her thoughts were so scattered.
She was all over the place, part of her mind filtering through memories in random order, the other taking stock of the present in the most clinical of terms. Like her chair, which was more of a throne, now that she thought of it, a queen’s seat, second only to the king of the Night Soul.
Looking into her king’s eyes was the first important choice she’d made without wasting time overanalyzing.
She’d spent so much of her life questioning everything, down to whether to wear brown or black boots, when no one was even looking at her damned feet.
“Jesstin.” She sounded so small to herself, as though a part of her still expected to wake up.
But no, he was there. Jesstin was there.
He might hate her, and the reunion might be pure mischance, but he was there.
All the fortifications, the little boxes and bridges of her psyche, cracked wide, and for once it didn’t scare her, not even a little.
“This is real then? This place? Tell me it is.” Elloven’s old tendencies to shrink and protect weren’t entirely gone, but as she observed the film of sadness glossing his eyes, she couldn’t recall what her last thought had been.
“The first time you came here, we talked and talked,” Jesstin said. He slid one hand over her bare foot and locked it around her ankle. “And then the earth shook, and I grabbed for you, but all I got was your necklace—”
“And then we woke—”
“In the carriage!”
“And we thought we were being robbed, but it was just...”
“The men you spared me the pleasure of killing.” His jittery, uneasy laugh echoed.
“No, I was being reckless. You saved my life that day.” His thumb caressed the bone at the edge of her ankle in an act so tender, it surfaced the entirety of her loneliness.
“I’m not going to question this. We’re here.
You’re here.” He shook his head and breathed out her name. “Elloven.”
He sounded so incredibly euphoric to see her, so much so that he was struggling with his words, his breathing, but the intrusive thoughts had never been louder.
He’s only here to assuage his guilt. He feels bad for you.
Poor, pathetic little Elloven, who died bonded to a man who had controlled her for over half her life.
Too stupid to see the betrayal coming, too weak to save herself.
Elloven pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes to shut out the internal noise. She didn’t know why it had taken weeks for him to find her, but she had to stop going backward.
“This isn’t how I imagined our reunion... though I’m not complaining. Not at all. I thought it would take so much longer, but here you are.” He sounded so nervous and awkward, like a young man at the start of a courtship. “Tonight is, ah, actually my first night in the Infinitum.”
She wanted to snatch the words from his mouth. “No, Jess. No, no, no.”
“Shh, no, I’m alive.” His smile soothed her as much as his touch. She was reminded how beautiful it could be when he meant it, like a hug from her favorite dream. “Whatever that means here.”
“Then how? How are you in the Infinitum? Were you still in Rivenholde all this time?”
“What do you mean, all this time? How long has it been for you?”
“How, Jesstin?” Her heart beat out of control, and she prayed for an answer that would return it to normal.
Jesstin released her ankle. “I know I wasn’t very forthcoming when you asked me about my necromancy.”
“Seems everyone but me knew about it.”
Jesstin didn’t hide his annoyance. “No, Sesto was the only one until recently. We didn’t know there was a whole cabal of dark wizards waiting for me.”
“Daire said it would save you in the maze. He said if I tried to help, it would distract you and you’d fail. You’d die.”
Visibly brimming with charged energy, Jesstin leaned against the leg of her chair as he looked through her, rather than at her.
“The spirits in the labyrinth said I could walk into Infinita Mori without dying because I’m not just any necromancer but a special necromancer.
” His laugh was performative and bitter.
“They said a lot of other things too, but I think I’m on my own from here. ”
How is this possible, she wanted to ask, but anything Jesstin might know had been fed to him by those who stood to gain from his compliance, not his understanding. “Oh.”
On the heels of a pensive silence came a request she wasn’t expecting. “Move over.”
She glanced down in confusion. “What?”
He nodded at her wide seat. “Make room, darling.”
She was too elated to argue, too caught in the luxury of his companionship to weaponize the anger and hurt he’d left her with.
The imprint of his hand on her ankle persisted, and the sensation was so wonderful, she could cry, but she really, really didn’t want to.
Even with everything he’d said and done, the only thing she wanted was to hug him.