It seemed like an eternity of praying to Skalki before the clouds slowly drifted apart and shafts of pure moonlight shone through their roiling mass.
I held Nelle in my arms as moon rays, soft and eerie, bathed her figure and made the beads of cold sweat that goose-fleshed her skin sparkle. At first contact, a weary sigh scraped its way from her throat along with a wracking cough that rattled her body. Her muscles tensed, and then with a slow intake of breath, she relaxed and curved into me.
Over the course of the night, I held her as she shivered. The sound of her struggling for breath, with its cruel rasping edge, had bands of iron tightening my ribs and desperation choking my thoughts.
But I was thinking deeply about what Sirro had told me after we’d left his solar. The way the Horned God had looked at me, and how he’d said it.
We all have to make choices. Some divide us right down the middle, cleave us in two. We have to pick one side or the other. Make one choice over another.
I wondered if he hadn’t been talking so much about me but about himself. It made little sense, but I tucked it away to think about later. Because what Mela had said down in the catacombs beneath Ascendria was a bell tolling loud inside my mind with every beat of my stumbling heart.
Don’t choose.
I had to use one to save the other.
I had to sacrifice one so the other could live.
But what if Mela was right and I didn’t choose? What if I could save them both?
There was no alternative to not usingNelle to save my mother. But only up to a point. There would be a way out of this for Nelle, and I was going to find it for her.
Nelle turned over, angling her cheek to rest in the space between my shoulder and neck, and the tip of her cold nose nudged into my throat. She breathed me in while creeping an arm higher along my upper chest until her palm curled around my neck.
It wasn’t me. It was what I was to her—a tamer—why she sought my comfort, what soothed her.
Nelle deserved freedom.
But she also had a big heart, and I knew if it was me who freed her, even if it was the bindings between us, a bond that would influence her, she’d forgive me.
I wasn’t worthy of forgiveness. I didn’t deserve a girl of fire. She deserved a life where she could soar wherever she wished.
As resolve seeped into me, a peacefulness settled like a mantle around my shoulder, not oppressive but freeing.
I’d free my little bird.
Somehow.
I had no fucking idea how I was going to go about unshackling those chains, and that was something to sort through if she survived the night.
As the hours ticked by and the sun slowly rose, gentle light stretched across the horizon and lit her in a halo of gold, and the shivering eased. When she dragged in her first healthy-sounding breath and let out a soft, contented hum, the tension in my chest broke and I exhaled hard.
My hands tightened around her middle, now warm with heat. I knew I was going to have to let her go, open the door to her cage and allow her to fly free.
As soon as we could save my mother.
And that’s why someone like me never deserved a girl like her.
12
Nelle
Heat soaked into my flesh, and a velvety softness cradled my limbs. Each breath carried a whisper of cedar that soothed my lungs. A breeze brushed across my cheekbones, lifting strands of hair that tickled my nose until I pushed them away with a sleepy huff. Suspended in that hazy place between dreaming and waking, awareness rose slowly. I sighed in contentment, curling my arm beneath something comforting, wishing to sleep longer.
Languid.
Content.
I was dimly aware that the light behind my eyelids had changed. It couldn’t be the soft glow of the recessed fixtures in my bedroom ceiling, it was far too sharp.
