Everything is so far away, everything but the voice. It is forever, but only a moment as the assassin brings his blade toward my neck.
Truths older than the universe ring through the words, the power of them curling inside me. The part of myself I have always tried to smother, the incurable wildness given form, given life.
You need only open yourself, Mirren.
I know it to be true, but I am so tired. Wouldn’t it be easier to just give in? I’ve gripped the shattered pieces of my heart for so long, desperate to keep them from disintegrating. Wouldn’t it be easier to let them go? Let them float away in the Darkness?
Easier, yes.
My soul is relieved at the thought. I can let go of the fear of failure and the pain of abandonment. Let go of the whispers that twist my dark heart. I can be at peace if I choose.
“MIRREN!”
Even through the mist, I can taste the bitterness of Shaw’s terror. I feel his panic as my own, as if he lives beneath my skin.
He cannot watch you die.
My own voice now. Whatever Shaw has done, he doesn’t deserve this. He will blame himself and give the last pieces of his soul to the Darkness.
He is here and I am here, you are not alone. But you need only yourself to be saved.
I have been fighting against my own power all my life, refusing to claim it for what it was, to wield its strength. No more.
Living is infinitely harder, but I have the strength for it. I open myself up, allowing the voice to bloom within me. It grows and grows, a soft ripple turned to a crashing tidal wave. It washes through me, filling every crevice with its cool, powerful touch. It laps at my fingertips and crests across my chest. It beats through my heart like a lifeline and fills my lungs until it’s the only thing I breathe. I am consumed, swallowed by it, yet a part of it all at once.
When I am drowning in its depths, when it thrums through my veins and my heart and my very soul, I let it all go.
* * *
Shaw
I’m halfway to the training site when the abyss inside me flares, an ember proliferated into an all-consuming wildfire. It rages, burning inside my bones and consuming my heart until I’m forced to stop, clutching at my chest, and gasping for air.
I’ve never felt anything like it, but I don’t stop to examine it. Mirren is not at the training site. I know it invariably, somewhere deep, and untouched.
Move, Shaw. Move.
I change directions, racing toward the cliff pond. As if fueled by fire itself, I whip across the moor fast as lightning. Trees and outbuildings blur in my peripheral as I plunge into the moist jungle and down the cliff path.
I allow myself a heartened moment. I don’t know why Mirren chose to go back to the place our lips touched for the first time, a place entrenched with my touch and my betrayal, but I pray she uses it. Uses whatever anger lingers in memory to bolster her will to survive. I pray she remembers my eyes when I gazed at her and knows their silent promise to always come for her. To never leave her alone.
Faster.
A scream rends straight through the night and into my heart. My lungs burn with exertion, but I don’t slow. I force them to keep expanding, to fly faster through the trees. Over branches and roots, with eyes for nothing but the darkness in front of me. The world suspends around me, as if the entire universe collectively holds its breath with me, until the moment the pond grove comes into view.
As if I’ve willed its existence into being, the trees of the forest open up, and the willows come into view. The pond sparkles under the night stars, the water cool and calm against the black granite cliff.
But there is no time for relief.
Terror pierces through me, sharp and sour. Mirren is prostrate on the ground, blood pooling around her. The assassin flips her over, lingering above her, Mirren’s dagger in his hand. The dagger I gifted her, meant to protect, now poised to take her life.
“Mirren!” I shout, desperation lacing her name. My father would be ashamed of the way my emotions run unchecked, swirling around me like a suffocating shroud. But the sight of Mirren, prone and vulnerable and seconds away from death, has robbed me of all thought. Only the fire remains.
The assassin raises the dagger andoh gods,I’m too far. “Mirren!”Fight. Don’t leave me like this.
I want to scream it, but words don’t come. I push further, harder. My body strains and my breath wheezes and still, I run. But it won’t be enough. The assassin doesn’t hesitate at the sound of my voice. His movements are smooth and efficient, reminiscent of my own.
“MIRREN!”
