One of the guards slowly stood, leveraging his body upright and staggering toward Elric. He only had to shove the man aside for it to stumble, for this wasn’t a person anymore. There was nothing inside of that body at all.
“Someone is taking your souls and using them for power,” he said, more to himself than to the man. “But the question is, what are they doing with all that power?”
It was a question that would have bothered him for long moments if he hadn’t smelled something burning. Running down the hallway now, he skidded around a corner and saw the smoke billowing from underneath one of the many closed doors.
“Jessamine?” he shouted, running to the door and throwing it open.
And there she was. Slumped against the wall, staring at the floor with her head lolling to the side. It was a room full of burning paintings, and he could only just glimpse the portraits screaming in pain. She had protected herself. She’d cast magic like nothing he’d seen her use before, and all without touching him.
“There you are, nightmare,” he breathed, falling onto his knees beside her. He cupped her shoulders, holding on to her for dear life, just to remind himself that she was alive. “Jessamine, look at me.”
Please don’t let her be gone, he thought. He knew, realistically, it couldn’t. The spell was using up people’s souls and taking them somewhere. And Elric had her soul safely tucked away.
But then she looked up at him, and he knew something was very wrong. Those bloodshot dark eyes were filled with sorrow and fear. And something tinged with anger, although that flashed only briefly.
“Were you going to tell me?” she asked.
He was lost. “I don’t… What are you talking about, Jessamine?”
“Were you going to tell me that you had taken my soul?”
All the air was ripped from his lungs. He didn’t know how to speak, let alone what to say. She wasn’t supposed to find out. She wasn’t supposed to know what he had done.
The choice he had made was entirely selfish, even if it had saved her now. Keeping her soul wasn’t right. He shouldn’t have taken it from her in the first place, and he certainly should have told her that he’d done so. He was a monster. He was the terrible creature who had stolen from her without consent, and he knew what that felt like. But he hadn’t said anything because he had known that once this conversation happened, she would hate him for it.
“No,” he answered truthfully. “I don’t think I would have told you.”
“That’s what I thought.” She braced her hand against the wall, shaking him off when he tried to help her stand. “I suppose I should not have expected more from a god who doesn’t understand what it means to have a soul.”
He didn’t, but the words still stung. “Jessamine, let me help you.”
“I can do it myself.”
She could, but it would make him feel better to know that at least she would accept his help. It would feel better to do something other than stand here with his arms at his sides, watching the woman he loved tremble where she stood.
He couldn’t breathe. Because he loved her. He’d never really said it to himself, just that he loved parts of her. Pieces that had always captivated him, and he’d told himself that he loved those parts. Only now, he had the epiphany that he loved her. All of her. Every piece, every struggling bit, every dark edge that was sharper than a blade. He loved her.
And she was walking away from him.
He wanted to scream it at her. To shout at any person who would listen that he was not as broken as he feared, because his heart beat for her and no one else. But he had made the mistake of stealing from her, and a soul was precious.
He could fix this. He had to. Because without her, there was no life any longer. It was just gray madness without the taste of her on his tongue and the scent of her in his lungs.
“Nightmare,” he said, and hope bloomed when she turned to look at him. “I did it for you.”
Those haunted eyes seemed empty. “I know you did, Elric.”
“Did I break us?”
“I don’t know.”
She turned away from him and started down the hall. But he had hope now. Hope that he clung to desperately as he followed her toward the stairwell. Because now that he had her, now that he realized how deeply he felt, he couldn’t let her go.
Jessamine staggered through the halls, turning the correct way to go to the main stairwell and then pausing at the top of it. He joined her, and together they looked down at the crowd of infected who milled around where there had been all the rich and famous only moments before.
Her expression was lax and her words far too emotionless when she said, “So they’re all dead, then.”
“I don’t know if we could call them dead, but…” A flashing memory of the woman dying against his shoulder burned through him. “But I think they are gone. Yes.”
