The embers paint him in orange and shadow, catching on the ridges of exposed bone, the curve of his jaw where skin yields to skull. His arm resettles around my waist, and I press my palm flat against his chest—against the open architecture of his ribs, where two strong heartstrings thrum beneath my fingers.
I let my gaze trail their taut lines. “In the forest, when you first showed yourself, one of them was completely severed.”
His hand covers mine, pressing it harder against his chest as if he wants me to feel the vibration down to my marrow. “I think…I think they healed because of you.”
“How?”
A pause, and then, “You know how.”
My heart beats faster, and I look up at him, at those fathomless black hollows that rest on me with undivided attention. “Then let’s return the third. Heal your heart.”
His jaw tightens. The heartstrings seem to shudder, and his thumb traces a slow circle against my hip. A touch meant to soothe, though I’m not sure which of us it’s meant for.
“You know what the third requires,” he says carefully.
“Yes.” I keep my voice steady, casual, as though I’m discussing last night’s supper and not my own slaughter. “My sacrifice and a resurrection.”
He shakes his head. “Elara?—”
“You told me yourself that you have the power. That you can bring someone back.” I lift my hand from his chest and bring it to his face, my thumb tracing the seam where skin gives way to bone along his cheek. “Just do it. I’m not afraid. And whatever pain there might be…it’s brief. I can handle it.”
He closes his eyes. Or whatever that slight narrowing of those hollow sockets is, the deepening of that blackness there. His hand comes up to cradle mine against his face, and he turns his mouth into my palm, pressing a kiss there that quivers.
“You make it sound so simple.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” The word fractures on its way out. His sockets tighten once more, and the black hollows brighten with something I’ve never seen in them before—something sparkling, catching the firelight. “No, it is not simple at all.”
He’s quiet for a long time. His fingers thread through my hair, tucking a strand behind my ear with a tenderness that feels like it’s costing him something vital. When he finally speaks, his voice is so low, I have to lean closer to hear it.
“I have longed for you…” he whispers gently, “longer than I had a name for longing. My own wife. My own companion.” The words settle between us like stones sinking into still water, letting that gold-tinged warmth in my chest rise. “I have likely loved you longer than I realized.”
My forehead shifts against his all on its own, lips straining for teeth and bone. I kiss him, soaking up the connection it holds, how he answers it with no hesitation, no restraint.
“Then let me give you the third string,” I whisper against his mouth before I shift my head back. “Let me…”
Something glistens in the hollow of his left eye socket. A single, impossible trail of light, luminous and slow, tracing down the curve of bare bone like liquid starlight. It catches theember glow and burns gold before disappearing into the shadow beneath his jaw.
“And then what?” His voice cracks like a rock splitting. He takes my wrist and holds my hand against his chest, over the two restored strings. “Say I break the curse. Say I slit your throat and bring you back, and my heart is whole for the first time in a thousand years. Then what, Elara?”
The question hangs between us. I open my mouth, but he presses on, and there’s something building in his voice now—something enormous and barely contained, a grief so old it has its own gravity.
“I am eternal. I do not age. I do not end. The stars will burn out, and I will still be here, walking between worlds, guiding souls to what comes after.” His grip on my wrist tightens, desperately, as if he fears me slipping away. “But you…”
A knot expands in my throat. “I’m mortal.”
“And you will never not be,” he grinds out. “Your hourglass has sand in it, Elara. A finite amount. And when the last grain falls—” His voice breaks. Stops. He swallows hard, and I watch the muscles of his throat work on the side that still has them. “There is nothing I can do. No power I possess, no bargain I can strike. No resurrection that will take the age from your body. When your time comes, it comes, and I will be the one to carry you through, and I will not be able to bring you back.”
The fire pops in the hearth. A log settles, sending a cascade of sparks up the chimney, and in the shifting light his face is a landscape of devastation.
“You’re afraid of losing me,” I say softly.
“No. I amterrifiedof losing you.” He sits up slightly, propping himself on one elbow so he can look down at me, and the raw, stripped-open expression on his face is almost more than I can bear. “Eamon was with me for two years. Two years, Elara, of quiet companionship, and when he died, the grief—” Hepresses his fist against his sternum, against the heartstrings. “It nearly undid me. And he was afriend.A father, perhaps, in the only way I’ve ever understood the word.”
He lowers himself back down and pulls me closer, his forehead pressing against mine. Bone on skin. Cool on warm.
“But you,” he whispers, his breath sawing in uneven waves. “When you die…in twenty years, in thirty, in however many grains of sand remain, I will have three whole heartstrings for the grief to tear apart. For eternity.”
