If you've never been really afraid, let me tell you - it does things to you. It takes over your mind and your body. You want to scream. You want to run. You want to wet your pants. You want to throw yourself down on the ground and cry and beg please, please, please, please don't kill me! And if you think you're brave, well, wait till you're cowering a few feet away from a monster who can turn you into coleslaw in about three seconds flat. But then the Andalite's voice was in my head again. < Courage, my friends. >
hold my breath and count to ten
one two three
forget how your hands might look on her skin
five six seven
eight reasons that you can’t be upset so stop
nine ten eleven
twelve i was supposed to exhale at ten
thirteen fourteen fifteen
sixteen maybe it takes more than ten seconds
to let it go
Reklam
Make sure he doen't kill himself
So despite the tiredness dripping down my bones like tar, I stride out of
the room with renewed determination. I can’t stop. I won’t. I will keep
going. I will keep trying. Because I will tear a rip through this fucking
world so I can get to her…
Or die trying.
Every time I hear flapping wings, I half expect Argo to burst through the
trees and land in front of me. But he’s probably still on a ship somewhere in
the fucking ocean, and I don’t know what any animal mender will be able to
do for him.
Yet another thing out of my control.
I’ve tried to pour out power here every day since I got back, and still,
nothing. Rot boils in my veins, fueled by my rage, but the well of raw
power stays empty.
It just makes me even more infuriated.
I feel exhaustion tugging at me as incessantly as the wrongness of my
separation from her. But I stay fastened to the base of this mountain, failing
over and over again. Because failing is better than giving up. Failing means
I’m still trying.
At least there’s no one around to see it—to see this pathetic attempt to
stop failing. No one else comes here. The timberwings won’t allow it—not
even their preferred handlers or riders. The beasts are far too territorial over
this feed site to tolerate anyone else. The only exception, apparently, is me.
Which is why it’s really fucking stupid when I hear a timberwing land
behind me, and then my brother calls out, “You need to rest.”
I sigh, dropping my hands down to my sides. “You shouldn’t be here.”
The female timberwing past the boulders lets off a guttural warning
growl that vibrates through the air. My brother’s beast lets out a responding
one, both equally bristled. At least Ryatt has the good sense not to
dismount. He doesn’t, however, have the good sense not to irritate me.
“Judging by the
To Annywyn
I feel the first piercings of the swords like a fingertip getting pricked
by a wayward sewing needle. Sharp. Small. Just the very tip biting through
my skin.
So I breathe. A single phrase caught in the exhale, joined with the
sorrow of my heart.
Find me in another life.
Find me in them all.
And then there is no room for words. None for coherent thought,
because the first of those swords sinks in deeper, and pain erases everything
else.
My body braces. My mind empties.
But then…the world erupts.
I don’t understand for a moment. When the ground shakes. When the
screams sound. I can’t grasp that the blades pressed into my body are no
longer firm or sharp. My numbed mind only registers something is off when
they fall away from me.
My eyes snap open to see dust as thick as fog crowding in the air.
Looking down, I see that the swords are no longer gleaming and silver, but
mottled with rust the color of amber stones and tangerines, and then they
suddenly disintegrate completely. I can feel them burst into powder where
they’ve sunk into my body.
And the guards...
I watch the man in front of me as his body morphs. Terrified eyes go
opaque, sinking down into their sockets. His jaw hangs open like his
muscles can no longer hold it. His lips peel, exposing a row of browning
teeth. His veins fester and burst, lesions peeling back up and down his neck.
He tries to grab hold of the pole, but his hands shrivel down to the bone.
When he falls, his body swells and twitches, bloating up
unfathomably large, before everything then seems to suck inward, shrinking
and shriveling until he’s just a husk of bones and dust.
So lets test it
“This is going to change everything,” I breathe. “If I can master this,
then I can touch anything, any hour of the day. I can be casual and
unrestricted. I won’t have to live in the dark anymore.”
In more ways than one.
“Because even if I gild something, I can ungild it.”
A low hum comes from his throat, and he lifts a hand like he’s going
to touch my face, but I rear back, batting his hand away with my elbow.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to grab your face and kiss you.”
My stomach tightens, because that sounds like a very nice reward, but
then my eyes snap to the outside of the cave. “It’s still daylight.”
“But you just proved that you can ungild something if need be.”
He tries to move again, and I leap up out of his lap. “Let’s not get
hasty. That was only my first time.”
Slade gets to his feet, and the look in his eye makes my body go hot
all over.
“You know how to call your gold-touch, and you also know how to
make it retreat now,” he says as he begins to prowl toward me with a
hungry look in his eye.
I lift my hands up in front of me to ward him off. “I only just learned
how to do that three seconds ago!”
He doesn’t reply, just keeps coming for me, and great Divine, the look
on his face. His dark green eyes sweep down my figure like he’s thinking
very dirty thoughts.
“I could still slip up. Now’s not the time to test this, and I definitely
shouldn’t test it on you.”
“You haven’t gilded anything involuntarily since you woke up,” he
points out, still prowling toward me.
I back up, shaking my head. “Let’s just save the kissing for when the
sun goes down. It’ll be like old times. It’s too soon to do this right now.”
Go then I am right behind you
“Stay back,” I call over my shoulder.
I lay Auren down on the cloak, the faintest traces of rotten lines
stretching up the veins in her neck. Her hair is spilled in a halo around her,
somehow gleaming even in the darkness. She looks so small with my cloak
tucked around her, so lifeless.
I kneel over her, immediately focusing as I snap my eyes closed. My
magic is there, clinging to her prone form like a poison. Unnatural decay is
slogging through her veins and withering the heart in her chest. It’s slinking
up her deteriorating throat, barred by her unmoving lips.
Tension rolls through me. Instinctually, I want to yank the magic out
of her as quickly as possible, but I’ve found pulling it out too fast is like
ripping a blade from a wound. I don’t want to do any more damage than
I’ve already done.
Carefully, I call the power back inch by inch so as not to shock her
system. Behind me, I can hear the murmured words of the rest of my Wrath,
uncertain footsteps shifting in the snow, timberwings chuffing at one
another, and thunder from the clouds we just departed signaling a cold front
blowing in.
I shove all of that away and keep my awareness on the magic
coursing through her. Like the roots of a weed, I drag it out as gently as I
can manage. Fingers dig through soil, removing the rotten stasis I buried
her in, letting her body reacclimate. I’m meticulous, lifting each bit of
corrupted patches like drying clay, ridding it piece by cracked piece.
Despite the biting air, sweat beads at my temples. My teeth clench as
I pull the power back to me, back to the recesses carved from my veins to
simmer in my own spoils. I get it all out of her, until there’s just one single
fragment left. One seed left buried in the center of her chest.
Yet when I call to it, try to unearth it from
Reklam
Reklam