For the witch alone, I don’t.
“How dare you inquire about what Ifeel.” He spits the word in my face. “You never cared before, when you took away my mortality over a goddess I didn’t even want. So how fucking dare you act as though my feelings matter now.” He leans in to place pressure on the blade. “All you need to know is that the prince—Elias if you’re telling the truth—didn’t ask for this. I know he wasn’t always this way. You gods are aninfection, Thamaos especially, and there are some people I refuse to let any of you claim. Including Nephele. You might have her trapped in a deal but know that I will find a way to save her from you, you pathetic virus.”
I tilt my head, unable to stop the smirk that forms on my face. “One, your little knife isn’t going to do a godsdamn thing to me, and you well know it. Two, you seem a bit… torn. Like you can’t decide which lover to protect. But I can help you with that. Because three, Nephele Bloodgood is safer with me than anyone else on this broken continent.” I lean in against the blade. “However, lastly, you need to understand that you may be too late to save your soul-sucking prince. You realize that, yes?”
“Maybe.” He jerks his blade across my throat, a pointless effort. When nothing happens, he says, “But I have to try.”
A commotion sounds behind me. I turn to find the man and woman from earlier standing at the end of the alley along with two sword-wielding constables clad in bronze leathers. Their eyes are wide as plates.
Moeshka pushes past me, ice dagger in hand, and flares his arms out at his sides as though protecting me, which is laughable. He glances back, one eyebrow raised. “Now would be a good opportunity to vanish, mongrel. Time for me to get captured.”
I shake my head at his histrionics, already silently calling upon a cold wind and the aether of the gods that blessedly still remains in this realm to come and carry me back to the Summerlands.
The last thing I hear as I swirl into a dusting of snow and ice are footfalls splashing through the mud, and Colden Moeshka’s taunting voice as he laughs and says, “Well, hello motherfuckers. Let’s dance.”
* * *
“He’s in Quezira,isn’t he?”
The witch sits at the base of my memoriam tree, huddled beneath the king’s jacket. She shivers in the mount’s dull, gray light and stares straight ahead where the sunrise touches the golden desert lands, stretching beyond the cliff to the distant sea. I sit beside her, noting how hoarse her voice has become from the fading smoke.
“Yes, he is. He told me he’d try to be ready when I return. It seems your king has taken a fancy to Elias Gherahn.” She exhales a slow and shuddering breath, but the news doesn’t land with the expected impact. “You already knew.”
“I pieced it together moments after you left.” Ice-blue eyes glistening, she looks at me with a pained and bitter expression. “You could’ve taken him to Winterhold, regardless of what he asked of you.”
“You wished me to obeyyourdesires for his fate abovehis own?” Her glare softens, and the sorrow and worry on her face morph into simple sadness. “I doubt I’ll ever agree with anything Moeshka does,” I tell her. “But this is why I let your sister have her revenge last night. Your loved one’s choices are theirs to make, at least until you have complete command of me. Even then, you don’t seem the type of woman to take away the free will of your fellow humankind, let alone those closest to you. From a god, perhaps,” I say with a lighter tone. “But not your people. No matter what you see as wrong or right.”
A teardrop swells on the rim of her eyelid. I can feel the turmoil inside her as she sweeps her gaze back over the desert.
Unable to fight it, a tear tumbles down her cheek. “You could have prevented all of this, though. If you’d shielded Raina when I asked you to.”
“She would have eventually found out. Would her pain have been any less if delayed? Her enemy would be free, and she would be driven by the need for vengeance. It would’ve devoured her. Denying her revenge would’ve only blackened her soul and postponed her rage.”
“Perhaps,” she replies, and another tear falls. “I only wanted to keep us together and safe. I’ve lost enough. Raina and Colden and Alexus mean so much to me. I can’t lose what family I have left.”
She’s never spoken so openly to me. Save for her plea for her sister just hours ago, we’ve shared nothing but teasing, vitriol, and threats. Something about such honesty makes me want to ease her.
For a split second, I think to deliver Moeshka’s message as a balm, to brush away the tear stain from her face and slip my palm over the pale hand clenching the garnet fabric of her dress. In this form, I might touch her, but just like Moeshka’s blade, I can’t truly feel her. Not the warmth of blood or the pulse of life in her veins. Not the softness or the cold of her skin. Not the fragile nature of her human form or the surprising strength in her sure grasp. Only pressure. An awareness of solidity. Nothing more.
Still, a need to comfort her stirs, but the moment I lift my hand, she unfurls her grip from her soot-covered gown, scrubs at her tears, and stands.
“Can we get this over with now?”
This.My resurrection. My return. After three unbearably long centuries trapped inside Un Drallag, watching the ebb and flow of time from the darkness of his immortal prison, my time to live again has arrived.
The thought sends a trickle of excitement through my soul, a thrill chased by the glimmer of something foreign to me.Fear. That this might go wrong, or nothing will change, and I’ll be doomed to roam this land as an unfeeling spirit for eternity, little better than a stinking wraith. There could be consequences. History says as much, though history is often the boldest liar.
“I must teach you the ritual song first. We’ve no parchment for you to study, so I hope you have a good memory and find my voice pleasant to the ear.”
She arches a sharp, sarcastic brow, any vulnerability that leaked from her before now tightly tucked away. “Don’t tell me you’re going to sing to me.”
“Of course I am. Over and over, until you know the words by heart.”
Arms crossed around her middle, she rolls her head and groans as though this is the worst day of her life. Maybe it is. A part of me worries about what this deal means for her and her future, how this resurrection will change everything about life as she’s known it and render me a permanent fixture in her world. But I’ve come too far now to give up this chance. Haven’t I?
She sits back down, carefully covering her legs with the length of her dress. “Well, go on. This ends today.”
I push aside any thoughts of guilt and close my eyes. Though this somehow feels like a dream, I begin the first refrain.Morentha tu morai… Rise my divine immortal…
