I could tell that the hearth was to my right; I could feel its warmth creeping in on me. Yet my skin, my bones, they remained gelid.
I tried to reach for him but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even twitch.
I kept falling.
The voices echoed, mumbled. They talked over each other.
“Get out! Everyonegetthefuckout!”
Footsteps ebbed. Then silence. Then sound-barrier kind of silence.
“Cordelia.” I stopped falling. And it seemed it was always about the way he said my name. “Please wake up.”
I remained there in the endless darkness, hovering, unable to obey his plea.
His power pulsed within me. Always so ethereal, always so willing. It mended my bones. Caressed my lungs and my heart—wishing them to breathe, to beat.
“Please don’t leave me,” he whispered, just as I had once begged of him. He clutched my shoulders, shaking my limp body. “Don’t go all Lady Stonehead on me, please, wake up!”
“I’m sorry,” he choked. “I’m so, so sorry. But please believe me, I didn’t choose her. I choose you. Only you. Always you. Please wake up.”
With the gentlest touch, I felt my body turn bare, then it was covered with something heavy and warm, his powers never leaving my body—they intensified, reaching down to my very core.
I remained hovering, and despite the warmth that cocooned me, I felt completely and helplessly frostbitten.
“It was all a ruse, a bargain between Princess Maryam and me. It was my only way to secure the alliance. I once told you that I’d rather the whole world burned in your stead and I meant it. But I got selfish, I wanted it to remain unburned. I wanted it unburned so that I could live in it, with you. I came so very close to losing you once, I couldn’t risk getting that close to losing you ever again and—and here I fucking am! I’m a fool!”
I could tell that he was furiously broken. I knew exactly what that felt like.
“I’m sorry it didn’t go as I had planned. I waited for you, to tell you about it, and to make you a promise that I was only yours. Please! I need my life back, please.”
He sobbed then.
I tried so hard to reach up to him but I couldn’t move…it felt as if I was slipping—as if death was near.
“Please.” His hands cupped my face, his powers coursing off his fingers with the lightest caress. I felt his lips brush against mine, his breath ragged as he wept. His tears fell into my mouth, their salt dissolving along my gums, my tongue. I swore I tasted truth in them.
“Please, Cordelia, my heart is yours; it has always been yours. And that day—that day I found you behind my bed, scared and hurt. That day, my soul knew it belonged to you.”
My own stirred. I willed myself to reach up. I willed myself to wake.
“My soulbound!” His voice wavered in pain, yet he claimed it with such pride, its sweet hymn wound its way through my skin, through my bones, through my soul.
And then I soared, my own fall urging me to wake.
My eyes sprang open.
Breathe.
My lungs filled with the deepest breath, but then the whole of me was stunned as I met and held his unwavering stare. There was such depth in his forest eyes—a meadow of green terrain. They widened as they stared back into my own.
The Seer’s song ripped through me, now spoken in the voice of another woman. A different woman. Dark, wise, and bound.
By the power of the lune and the main,
Nothing but the second shall remain,
All else hidden never to unveil,
