Chapter 28 #4
I expected my dress to burn from the press of their hands.
My skin felt as though it blistered and sizzled when they grabbed me by my upper arms to drag me back to the altar, but the fabric didn’t char and I couldn’t smell any smoke.
It hurt like a palm over a candle flame though, every nerve ending that intersected with the green flare of their touch burning without the relief of extinguishment.
I screamed, and the dusk-souls winced at the noise but did not stop.
I tried to tell the dusk-souls it wasn’t their fault, mostly because I wanted to apologize to someone before I died.
I’d always tried to do the right thing, but I’d made it worse at every step of the way.
If I had said nothing when Death sacrificed Elantia, that day in Ereban might have ended with only one death.
If I hadn’t led a reprisal against Death’s cult, the other priests might not have fled to the Summerlands.
If I had let Taran evacuate the acolytes from the battle on the beach instead of trying to confront a god, Taran would have lived.
And now I’d die down here without having saved even a single one of the captured priests.
Many people in my rebellion must have died in despair, but dying ashamed seemed like my inescapable fate.
Taran was going to be so angry at me, if he ever found out.
The thought made me struggle again. Even if there was no chance I’d escape, I’d make the Fallen remember me.
Give one a nasty scar across an ugly face, maybe a wrist that ached when it rained.
I sang fire that passed harmlessly through the dead but made Fallen jump back and curse me again.
I kicked, screamed. The touch of the dead burned, but they weren’t stronger than they’d been in life.
They had to heave and yank on my arms to get me toward the stone altar.
I fought for every inch, but eventually one of the Fallen bull-rushed through the gusts of fire I was calling and got me pressed against the stone.
The hallucinations, or perhaps memories, had started to crowd in brighter and clearer as I drew closer to my mortal end.
I no longer saw a stone cavern around me but the whitewashed walls and ceilings of the small temples of Wesha, where I’d spent most of my short life.
I heard the voices of the priests who raised me and measures of the Maiden’s melodies. Smelled disinfectant and honey salve.
Maiden-priests spent too much time trying to save lives to think much about what happened afterward, but before the rebellion, Death’s cult had promised that the Underworld was a reflection of how a person had lived—the comfort of home at the end of a long journey if you’d lived a worthy life, a torment if you had not.
I snarled as much at the phantoms conjured by my own mind as the Fallen who was trying to hold me in place long enough to sacrifice me; I didn’t want to die as Iona ter Wesha.
The maiden-priests weren’t my home. That wasn’t what my life had been about, if the measure was moments that had mattered rather than the number of days.
If I had to pick one moment to live in forever, it would have been one with Taran. The day we met. The first time he asked me to sing the calendar of flowers for him. Say yes, nightingale. Or even I’ll love you till the stars fall out of the sky.
Lingering in those moments forever wouldn’t feel like a punishment; forgetting them would be worse than the pain of these last seconds. Another Fallen climbed to the altar and seized my hair in his fist, exposing my throat for the blade.
There was another shout. My name, maybe.
I thought at first that I’d succeeded in summoning my memory of Taran to comfort me at the end, because it was impossible that he would actually be here: I’d taken both horses, then rushed after the priests by a route that left no trail on the stone.
But the Fallen heard him too, and they paused their chanting of the sacrificial rite to confront a second intruder.
Taran skidded into the firelight, panting so hard that the cords of his neck pulled with every breath, sweat gluing his tunic to his chest and his filthy hair to his cheekbones. One hand clutched a bare sword and the other a stone knife, but he’d come alone and unarmored.
Oh, you idiot. You didn’t think either of us would survive this—why did you follow me down here?
He didn’t know a tenth of the blessings I did, and they wouldn’t work anyway. Marit had said he was really just a Fallen, just the youngest bastard child of the Peace-Queen, and he was outnumbered more than seven to one.
He shouldn’t have come. He knew better, and he should have spent the rest of his eternal life wondering what happened to me instead of coming here just to die too.
I twisted enough to hit the goat-like Fallen in the chin with the back of my head, winning a few seconds to yell for Taran to run, because I didn’t have time to say I’m sorry or I love you.
Even from a distance, I caught the emerald gleam of his eyes as they locked on mine.
The Fallen raised his arm, knife in hand, not even bothering with the final words of the rite in his haste to dispatch me.
I thought the last thing I’d ever hear was Taran screaming no, but the wordless crash that swept through the cavern in the next second was louder than any voice, flooding the cavern with a flash of green light like a ball of lightning striking a tree.
Reality wavered, vibrated, and then swept away the cloying press of memories.
My eyes flooded and blurred, but the echoes of the shockwave reverberated in my soul more than in my ringing ears.
Whatever had just happened stunned the Fallen into stillness too, but for a moment, I couldn’t discern any real effects. Taran slumped to his knees, chest heaving like his breath had been knocked out of him, but everyone else kept to their feet. What had he done?
Awkwardly, as though walking on unfamiliar limbs, one of the enslaved dead who had dragged me to the altar left her position by the bonfire and stumbled toward us, her form wavering between green and a peace-priest’s saffron.
Before the Fallen could recover from the flash of light and slit my throat, the little dusk-soul shouted a high-pitched curse and drove her spear through his gut.