“This. You. After all—you are her. I knew you’d get all riled up and angry if I argued with you, taunted you just the littlest bit.” He shook his head, a smile spreading across his face. “And you think I don’t know you.”
I wanted to scream. Because he was right. And because it was exactly like something Rhyan would do. It was exactly like something Rhyan had done on more than one occasion. Arguing with me, teasing, even flirting to keep me present, to keep me from panicking. Spiraling.
He always knew what to say, what to do, how to bring me back from the brink when I’d needed it. But this was different. Because this time Rhyan was on the other side of the brink. And I’d be damned before I let Auriel distract me from what I had to do next. “Let. Me. Go.”
“I believe we’ve already covered this section of the argument, but by all means if we must visit it again in the near future, then go ahead, and let me know. I’ll even give you a head start.” He winked.
I glared in response.
He sighed, making an exasperated sound. “Lyriana, look, I know this is difficult for you, to lose him like this. I do. But you must believe me when I say that nothing that happened last night was your fault. It wasn’t. But it did happen, and it was awful, and traumatizing, and now? You’re not thinking straight.”
“Yes I am!”
“You tried to summon a tsunami!”
“That was right after it happened.”
“Which was hours ago!”
“Oh fuck you. Just stop. Okay? Just stop! I’m not ready for the comfort portion of this. Don’t you see? I don’t even have time to Godsdamned grieve for him—or try to remember him properly! This isn’t over yet. My friends are still in trouble!” Iscreamed. “They’re in danger! And Rhyan … Rhyan is—” The Godsdamned tears were back. “I have to do something about Rhyan.” Find him.
Kill him.
My stomach twisted with fresh pain. I was dangerously close to vomiting again as I realized that the last time I would ever see him, or touch him, it would be as a monster. The last time I would ever put my hands on him would be the first time ever that I wasn’t trying to bring him comfort, or pleasure, or healing. It would be to kill.
I’d seen his red eyes in my dream. I could imagine what an akadim Rhyan would look like. And just like that, with that image burning into my mind, the fight left me again. I stopped struggling.
Slowly, Auriel released my hands, and stepped back. He held his hands up as if in surrender, once more revealing the scars that covered them. Eyeing me warily, he took a slow step back, treating me like I was a wild animal.
I slumped against the Guardian, my eyes closed. The feeling in my heart was splintering. I felt like I’d just gone through every emotion in the world in the last few minutes. Panic. Grief. Anger. Now, I felt like I was on the verge of despair.
“Auriel?” My voice was small, and pathetic.
“Lyriana.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Are you sure he’s akadim?”
“Meka,” Auriel said gently.My soul.“I am. I am sure. His soul … it’s … it’s not here. I promise you. I’d know. I defied so much more than was possible, but even I couldn’t be here now if his soul was. And yet … it didn’t go to the place one would expect.”
“What place? The celestial realms? Heaven?” Or was it just gone? Eaten. Mangled and destroyed by the akadim. Gods. I couldn’t even voice those fears out loud.
“In a sense,” Auriel said. “It’s not quite that. It’s hard to explain in language down here. The mortality I’m cloaked in is making everything more difficult, making me work harder to move, to think. I can’t stop feeling like I’m forgetting something important. Something else. But what you’re asking me, these are … concepts that just don’t exist in this world.”
“Can you try to explain,” I begged. “Please.”
His mouth tightened, but he nodded. “Rhyan’s soul would have met with mine if he’d passed. We share the same origin, history, the same life force. But we don’t share a personality. Not officially. He would have become a part of me in some way, joined me or …returnedto me. He’d remember being me, remember all of the lives he’d lived. But he would still be Rhyan.” He frowned. “Think of your family. Your sisters are your sisters—always. Whether you’re in the same room or not. Nothing changes that.”
There was a sudden pang in my chest. For Morgana. Morgana who’d led the akadim into the capital. Morgana who’d tricked me into stealing the indigo shard. Morgana whose presence stalled me from getting to Rhyan—whose akadim murdered him.
I pushed thoughts of her away and nodded at Auriel, desperate to follow along, to find some glimmer of hope in his words.
“It’s like I’m in another room, and if Rhyan had … had passed traditionally, he would have returned to the room with me.”
“So you’d be in the same place?” I asked.
“Yes. And he would continue on in the next world as Rhyan, albeit in a less-physical form, but he would have gone to his own realm, his own Heaven you might say, to exist as himself—somewhere that would make him happy, someplace where you could be with him, too. Forever. But at any point if he wanted, he could be … absorbed by me. Or by any of our incarnations. Hecould even—if he wished— watch what’s happening here. Watch over you. I’m sure he’d be doing that now if he weren’t—well, where he is. But he’d always be able to return to himself. He’d always be Rhyan. With every incarnation—every lifetime lived—my soul only expands. I simply become more.”
“So you all continue to exist?” I asked. “I’m Asherah. But after I … when I die at the end of this life, I won’t just become Asherah again—unless I want to be? I’ll still be Lyriana?”
