But I just chuckle, stretching my stiff limbs. “A valiant effort, but I’m not going to break down sobbing because I don’t get to stick my face in your chest.”
Dorian raises his hand from where he’s seated beside us. “I might. Not worth the risk really, so,” he trails off suggestively and waggles his eyebrows.
Cambria situates herself on his lap, smiling as he wraps his arms around her waist and rests his chin on her shoulder. “So all those claims of angels weeping at my beauty were bullshit.” She dramatically sighs, feigning being put out. “Then I’m out of ideas. Want us to call you mean names?”
Rolling my eyes, I glance around, scanning our surroundings to make sure no one else is in the wasteland. From our perch atop the mountain, it’d be damn near impossible for someone to get the drop on us, especially with the noise that would come from scaling the unstable rock, but I don’t want to let our guard down. After all, there are fae that can fly. Hell, Elorie can teleport people besides herself, I’m just not sure of the range. We’re also not sure what creatures besides scorpions are hiding in the crevices and caves surrounding us.
“You’re the worst playground bully I’ve ever met.”
She tosses hands up with her overly dramatic shrug. “I’m delightful, what can I say?”
As ridiculous and flippant as she’s trying to come off, it’s easy to see through the act. Without any food up here, she can still feed off of adoration to keep her strength up. If the rest of us continue to get weaker, at least she’ll have a little bit of energy stored up to take point if something happens, to try and protect us however she can.
“Charmingandwitty. How did we get so lucky?”
She winks, silently mouthing her thanks and snuggling closer into Dorian as we brainstorm. Lucien rolls his shoulders, working out the stiff kinks that we’re all getting from sitting around up here with nothing to do but stress and think.
“Cambria, you’re better at this than we are. Think you can manage it?” he asks and she closes her eyes, contemplating.
“An hour ago I’d have said no, but now that the ring is pulling in energy, the earth is starting to breathe, for lack of a better word. I can give it a go, but something tells me it’s going to piss them off that I’m stealing the energy they just worked so hard to get back.” Her eyes remain shut, mentally feeling out the invisible energy that I’m barely beginning to understand.
Feeling like a complete idiot, I give it a shot too. All of them are trying so hard to keep it together while I’ve let myself become an angry mess, making things harder than they already were because I was having trouble coping. And she’s looking to me for help with this. Not Lucien. Not Dorian. Me.
So though everything inside of me balks at the ideas, I try to blank my mind, to connect to that force that binds everything in our lives together. I raged against that connection, wanted no part of it. But whether I want to be or not, I am. From the first second I laid eyes on Cambria, my path was irrevocably changed. I became a part of this world long before the brand was seared into my skin. I didn’t need that tether to bind me to her, it just shoved me past my reservations when I was too blind to know that this is where I’m meant to be.
When I created the other rings, it was a blinding shockwave of desperation and rage exploding out of me. All of that energy, it came directly from me. But now, I try to shut all of that off, to feel the thrum of power beneath my feet instead. Focusing on the way she described it, I try to imagine the ashen earth as something more, something that’s alive, but just barely.
It’s faint, and unless I was searching for it, I’d never notice, but I don’t think she could have described it any better. The energy lurches abruptly, like someone’s drawing in a small, gasping breath.
Bending down, I run my fingers through the ash until grass blades tickle my palms. A small pulse, like a struggling heartbeat, meets my hand. It could very well be my own and I’m just projecting a ridiculous fantasy, but I shove that doubt away. I embody the feeling of standing on top of a mountain and looking down at the world, the sensation of my feet covered in sand as waves lap at my ankles; everything that makes the world seem so impossibly vast and small at the same time.
I let the irrational fear that I’m inconsequential and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things see the light of day. That every bit of pain I’ve been through was meaningless, that the sun will continue to rise and fall long after I’m gone as if I’ve never existed at all. An impossible yearning for more that leaves me aching, that void that I’m always trying to fill by chasing the feeling of being alive before I’m out of time.
And just once, in a moment we’ll never speak of again, I let a single tear fall to the ground beside my scarred hand. A tiny offering to a dying world, so that a piece of myself will live on even in death.
The energy beneath my palm seems to pulsate, blending with that of the ring the changelings created, infusing the earth and coaxing it back to life. As I open my eyes, I find myself on the inside of the ring with the others. The two fairy rings merged into a singular, massive one, encapsulating everything important in my life; even the changelings, dead silent and staring at me like they’re truly looking for the first time. They’ve seen me, sure, but this...this is deeper than that.
These are the pitying stares of creatures that understand a feeling that can’t be put into words, that see something that the majority of the world will never understand. The looks of creatures that realize the pain that stems from being perpetually alone while surrounded by a sea of people.
Turning to the others, I waver on my feet. Drained, but far less so than my previous attempts left me. “You’re up, Dorian.”
