He can't let her go
The world has gone gray.
I have gone numb.
And Auren has gone still.
My hands stroke her face, though she no longer feels my touch. My
lips press against her eyes, though she no longer cries. My arms cradle her
body against mine, though she no longer trembles with cold.
I bury my face against her neck, my tears soaking against her pulse
that no longer thrums. Inhaling her scent that’s now tinged with the sharp
pull of blood. Wrap my fingers around her ribbons that no longer twist.
But I hold her.
Gently. Desperately. Wretchedly.
I thought I knew what it meant to be torn apart when my two sides
separated. But no.
No.
This is what it feels like.
To have your soul ripped in half.
My päyur bond has been cut. Like scissors to thread, both pieces left
to float in a colorless sea. Drifting further and further away from one
another, every wave and gentle lap separating us even more.
I don’t know how long I kneel upon the ground with her. I hear
nothing but the silence of her body, see nothing but her motionless form.
My mother speaks no more, but I didn’t expect her to. That one word
seems to be the only thing she’s ever able to tell me. The first time, it was
my divined promise.
This time, it’s my fatal devastation.
She’s clutching the wound at her stomach, but then her hand moves
to my back. My mother’s touch is the only thing that makes me aware of
anything else other than Auren. Her tense fingers alert me a second before
Wick and a group of Vulmin appear in the courtyard.
“Auren?” Wick calls out. The heavy silence that follows turns his
She is His everything
“You are already dead,” I pant out with dark menace. With vicious
promise. “The second you touched her. The second you hurt Auren and my
mother, you were done.”
“No, son. You are.” He rolls up one of his sleeves and drags the
dagger down his own arm, opening a vein.
“Culls cull the weak,” he goes on. “I will be king of the skies. I will
be king of Annwyn.”
He crouches down in front of me then, his dark eye boring into mine
as my mind spins. “I will take your dragon the same way our ancestors did
when they knew another Cull didn’t deserve the manifestation. And by
doing so, I will finally divest you of your greatest weakness. Your heart.”
I try to surge up, to launch myself at him, but I can’t.
My dragon is dying, unable to even roar anymore. My mother
bleeding, Auren threatened.
And I’m trapped. Fucking trapped.
His soldiers wait around my tortured dragon, while my father
watches the blood seep from his arm before deigning to look back at me.
“Pour the heartblood of the ward and its dragon into the veins of the
victor…and the victor shall manifest anew,” he intones, his expression
eager. The words sound like he’s repeated them thousands of times to
himself.
Cold realization freezes me and makes my stomach roil.
This is what he’d always planned. This is why he pushed me so hard
as a boy. He wanted me to manifest a dragon…so that he could murder me
and take it for himself.
“You’ve finally fulfilled your purpose,” he tells me with a biting
edge.
From my peripheral, I see soldiers pinning down my dragon’s feet.
See one of them positioning a sword right in front of its pulsing heart, ready
to pierce it through.
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Finally the confession
Slade’s hands hang at his sides, and something ripples
in his eyes. Something I can’t read. “What are you saying,
Auren?”
Everything.
I’m saying everything.
Because there’s no time. Because I’m supposed to
leave. Because he’s leaving too.
I take a deep, shaky breath. “All my life, I have been
coveted or bought or possessed because of the gold that
drips from my fingers and lusters my skin. I have been used
and kept, and I learned to accept that life. I learned to
accept that the best I deserved was Midas and that I
shouldn’t ever hope for more because I knew just how
much worse it could be.”
An angry look slashes across the shadows of Slade’s
face, his mouth pressing together above his stubbled chin.
My wet lashes drag against my cheek with every blink.
“But then you came along. And never, not once, has anyone
looked at me the way you do.”
He goes tense, breath bated to hear what I have to say.
There’s a long pause held between us, like hands cupping
water, desperate not to let a single drop leak out. “And
what way is that?”
“Like I’m a person instead of a trophy. Like you don’t
just look at me and see gold,” I answer honestly. “That’s
never happened before,” I admit with a sad smile. “You
challenged me to be more than what I’ve been made into.
You showed me how to see the world without my
blindfold.”
He shifts on his feet, allowing a slash of light shining
