Oro shot him a scathing look, but Grim couldfeelthe impatience radiating off the Sunling, similar to his own.
Grim glared back at the Sunling. “As if you don’t also want him to hurry.” He scoffed. “I thought you were supposed to be honest.”
Oro looked away from him. “Please, as quickly as you can,” he said to Azul. The Skyling nodded.
Oro always got to be thehero, just for pretending to be so different from Grim. Grim’s honesty made him a villain, apparently.
Grim turned around, having seen enough of the Sunling lately to last a lifetime. The chill of the incoming storm seeped into his bones. Was this place similar to where Isla was? She got cold easily.
He frowned. Was she cold now?
The fact that he didn’t know was almost worse than the fact that he couldn’t help.I love you, he sent through a bond that he could barely feel any longer.I’m coming for you. He glanced over at the Sunling, who was also frowning at the surrounding mist.We both are.
He said it only because he knew it might make her feel better. To know that they hadn’t killed each other yet.
Though he desperately wanted to.
Oro and Azul were facing different directions, walking purposefully, as if toward something. Grim shifted impatiently. He wanted to leave. He wanted to get the information they needed and go to her.
His fingers curled and uncurled. He tried to breathe, to settle his panic. It didn’t work. No, she was the only person who could anchor him. The only person worth anchoringfor. His mind was constantly racing, preparing for any contingency, stuck in the future, but she always managed to pull him down into the present. Because that was where she lived. And he wanted to be wherever she was.
She wasn’t here, so he closed his eyes to sift through his memories of her. That was the closest he got to seeing his wife, so every moment he wasn’t looking for ways to find her, he was reliving the past.
In the middle of reliving one of his favorite moments, he felt the air shift. He noticed a spot of near emptiness in the heaviness of the fog. He recognized the aura around it immediately. A near-hollow, near-colorless one that he hadn’t come across in centuries.
Grim sighed as he opened his eyes. “Hello, father,” he said.
Begrudgingly, he turned around, and there he was—his father, former ruler of Nightshade. His face looked as hollow as the last time Grim had seen him, but his being seemed as impermanent as a wisp of smoke. He was just a shred of putrid soul trapped in this cursed place.
He peered at Grim and all he said was, “Did you do it?”
Grim didn’t have time for this. He looked around and spotted Oro and Azul wandering in the fog. “Do what?” Grim asked, impatiently.
“Claim it.”
His teeth ground together. He remembered their final conversation. He knew exactly what his father was referring to. Infinite.
“Yes,” Grim said.
“Good.” His father’s aura shifted. For the first time in his long life, Grim felt a prickling of pride from his father.
And that bitterness Grim had buried away after meeting Isla, that hatred for his father, rose now. Part of him wanted to tell his father that hehadclaimed Infinite, but for a reason his father would have considered all wrong.
It would have angered his father to know that Grim claimed the diamond only to give it to hiswife. It would have haunted his father for eternity. It would have been suitable revenge for the pain he had inflicted on Grim.
But Grim simply couldn’t muster the energy to care anymore. His rage toward his father...crested. Fell away. What was once as strong as a riptide faded to just still waters. This past hatred felt meaningless, when his life now had meaning.Shewas his new family. She was his joy, and the life he had created with her had smeared away all the bad that came before her.
That was what she did—she didn’t make the darkness go away...she outshined it with her light.
He didn’t want to tell his father any of it. He didn’t even want his father to know his wife’s name.
He would leave him in the past, where he belonged.
His father reached toward him as if to press a hand upon his shoulder. But before he could...he disappeared.
His aura was gone completely from this place. It was like part of his soul had remained, in need of this last assurance. To see Grim’s fate fulfilled.
He turned, irritated once again. They had already been here for too long. He opened his mouth, to tell the others it was time to go.
