The gravel crunched beneath his feet as he hauled himself out of the busy streets and to a secluded bluff overlooking the valley.
Abruptly, the harsh tugging of what felt like invisible twine constricted around his organs.
His breath caught, and his feet scraped in the gravel as he came to a stop. An excruciating tension hung in his insides. Startled by the pain, he staggered backwards. The pull around his organs released instantly.
“Fuck,” he grunted, massaging his diaphragm.
The binding potion.
Apparently, he’d traveled too far from Cassian’s approved boundary.
Pulse stammering in his skull and throbbing his eyes, he straightened and glared out at the rolling hills of windswept lavender and the souls caressing it. His nostrils flared with a furious urge building inside of him. He wanted to scream, pour magic from his fingertips, inflict some kind of destruction—anything as an outlet to release it.
I need to find Father and get out of here.
He could feel Isla and Eleanor lingering behind him. There were too many words, too many feelings colliding and thrashing in his chest. He raised his hands to the sides of his head and fisted his hair at the scalp.
I miss you.
I hate this.
I love you both.
Come back to me.
Leave this place.
I don’t understand.
He frowned down at the gravel, running his hands over his face. The chilled metal of his rings felt good on his cheeks.
“This is not good enough,” he murmured. “I wish for you both to be full of blood and with beating hearts.”
They both came closer. On one side, Isla took his hand and rested her cheek on the back of his shoulder, and on the other, Eleanor hooked her arm around his and held it tightly.
“We miss you too, Finny,” Eleanor said softly.
As the fight in his muscles subsided, he sank into their embraces, resting his cheek on Isla’s hair and raising a hand to cradle the side of Eleanor’s head.
“Promise us something,” Isla said.
“No.”
“You stubborn fool. It’s been centuries and you still have no manners.” Eleanor gave his arm a firm squeeze.
Finnian cracked a small smile.
“Promise that once you see all your plans through, you’ll find happiness. Slow, quiet happiness.”
Finnian twisted his head to look at Isla, reading the sincerity of her expression.
There was a spot within his heart dedicated to her and Eleanor alone, and since their passing, it felt like a tender bruise, incapable of healing. Looking at them both now, that spot throbbed in deep agony until it became hard to breathe.
After he burned their bodies and released their ashes into their favorite parts of the city, time slowed. Witnessing a new sunrise each day became meaningless. The silence he claimed to always miss when Eleanor filled it with gabble was unbearable. Coming home to find his workbenches messy and cluttered with potion ingredients, rather than clean and organized and Isla nose-deep in one of his grimoires, kept him from entering the space altogether.
There was no remedy for their absence, and he selfishly regretted not turning them into ghouls against their will.
Death was resolute. Once a person floated in its River and onto its Land, that was it. No matter the peace they found in the afterlife, it did not make up for the years it forced Finnian to walk without them at his side.
