Chapter 11 #2
After a while, he asks, “When this is over, what do you really want? You say you just want to go home, but the more I hear about home, the less I think that’s what you should want.”
It’s the second time he’s asked. The first time, I gave the answer I thought he wanted to hear. This time, I give the answer that’s true. “I just want to live,” I say. “I want to go somewhere where people are kind, and it’s safe, and I’m never hungry or hurt. Maybe grow something. Maybe not.”
He’s quiet for a second, then says, “You could stay. In the fae realm.”
I look at him, not sure if he’s joking.
He shrugs, but I can tell he means it. “You don’t have to go back. You’re not like the other humans, our servants. You’re smart, charismatic, interesting, and, well, a lot of things. You’d fit in here with the fae.”
I think about that. The only humans here appear to be mindless servants. And the fae? The fae are evil… aren’t they? Somehow, the world doesn’t seem so black and white any longer. I don’t say any of it, just shake my head. “I don’t know if I can stay here.”
He nods, like he was expecting that.
We sit. The sword-light goes out, and we’re left with just the moon and the soft, black silence. I’m about to say something, anything, just to fill the quiet, when I see it. Fog.
It pours in through the hedge, a brilliant silver color. Thick, rolling, heavy as steel. It blankets the ground, then rises, slow and deliberate, until it’s just below our knees.
Ashton stands, tense. “You seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Yeah.”
He reaches for my hand again, and this time, I squeeze first.
We watch the fog continuing to roll in. At first, it curls under the hedge and pools around our knees.
But it thickens as we walk, crowding out the dark and swallowing the glow of my sword until the world is a numb, colorless blur.
My skin prickles, cold and hot at the same time.
The air suddenly doesn’t taste clean any longer.
It tastes sharp, like eating snow or biting a metal spoon.
Ashton whispers, “This can’t possibly be just normal, safe fog, can it?”
I sigh. “I don’t think we’re that lucky.”
“What should we do?”
“We could try running for it,” I say.
“It’ll eventually catch us. Probably better to face it head-on and see what happens.”
That’s probably the brave thing to do. I’m not sure I’m that brave though, so I watch the fog growing with an increasing feeling of dread. My legs itch to start running.
Ashton keeps his hand in mine, but his grip gets tighter, then weaker. He stumbles and catches himself. He laughs like he means to sound brave, but it comes out strangled. “Shit. I can’t feel my face,” he says, and the words vibrate in my skull, echoing weirdly off the mist.
I try to reply, but the fog crawls up my throat and makes my voice vanish. My legs are heavy, every step a slow drag.
We keep moving, because there’s nowhere else to go. The fog climbs quickly, reaching my waist, chest, neck. The silver in the air pulses with every heartbeat.
Ashton coughs, then lets go of my hand to press his palm to his mouth. “Alette,” he says, and even though it’s only my name, it sounds like a warning, or maybe an apology.
I look at him. His eyes are huge, pupils blown out. “Breathe shallow,” I manage, though it hurts to speak, like there’s glass in my lungs. “It’s stealing the air.”
“Air!” he says softly.
Reaching out with his hands, I feel a sudden rush of air hit us so hard it nearly rips me off my feet.
It slams into my chest, sharp and cold, filling my lungs for half a heartbeat before it’s gone again, ripped away as if something unseen is dragging it from us.
The pressure shifts violently. My ears pop, and the world narrows to the frantic need to breathe.
And yet, the fog doesn’t move. Doesn’t change. It just hangs there, thick and heavy, pressing in from all sides. It feels wrong against my skin like it’s not made of air at all, but something heavier. Something alive.
He tries again. A swirling tornado of air suddenly begins to circle all around it. Leaves tear off the hedges, caught in the violent spin, whipping my face and tangling in my hair. The wind howls, strong enough to tear branches loose, to drag dirt from the ground—
But the fog remains.
Unmoved.
Untouched.
It clings to the space like it belongs there, swallowing the air Ashton calls, devouring it the second it forms. Each breath grows thinner, weaker, like we’re trying to breathe through water, through cloth, through something that refuses to let us live.
Still, the fog doesn’t move. Doesn’t thin.
“It’s not working!” I shout.
He nods, and we keep walking, trying to get through it. But after three more steps, he sinks to his knees. “Sorry,” he rasps. “Just—just need a second.”
I drop beside him, my head light, sword in my lap, and try to remember how to think.
I know what this is. Some old memory is clawing at my spine.
