“...No.” His voice cracked. “Not nothing. My own, terrified screams. Sometimes, I move outside of myself, and I hear them still...”
She wrapped her arms around him.
“...Now, you’re the only one who knows.”
Inside he was hollow, the emptiness that had overwhelmed him the first time she asked him to reveal himself had opened a crack at the very center of his soul. Now that he had told her, the fissure widened. He was helpless again. He couldn’t even hold her back.
She moved him...somewhere. Because his legs didn’t need his strength any longer. He must be sitting. Was he sitting? He didn’t care.
“They left you,” he heard.
“Yes,” he choked.
“In an instant.”
The words were brutal truth, but the voice who spoke them was soft, almost soothing.
“Grieve, now,” the voice insisted. “It’s time—oh Godric—far past time for you to grieve.”
She sounded as if she were in deep distress. Shemustbe disturbed because she was crying. He felt the wetness on his cheek. But when he would have brushed away the damp, he discovered the tears were his own.
He blinked at his hand.
What?His fingers were moving. Trembling. Then, his shoulders jerked as well. His body would not heed the inner command to be still.
Some horrible sound was ripping from the empty place inside—pried, unwilling, from the deep. A horrible, ugly moan. A sound containing all his loss.
But no. Not all.
Because more terrible sobs followed, each coming faster than the last. They rode him until every part of him felt bruised and broken.
And then, something landed in his lap. Hot, pliant straps wound about his thighs and his shoulders, and he found himself securely bundled against something soft and warm, vibrating with his name.
And that something bound him together as the storm around him roiled.
Godric. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Godric. They loved you. They wouldn’t have left if they’d had a choice. Godric. Godric. Godric.
And then, the words that gave the disembodied voice a name.
“Godric,I love you. You’renotalone anymore. Do you understand? I love you and, and, as much as in my power, I will never leave you again.”
Hera.
The sobs receded, leaving him gasping for air.
“Hera.” He didn’t recognize his own voice.
“Yes,” She pulled back, hands clasping his face. “Did you hear me? Did you understand?”
Hear her.Yes.Yes, he had. She’d said she loved him.
“I’ll tell you what I tell myself,” she said. “You only feel like you’re going to break apart. You won’t. I won’t let you.”
“You left me,” he said stupidly. Plaintively. He could not think of anything else to say.
“Only because I thought...well, I didn’t understand. But I do now. IswearI do.”
Was shestraddlinghim?
