Before my next heartbeat, the air rushed from my lungs in a desperate, raggedwhoosh. Next came exploding pain.
Then darkness swallowed me entirely.
Chapter 38
Isca
Dust motes hung in the dim light as I opened my eyes. My limbs felt leaden, and I ached all over. It wasn’t until my hand brushed something warm and solid across my waist that true awareness began to return.
Emrys. The name surfaced sluggishly in the fog of my confusion.
I was half-lying on a stone floor, air so damp with cold that I was shaking, a jagged stone pressing painfully into my side . His arms were still curled around me. He’d shielded me from the impact of the fall.
Gods, Emrys. I immediately rolled off him.
His face was slack. Blood soaked his hair, trickling down onto the stone below. My trembling fingers found his throat. Faint but steady, life still beat within him. Relief flooded me as I struggled to push myself up.
I looked around. We were trapped.
The magic in this strange structure we’d fallen into felt ancient, like the stones of Caervorn keep, yet imbued with a different type of energy. The pit was circular, maybe twenty feet across, hemmed in by crumbling walls of rock. Here and there, I could make out the shape of writing, like broken runes etched into stone.
We’d landed in what looked like one end of the tunnel, which had now collapsed inwards. The eerie, magic-soaked silence of this underground cavern was broken only by the drip, drip, drip of water and Emrys’s shallow breathing. Far above, the shaft we’d fallen through was nearly closed off.
Beams of fractured sunlight trickled in weakly through rubble and roots, barely enough to outline the time-worn stone columns bracing everything above us.
Tir Darreth must’ve been built on the ruins of an ancient structure.
It was far enough overhead that I doubted I could scramble to the top without falling or killing both of us in a collapse.Wanting to do what I could to get us out of this situation, I repeatedly threw my weak telekinesis at the stone above, shoving with more will than strength. A bit of dirt shifted, but nothing significant budged. Giving up, I settled beside him once again.
Something about looking directly into the daylight stirred my magic. Sluggishly at first, then violently alert, I sensed it shift within my chest. It reached out for Emrys, unbidden—like it always seemed to.
I wished it hadn’t. When my magic reached him, the feedback hit the damp stale air between us like a thunderclap. Though the chamber remained unchanged, it felt as if the ceiling had collapsed on my head. But no debris fell.
It was the invisible weight of his agony. Emrys’s inner storm crashing down on me like a tidal wave.
It dragged me down into his curse’s depths before I could gasp for air. His physical pain hit me first. Then his grief—a fist slowly clenching around my heart. Finally the fury, wild and roiling like a beast pacing in a cage. Yet beneath it all, there was a sorrow so deep it threatened to unmake me.
The entire time, his soul thrashed, shrieking in a silence created by the curse that was so loud it eclipsed everything else.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t get enough air through the torment.
How could he hold himself together enough to pretend at humanity through this? My hands shook and my mouth went dry. I stumbled backward from my crouch, falling on my backside onto the mud-caked stones beneath us.
How did he go on living like this? Even experiencing his suffering secondhand wasexcruciating.
No wonder he locked himself inside his room. No wonder he tried to push me away. Hiding this from me could be called a kindness, a small mercy he could show, sparing me the pain of it all.
The fact that he hadn’t self-destructed was a miracle in itself. I didn’t think I was capable of the quiet triumph he showed against the darkness he battled day and night.
Emrys was undeniably the strongest person I’d ever known. In so many ways.
Despite my admiration, I wanted to hide from the onslaught. From him. But my magic wouldn’t let me. It forced me to sit with his suffering, to understand it. All I could do was brace myself against his pain for a long while—how long, I couldn’t possibly know.
I forced myself to bear it. If he wouldn’t allow me a chance to get used to his curse, I would do it while he had no say in the matter.
Little by little, my heart adjusted and my breathing steadied. The agony was unrelenting, a dull ache that resonated deep within my bones, but I finally began to understand it. Beyond that, I started to see his stubbornness, protectiveness, loyalty—all twisted by fear that he might hurt those around him.
Eventually, I crawled back to him and placed my hand gently on his chest. I wanted to weep for him, but the weight of it was still too much to breathe through. The only thing I could manage was wiping at the blood on his brow with the hem of my dress.
