There’s a peace to that, one I don’t expect, and though I suspect it’s my Gift’s doing, I can’t fault it for it.
So I play, and my Gift hums, and even the forest stops to listen as the wind carries my song to distant lands, over rolling hills, tickling the pines and stirring grains of sand as it flies.
And then I am the song, and we are one, and it’s larger than the two of us, as expansive as the sky itself.
The song swells, and I fly, and suddenly my feet no longer feel the ground, my fingers no longer feel the resistance of the keys. Yet still the song plays, and it’s no longer me playing it, but I’m the audience, savoring it, as surprised as the next person by the next note.
I play, or rather, the song plays me, and together we welcome the oblivion.
Something brushes against my skin, stirring me from the state of euphoria, anchoring me back to this present realm, the one in which I should be torn apart.
But when I allow my drunken eyelids to flutter open, all I find is a mere. It’s nuzzling up to my arm, though gently enough as not to jostle my flute. It peers up at me with wide, silvery eyes, and I can no longer tell whether the soothing hum is coming from my music or the satisfaction of my magic or the purr of the feline burrowing its snout into my elbow, wrapping its tail around my feet.
I should be terrified. But part of me is still drunk on the music. High on the performance.
It’s working, I whisper in my mind to my Gift.
A high note resounds back. It sings out through the flute, and like a soldier to the sound of a trumpet, the mere stiffens.
It takes one more glance at me, those saucer-wide silver eyes glinting.
When it takes a step, its paw disappears into the void.
It cranes its neck, gesturing for the others to follow.
The mere passes through the Rip and disappears. And then, one by one, the Others follow.
First it’s the Others in the field that were just surrounding me. Once those disappear, I still feel the resistance of the bonds shooting out from my flute—tethers sailing through the sky—so I keep playing until shadows form in the moonlit heavens.
Wyverns sweep in from distant lands. I shiver in the gust of their wings as they shoot by me, vanishing to dust through the Rip.
It takes longer for the rest of the mere to appear. It could take hours, it could take days, for all I’m aware.
My back throbs, my feet ache, but still I play.
I play until the last Other vanishes through the Rip, and the rope connecting us slips with it.
And with the last breaths my lungs can bear to muster, I play a note that commands the Rip to close.
It listens.
CHAPTER 115
KIRAN
Humans die.
Asha is human.
Therefore… no.
Asha is dead.
I don’t want to believe it. Much like Azrael, I believed in my wife. Believed she’d found a way to deceive the rest of us. A way to make it look real, when in reality, she would be hiding behind a curtain, just as Azrael expected.
Except I heard Blaise explaining to Azrael about the dagger. The one that now lies unused against the cold marble stone next to Asha, her face drained of color.
I watched her die and hoped I hadn’t.
But she’s gone now. Part of me knew it the moment the Old Magic separated from her body. Part of me knew it before then, the moment Az’s blade punctured her chest.
When the dagger sliced through her skin, my first thought was how that couldn’t be, because Az had entered a fae vow not to lay a hand on her.
My father would have beaten me for making a vow like that. One with loopholes that don’t account for figurative language.
The curse can be so literal at times.
Even then, I don’t know if I would have thought to be more specific. Because as deluded as I knew Az was, as likely as I found it that he might force himself on her having convinced himself that was what Asha wanted, never did I dream he would try to kill her.
“Asha.” I crawl to her, the guards who previously detained me still in shock over their queen’s death.
As I draw closer, her blood coating the slippery floor soaks my hands.
I’m transported to Rivre, where over a year ago I held the same position, cradling my wife in my arms. There was still life in her that time.
There is none now.
Her scars have returned, whatever magic the healer wrought on her skin having dissipated with her spirit.
I feel for her pulse in the crook of her neck as I brush her sweat-ridden hair away. All I find is an absence of the vitality that thrummed there only moments ago.
That’s the strangeness of it all. That Asha was here, just a moment ago, looking into my eyes and trying to communicate something to me.
It’s a moment so fresh in time; it feels wrong, that she’s no longer here. No longer breathing. That her chest no longer rises and falls, her eye no longer sees.
It remains open, staring at the ceiling above, and I brush the side of my hand, the part that’s not sticky with her blood, over her lid. There’s a part of me that’s selfish in doing so, like if her eye is closed, I can pretend she’s sleeping. Something that’s impossible to do with her staring into nothing.
It doesn’t help.
Asha doesn’t look like she’s sleeping.
Asha looks dead.
Because she is.
Something within me cracks. Rips. An anguish I’ve never experienced before. I came close the day I thought I’d lost her. But she’d been hanging onto life by a thread, and I’d still been clinging to the other end.
There’s nothing for me to cling to now. Nothing but her corpse, which is already cooling to the touch, and I don’t even have my magic within me to warm it.
