Oh, fuck. He’s going back. Back to Goira, and I’ll never see him again. Now I’m catastrophizing and…
“Stop,” he chuckles, kissing my forehead. “I can see the scenarios dancing in your brain and they’re all terrible.”
“Shut up.” I pout. I want to stick my tongue out at him, but if I do that, we’ll probably end up back in bed and there are things we need to get done today. Probably. Maybe.
He pulls back slightly, bringing his hands up to tuck my hair behind my ears, as he stares into my eyes.
“If I shut up, how am I going to tell you that I love you?” he wonders.
In an instance, it feels like my heart drops to my knees then bounces back up to my chest.
“I love your kindness and your heart. I love your dedication and your stubbornness. I love your coffee addiction and the way you snore, even though you say you don’t. I love watching you with Calida and Bits and Annemarie. I love your fierceness and your resilience. I love you, Casie. I loved you before I had a name for it and I’ll love you long after you remember.”
“I love you, Flint.” My voice wavers, thick with the tears in my throat. “I love you so much.”
I pull away, just for the barest of a moment, wanting the space to wipe my eyes before I kiss him senseless.
And as Flint watches, a sharp pain rips through my head and I fall to my knees, screaming.
Then
I watchin horror and fascination as the Princess whips out power. At first, she wields a whip of flame, incinerating every being it comes into contact with. I watch as the bodies heat and then crumble from the intense heat she is producing.
The next instant, she is throwing spears of ice with deadly accuracy. Her eyes glow a molten gold as she reaches out to pluck the complicated strings of emotions from those around her. One particularly large adversary crumples as her ice punches through it’s chest.
She’s struggling,I realize. The princess can barely stand. I can see, almost feel, her grit her teeth and lock her knees to keep herself upright against the pain, the failure, the hopelessness engulfing her. The people around her - they don’t have any emotions left to give. They’re dissociating. She’s been in battle for so long, toolong. Her own emotions are far too detached to be of any use. This is the end. There’s nothing else to call on, to summon. They’ve made sure the land around her is dead; she can’t even ground herself.
Ash- Then
The battlefield is madeof screams.
I stand at the center, boots sinking into churned mud, my arms trembling with exhaustion. My grief is locked away, behind a solid wall in my mind. My cloak is torn, soaked in blood — mine, other’s, I don’t even know anymore. The sky overhead is split with lightning, but there’s no rain. No. The storm ragesinsideme.
We are losing.
I can feel it. The fading sparks of my comrades, the thinning of the veil as magicks collapse under the weight of grief. I can feel neighbors, friends, acquaintances burning out until they’re nothing but husks. The air around me is thick with the electricity of so much magick being conjured, thrown. The Hollow Orderpresses in from all sides, chanting their poisonous dogma as they battle.
I drop to one knee beside the body of my captain. My hands tremble, already stained, but it doesn’t stop me from reaching for him. Towards this touchstone from my childhood.
His eyes are open wide, shocked and unseeing, already dull with death.
He had been laughing earlier. Before the battle, he had offered me a piece of candy from his pocket. The same candy he had been sneaking me since I was a child. I hadn’t taken it.
Why didn’t I take it?
I swallow the tears in my throat, adding another brick to the wall holding back my grief. There isn’t time now. All around me, the air is buzzing, alive with pain. Not just mine.Everyone’s.
A young soldier sobs into the shoulder of her dead twin.
A Fae woman holding pieces of her broken staff, whispering prayers in a language that I don’t know, but can feel.
A line of archers are vaporized in one blast.
A dragon curled in on itself, howling because his one has gone silent.
The battlefield is bleeding grief.
And that’s when I feel it.
