ASHA SILVERSPUN
The echo of my scream fades, and a cold silence settles around me, broken only by the icy breeze.
Erik rests in my arms, his head cradled to my chest, his left hand dragging in the snow beside him as I try to hold him close.
The light is gone from his eyes.
The breath has left his chest.
No longer will he tell me that I am limitless.
No longer can he tell me that he loves me.
A new scream builds within me, a powerless scream filled with rage. “Erik!”
I have nowhere to put my grief.
Nowhere to place my fury.
All I have is this cry that tears across the snow-filled clearing in which I kneel.
The clearing extends for a hundred paces in each direction between a forest of trees on my left, a cabin on my right, and a small forge directly in front of me. The cabin is sheltered beside a massive rock face that extends to the top of a mountain.
Erik brought us here. This place was once his childhood home. Only hours ago, he told me all his stories. He finally spokeabout how we first met and everything he lost to keep me alive: his family, his home, and even his identity.
He told me I was his destiny.
Now, a new cry surges through me, a wail of pain that’s filled with all the darkness in my heart, but instead, the air brightens at the sound.
I’m suddenly aware that my left forearm has brushed the hammer Erik forged for me, and now a burning sapphire light bursts into life around me.
The hammer rests in the snow, its block-shaped head sunk into the icy powder. Its black handle is barely touching me, and yet its power is undeniable.
Mypower is undeniable.
Erik gave his life for this hammer. He poured all of his life-sustaining deep light into the metal so I could finally access my true magic. He emptied himself into the task, draining his own life with every moment of the forging.
He made me a war hammer unlike any Blacksmith hammer before it, and he asked me to take it, claim it, and accept it.
But I don’t want it.
I don’t need it.
I needhim.
I need his ferocity, and his quick mind, and his determination. I need his belief in me and his perseverance. I need his constancy. I need his ability to see all of the moves and countermoves, the threads of possibility, and the plotting and scheming of others.
I need hisneed. I need his fire. I need his heart.
For years, he was the Vandawolf, a beast created in an act of pure malice, whose wolfish mind was in constant turmoil.
Not long enough was he Erik, the man he’d been born to be. The man who loved me but didn’t show me until I healed hisbody with my power, merging the wolf’s mind with his once and for all.
I gave him back his freedom to choose his own path.
A path that led to his death.
My shoulders slump, and my tears drip on his quiet face, droplets sliding across his cheeks as if they were his own.
