Chapter Thirteen
Eryon - Earlier
Ifollow her. Unseen, unheard, unknown. I keep pace above the two women, the forest swallowing my steps and hiding my form.
As if she can sense me, she chances small glances over her shoulder to the tree line. Sometimes her eyes slide over me, and I feel them pulling me forward till I can scarcely resist their call.
But I do. I vowed she would not walk alone, and she doesn’t. I trail them to the ashram, then hide outside when they go in. Even with focusing my keen hearing towards its thick walls, all I can hear are muffled voices.
Though I didn’t need to hear what they said, because when she emerges, their answer is written in the slump of her shoulders, in the tears sparkling in her lashes like the first frost of winter.
I heard her say the name of the plant she is looking for, Silene vitalis, but the foreign word is unknown to me despite my familiarity and understanding of many of the centuries that have passed.
Man’s names for the plants of my mountains and forests is not something I ever wasted time on learning. What is the use of a name when knowing the use of the plant itself is what matters.
Knowing when to harvest and how to preserve, what phase of the moon makes the plant's essence more potent or which to leave on someone's doorstep for health.
What plants and animals are in harmony, and which need to be balanced to fulfill my sacred duty to the mountains and the forests of my domain.
These are the things I concern myself with.
And now, also with her.
As the women stand outside the large wooden doors of the ashram, their voices drift back to me on the wind.
I listen as she tells Sita she needs to get back to her notes.
But as they come into view, I see the truth in her eyes.
The conviction of a woman with nothing left to lose.
I’ve seen it reflected in my own face, and I know—she is going to cross the river. She is going to enter my domain.
And I will not be able to stop her.
The thought unsettles me more than it should. She does not belong there. In fact, she does not belong here at all, and yet she keeps coming back. Pulled to me just as I am to her.
The wind shifts, sending tension coursing through my limbs, my fur prickling with awareness. The sky is heavy, pressing low, thick with something unseen. The trees murmur, uneasy. The scent of the storm curls through the peaks, slow and creeping, until it is all I can smell—all I can feel.
The mountain is changing.
I tighten my pace, scanning the ridges above them, my instincts twisting with unease. She isn’t safe. The thought echoes in every beat of my heart—not safe, not safe, not safe.
The first flakes fall, no more than a breath.
She does not heed the warning the mountains whisper. I debate forcing the women to turn back to the safety of the ashram, but they are determined to return to the guest house. My only option to not yet reveal myself but still assure her safety is to ensure their arrival back home.
The wind whips through the trees as the weight of the sky deepens. The flakes move from a delicate flurry to an absolute downpour, a monsoon of white, blinding in its intensity.
Instinct has me moving, as close as I dare to protect them and then—I see it happen. She falters for a moment, and Sita keeps going. I’m close enough to see her spinning in a circle, yelling for her friend. Yet too far away to stop the danger looming ahead.
Instinct has me running, my long legs eating up the distance before my mind can even register I have made the decision. My heart pounds in my chest as I will my Winter Star to stay still until I can get to her.
But the determined thing moves again, chasing her friend, and one wrong step is all it takes.
The ground shifts. And then—she is gone.
The world collapses with her in a deafening blast of snow and ice and rock tearing away from the mountain, roaring down its side, consuming everything in its path, devouring my heart, and ripping it from my chest into its icy maw.
I lunge forward, a snarl ripping from my throat, but I am too far away. Too late. The avalanche takes her. And for the first time in ages, I am powerless. Once again watching as forces beyond my control tear my heart away.
I move.
Faster than I have in years, pushing through the storm, through the chaos, my breath a fire in my chest as I chase my own heart down the side of a mountain that for the first time in my existence, I hate.
As love is ripped once more from my grasp, as hope disappears in the deluge, I curse the earth that swallows her as eagerly as it accepted my blood oath.
I track her scent before the wind can steal it and track it down, heedless of the unstable ground beneath my feet. The mountain does not give back what it takes.
But I will defy it. I call on the creator, the moon goddess, and all the guardians that have come before. I beg for their blessing, throwing myself down at their mercy if only I can hold this sweet flower, my harbinger of Spring, my Winter Star.
If I can only sweep her up into my arms, just once to save her, not for my sake but for hers, it will be a divine miracle.
The storm thickens, an unrelenting force bent on stopping me.
