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“I don’t care,” I snap, turning on a goddess because fear has apparently burned the last of my survival instincts clean out of me. “He doesn’t get to die for me because he feels guilty. That’s not noble. That’s him bein’ a stubborn, self-sacrificin’ asshole with antlers.”
It shouldn’t be possible for a dead man’s heart to break, but mine does. It breaks with a pain so physical I fold one arm around my middle. I have seen Onyx furious. I have seen him jealous, possessive, terrified, tender, smug, confused by basic household appliances. I have seen him on his knees before, but never like this.
“There is no life… no life for me without him… Please—!”
The plea cracks on the last word.
I can’t stand it.
“No,” I whisper, and then I’m crying, or something like crying, because tears come hot down my face even in this in-between place where my body might be dead and my soul apparently still has opinions. “No, Wildheart. Don’t you dare. Don’t you make me be the thing that ends you. Don’t you love me like that.”
Aestrata turns her gaze to me, green-white and ancient, and I hate her a little in that moment because she is calm enough to let me watch.
“He loves you as he knows how,” she says.
“Then teach him better,” I say, voice breaking.
Onyx bows over my body again, his forehead pressed to mine, his black hair spilling across my bloodless face. His lips touch my temple, my cheek, the corner of my mouth, each kiss more devastating than the last because they are goodbyes he is refusing to name. His hands keep moving over me, checking for a pulse that isn’t there, smoothing my hair, touching the mark at my shoulder.
I press both hands to my mouth again and sob into them.
“I’m here,” I choke out, uselessly. “I’m right here. Please. Please, Onyx, look at me.”
He clutches my body harder and begs the Mother who made him to unmake him if that is the price. For a long moment, Aestrata says nothing, then her mouth curves.
It’s small, but it changes the whole dark around us. “He is my most stubborn child.”
The vision fades, but the ache of it stays in my chest. “What happened to me?”
Aestrata sighs. “My corrupted son wounded what your body could not mend,” she says, and the soil beneath her feet shifts with each word. “Your thread broke before he reached my hollow. Your bond held the shape of you long enough for farewell, but not life.”
I hear the sentence. I understand it. I still cannot make it fit.
“So, I’m dead.”
“Between,” she says. “For this breath.”
I look down at myself, and I don’t know whether to laugh or scream, so I do neither. “Is this where you tell me there’s a lesson?”
Her gaze sharpens with something almost amused. “No. Lessons are for those with time to waste pretending they do not know the truth.”
“Right,” I say, because what else do you say to that? “Efficient.”
She steps closer, and the roots under her feet lift slightly, not grabbing, just reaching. “When I shaped him from root and bone, I placed mercy in a creature made for solitude. Not promise, but possibility. A soul-shape that might come if endurance did not harden fully into stone. Many of my children never found it. Some found and were refused. One rotted before such mercy could matter. He is my only Cervari child left now, and the only one who has found happiness as he did.”
My chest hurts in a way death apparently does not prevent.
“I cannot return you as you were,” Aestrata says. “Your human body ended. To send you back unchanged would be to lie to flesh, and flesh does not survive divine lies for long.”
My hands curl slowly. “But you can send me back.”
“Yes.”
There’s the dangerous little opening. Aestrata stands before me, beautiful and terrifying, and the dark around us holds its breath.
“You have a choice, Lucas Dawson,” she says. “The first is peace. You may move beyond root and blood to the heaven your heart can understand. Those you loved and lost will not be pain there. Your fear will end. Your wounds will end. The forest will be memory without hunger, beauty without threat.”
That sounds like rest, and God knows I am so tired.
