Between my lips, I tasted the blood dripping down my face, from my nose and my eyes.I cried out, trying with all my might to hold up the stone that was dropping closer, but the shadows grew wispy and weak.My head was aching, and I was struggling to stay conscious as the rock-filled dungeon blurred before me.
Torgrin was now lying flat to avoid being crushed, and I was weakening by the second.I felt my eyes roll back as convulsions wracked my body.Torgrin was yelling at me, and I tried to decipher his words as my body continued to shut down.
‘Save him and yourself!’
He wanted me to sacrifice him.Does he know what he’s asking me to do?Cillian was still lying helpless and unconscious, unaware that our lives were in peril.I loved them both.I could never choose to let one of them die.It would tear my heart in two.
‘I can’t!’I screamed at Torgrin.
‘Then we will all die!’
‘No!’I moaned.
In desperation, I did something I thought I would never do.I had spent years keeping the door to my Darkness shut, only ever opening it a crack.
‘Help us!’I screamed as I threw open the door that kept my Curse safely contained.
I inhaled desperately as Darkness spread through my failing body.I never imagined it would feel like this.It was like I was being put back together.The Darkness was me.As I allowed the Darkness to put all my broken and jagged parts back together, the truth hit me.Cillian and I would not make it out – but I could save Torgrin.He was the only one close enough to the door, but I needed to givehim more time.I would have to move what shadows I had left to his side, but to do that, I would have to tear my heart in half.
I watched myself from the outside as if I were observing everything playing out in a nightmare.With a sob, I withdrew my weakening shadows above Cillian.His body disappeared under tonnes of falling rock.
‘No!’Torgrin yelled.
I wept bloody tears for my sweet blacksmith with his kind, powerful hands and gentle kisses.What have I done?
Gone.
Gone forever.
I would never see or touch him again.And with that thought, I knew what it meant to want death.To want death to end my pain.
I turned my head to look at Torgrin one last time.The shadows grew stronger above us, holding the stone ceiling up.
‘I can’t open the door,’ he yelled, slamming himself against it.
The ceiling trembled and rocks fell, but the slabs above us remained in place as I focused on the blocked door with all the pain that was ripping through my ruined heart.
A powerful shockwave pushed and twisted the door, opening it enough for Torgrin to drag himself through.
I won’t have to watch him die again.He is safe now.My body, mind and heart are beyond repair, but I’m not afraid.I will be with my blacksmith.
I fell into nothingness.
CHAPTER 38
TORGRIN
‘Fuck, no!’I refused to let Caris join Cillian in the underworld.He was going to have to wait, because I needed her to stay in this wretched world with me.
It took everything I had to dig her body out of the rubble.My fingernails tore, and my knuckles were bleeding when I found her.I dragged her through the door, narrowly escaping the collapsing stone blocks.
I threw myself over her lifeless body and waited for the ceiling in this room to follow.Falling rocks pelted my back, and I groaned at every strike.Mercifully, most of the ceiling held, and none of the stones that fell were big enough to kill us – just big enough to crack a few ribs.
I choked and coughed as stone dust filled the air, and I blinked away the grit in my eyes, searching for signs of life from Caris, who lay motionless beneath me.
Blood covered her eyes and nose, but her chest rose with a shallow breath, and her eyelids fluttered ever so slightly.She had more power inside her than I had imagined, but even a goddess had limits.
Through the small opening in the door we had escaped through, there was only an impenetrable wall of fallen stone.‘Goodbye, my friend,’ I whispered.
