I want to argue further, saying that she lost the right to speak to me like that when she left me behind with a heartbroken father knowing full well that he would be dead before the winter was over, leaving me as essentially an orphan.
She jabs a finger to the mark on my arm. “This represents the bond between you and Marcello now. This bond is the only reason that you are still alive. Your curse has been countered by his immortality. Through him you are a little immortal, and he is a little cursed, but as you can see by this marking there is no balance in your relationship.”
I look down to where the single weight is so much higher than the other.
“So, while you are living longer than the curse would permit, you are still dying.” The Werma pushes to her feet, dusting off her skirts. “You have stalled it perhaps a day, perhaps three, maybe even a year, but sooner or later the cursewillclaim you.”
“What is the point of even going through with this if all I’m doing is postponing my death?” I demand, also lurching to my feet.
“What do any of us do but postpone our own deaths?” The Werma shakes her head with a click of her tongue. “No, what this has done is buy you time.”
“Time to do what? Say my final farewells?” Even if I live a year, it is not very much time to do much of anything, not when death awaits eagerly on the other side.
“Time to bring balance to your relationship.” The Werma’s fingers grace my wrist, her fingers digging into both ends of the scales. She pulls at my skin as if trying to bring the scales into balance herself. I hiss slightly and jerk my hand away. “Which you do so by making your husband fall in love with you, and you coming to love him in return.”
“Save me your talk oftrue love,” I reply with a snort.
“It’s a true substance, something that even the chaos of magic will recognize.”
Yet my mother left the man who was supposedly her true love instead of warning him of his imminent demise and trying to change fate, she accepted it all and left us both.
“There must be another way,” I say with a sharp shake of my head.
The Werma’s face is stony, but I see something flick in her eyes.
I jab a finger toward her. “There is, do not lie to me. I know there is.”
She exhales a drawn-out breath. “There is always another way, but not one so simple as learning to love your husband.”
I fold my arms. “What is it?”
She shakes her head. “Ach, but you have always been a stubborn girl. Very well, if you must know, magic, this curse, the Imperial’s immortality, it all only exists for a single reason. That being because there is no natural order.”
“I know, I know because of the god’s death anything is possible,” I say.
“So… if there were a god none of this would be possible.”
“But the gods are dead.” I reach up to pinch the bridge of my nose. We aren’t getting anywhere here.
“You’d have to change that.”
“How exactly do you suggest I do that?”
“Resurrection, my girl. You embrace the impossible and raise the dead… and through that vanquish the very impossible you utilize.” The Werma smiles, the shadows on her face making it look grotesque. The Werma waves the root through the air. “And that’s why I suggest that if you want to live that you make tonight a memorable one. Because your only other option is to raise a god.”
Chapter Fourteen
That First Night
Iconsiderstayingoutside,hopping on the back of my dragon, and riding away into the night. But I suppose the part of me that isn’t quite ready to die forces me to follow the Werma inside.
Marcello is sitting on the raised hearth around the fireplace with Tira beside him. She’s talking animatedly. “And then she came out sporting this rock, at least I thought that it was a rock at first, but then dragons hatched out of it and Laduga was the one laughing instead of us….” Tira trails off as we both step into the house.
Marcello is smiling slightly as he looks over at us. His eyes move over me, a question in his gaze as if he is trying to answer a difficult question. Well, if he is hoping to puzzle me out then he will be sorely disappointed.
I don’t even understand myself most of the time.
The Werma slaps the root on her table. “Get your cloak, girl.”
