A stark chill seeps through my bones.
My muscles twitch and tighten, lids growing heavy, and I wilt against his arm like a decaying stem. The flaming torch heads blur until they’re a pretty smear of white, orange, red.
Black.
I drift.
Floating …
Floating …
Weightless, I tumble toward that seeing end, zipping through the inky forest with a swarm of glowing orbs. Again, we whizz past a decrepit castle that sits on the edge of a sheer cliff, and I’m hailed by the sweetest voice riding the wind’s current in lilting notes I want to chase:
A persistent warmth oozes through me …
A deeper, more demanding blackness catches me in a clawed hand and yanks me against the grain. I feel myself falling in the wrong direction, away from that soft, sad song I want to hear the rest of.
Wait …
Wait!
“No.”
I’m ripped into a watery embrace, tethered to an ancient, mighty unknown that electrifies me with icy rage and challenges me to draw breath.
Arctic hands cradle my face, a phantom kiss pressed to my lips that feels like a whisper given shape. Given life and love and a fluttering, thumping, hammering heartbeat.
A whisper for my wrongs. Another for my rights.
A whisper for the words that cut, the lies that struck, and for a love that took more than it had a chance to give.
A whisper for every stone I set amongst that curling wall. Bits of myself I purged to a man who kept everything safe but himself.
A whisper for …
Him.
‘… Rhordyn.’
The rough, whispered thought comes to me like a blow of wind rustling the trees. Like a star shooting through my cold oblivion.
I strain to catch the next, feeling it burst against me. A punch of warmth.
‘… making my heart lurch, like it was trying to leap from my chest to his … his mighty weight upon my body …’
I crush the thought against me—a quenching pocket of air in this inky void—reaching for another.
‘… feel safe … his icy breath pouring upon me …’
‘Don’t cry.’
The last words don’t sound right—too deep and harsh.
They sound like … like …
Me.
Islam into something hard and hostile, my essence compacting down, stretching against the limited space. Too tight. Too—