Even the wind tries to push me back. The world is nothing but endless white.
My hands burn as they tear through the drifts, peeling away the layers of ice and snow and rock that swallowed her whole.
My fingertips shred against the debris, my muscles scream—but I do not stop.
I cannot. Her oxygen is slipping away; each second lost like grains of sand in an hourglass.
Then—
A sound. Her sweet voice. At first, I think she is calling for help. My brilliant flower is helping me find her. Brow furrowed, I listen harder. She isn’t crying for help. I think she is…singing.
A strange, muttered melody drifts up from beneath the snow—soft, cracked with cold, absurdly light for the gravity of her situation.
She is dying. And yet she is singing some terrible song with words that are so strange. She is singing about, if I’m not mistaken, her ass. Although it may also be my favorite part of her, I cannot imagine why on earth she would be singing about it.
A growl rumbles deep in my chest, sharp and incredulous. She defies reason. She is a paradox, a Gordian knot I ache to unravel. Even on the edge of death, she does not understand how fragile she is. Or perhaps she does but simply does not care.
But I do.
I care enough for the both of us. And I will not lose her. I should dig faster. I should tear through the snow until she is safe. But for a single moment, I hesitate and just listen.
I let her have these final notes, because if she is singing, she has enough air, and I need her to know that she is brave and fierce and strong. But I also need her to know that I am here.
I am here for her, and I will not allow those tears in her eyes, will not accept the slump of her shoulders in defeat. I will not allow her to live without whatever plant she so desperately seeks. Yes, she is strong, but she is my strength now, too.
I act.
Her terrible singing allows me to reach her with surgical precision, my hands breaking through to where her body is entombed in the snow. It could have been behind the thickest stone of the mountain and still it would not have stopped me. I would have clawed the earth bloody until it yielded to me.
She is limp in my grasp, her limbs too light, her breath too faint. She is smaller, frailer under all of her mountain gear than I could even have imagined. Her bones feel like a bird’s beneath my great hands. I gentle my grip, afraid to leave a mark on her delicate flesh.
I pull her free and watch her lie there in the snow. The flakes swirl over her face, falling down around her ears. I watch one dance in her panting breaths until it finally loops and arcs to land softly on her lips.
Oh, how I want to land there, too. To be the snowflake that dares kiss her lips. But it does not melt. The cold is stealing her from me.
Her eyes flutter open and words fall from her mouth, but I cannot even comprehend them in the enormity of this moment—she and I are finally together.
She sees me. And she should be afraid or even surprised but the only thing I see reflecting back at me in the violet-blue eyes of my Winter Star is like recognizing like. Soul meeting soul.
This may be the first time she is truly seeing me, but she has felt me all along. Despite the storm raging around us, her warmth floods my veins like the summer sun.
Her small pink tongue peeks out, sweeping the lucky snowflake into her mouth as her teeth begin to chatter and she pales even further.
Without thought, I sweep her up and into my body, cloaking her in my thick fur against the raging elements and she thanks me.
Me. She thanks me. Not with fear. Not with hesitation. With gratitude.
Her voice, barely more than a whisper against my flesh, reaches through the storm, curling around something deep inside me.
She is not afraid. She only knows that I have saved her.
Something inside me tightens. Something ancient. Something I never thought to have again but has declared itself, established a foothold deep in the mountain of my soul.
I shift her against my chest, cradling her carefully, pressing her into the warmth of my body. Her skin is like ice, but she is soft. So soft. Beneath this ridiculous puffy coat and the jeans that have no place in this snow, I feel her curl around me as if she were carved from my own flesh.
But I should not want this. I should not crave this. My hands are made for shaping the land, for protecting, for killing if I must. Not for holding something so delicate. Not for keeping. I’ve proved it before, but my heart does not listen.
It screams, mine.
The word slides through my mind, unbidden. I crush it down. She is dying. She does not belong to me.
Not yet, my heart says.
I will it with every fiber of my being, and although I am hers, just as I have vowed, she will need to choose me. I honor her far too much for any other way.
The wind howls, wrapping around us like a living thing, but it no longer matters. She is no longer lost.
And neither am I.
I tighten my hold, fitting my body around hers, sheltering her from the storm. And then I turn toward the mountains. Toward safety. Toward the only place she will be truly protected. The storm swallows us whole.
And I carry her home.