This is what it’s like to suffocate in a snowdrift.
I saw it once. There was a boy from my village lost in a whiteout.
They found him dead, his face perfectly calm, like he’d just fallen asleep.
This air… it’s going to keep stealing our air until we’re gone too.
Ashton sways, tries to get up, can’t. “Sorry,” he says again. “Sorry, sorry, sorry—”
I stand up as tall as I can, swaying on my feet, but the fog is everywhere.
Just like smoke. Only smoke doesn’t stay close to the ground.
Taking a chance, I drop down low and discover that it’s actually easier to breathe.
Just like smoke. Which means, there’s a way to survive this. Okay, we can do this.
“Down,” I gasp, and push his head until it’s level with my own. The fog is thickest from my waist up, but around my knees… my knees are cold but clear. The ground is safe. I lay flat, face pressed to the dirt, and take the first real breath I’ve had in minutes. It hurts, but less.
I reach for Ashton, drag him down next to me. He fights me, but he’s too weak to really stop me. I plant my arm across his chest and pin him down onto the ground, hard.
“Stop,” he wheezes. “Let go—can’t—”
“Shut up,” I say, or maybe just think it. “It’s better here. Trust me.”
He shudders, but then I feel his ribs expand under my hand. His breathing evens, just a little. He coughs, then turns his face to mine. His skin in pale, and his eyes are wide.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
I nod, because I don’t have air for words. We lay there, side by side, my arm across his chest, the fog boiling over our backs but leaving a tiny seam of nothing at ground level.
Ashton keeps staring at me. There’s a flicker of the old charm in his eyes, but it’s cracked at the edges, scared. “I thought you were trying to kill me,” he jokes, but his voice breaks.
I just look at him, and the look must say everything, because he lets out a choked laugh, then leans over and kisses me, quick and soft, right on the corner of my mouth.
“You’re amazing,” he says. “You know that?”
I shake my head, more dizzy than embarrassed.
He runs a hand over his face and looks at me again. “You are. No one’s ever saved my life before.”
I want to make a joke, something about fairy tale roles reversed, but the exhaustion hits me in a wave. I roll to my side, curl up, and rest my head on his arm. We lay together in the mud, listening to the hiss of the fog above us, waiting for the air above us to be safe again.
He starts humming, soft at first, then louder as his lungs recover.
I recognize the tune. It’s the one he hummed the night before, after the wedding, when the world was just a tangle of lights and noise.
I close my eyes and let it wash over me, pretend for a second that we’re somewhere warm, somewhere safe.
He says, after a long silence, “My mom used to sing to me when I was a kid. She said it was a good luck charm.”
“It’s pretty.”
His expression gets soft and sweet. “She would’ve liked you.”
I smile. “I wish I could’ve met her.”
The fog hasn’t lifted, but it’s not getting thicker. If anything, it’s just… waiting. I reach for Ashton’s hand, and he happily takes it. “It’s not dispersing? Should we try to get out of here?”
He glances at the fog, then back at me. “It doesn’t seem like we have another choice.”
I brush hair out of my face. “Crawling it is.”
“Like in the tunnel,” he says, with a grin.
“Yes,” I say, confused by his smile.
“I must like you on your hands and knees…”
I stare at him. “I don’t get it.”
Something wicked flashes in his eyes. “I swear you will, one day.”
A shiver rolls down my spine at the heat in his eyes, but I look away from it. We have other things to focus on than whatever image is rolling through his mind.
We start crawling. At first it’s hard. My joints hate me, my palms sink in every patch of mud, but after a while the rhythm becomes almost soothing. The fog boils a centimeter above my head, but as long as I keep my nose close to the moss, I can breathe.
I glance over at Ashton. He’s doing the same, eyes fixed on the ground, jaw clenched.
After a while, his gaze catches mine, and he says, “This is the most undignified thing I’ve done in a century.”
“Is that why you’re making so much noise?” I say, and he snorts, then coughs.
At some point, the mud turns to pebbles, then to hard dirt, then to stone. The shift is subtle at first. There’s less suction at my hands and knees, less drag with every movement, but I feel it.
And then… something else changes.
The air begins to thin, but just a little bit. Each breath comes a fraction easier, like something has eased its grip on my lungs. The gray around us begins to thin in strands, unraveling instead of vanishing, pulling back in slow, reluctant threads.
I can see a little farther. Not much, but enough to notice the difference. Enough to feel the space around us open, inch by inch.