It’s the sort of song one hopes will be their last.
Their finale.
Their take a bow as the crowd erupts into applause.
This is it for us.
My Gift knows it, and I know it too.
So together we play, my fingers tapping the keys as the two of us surrender to the language we both speak.
The song swells and flows, and still the Others draw nearer. I don’t bother looking into their eyes. If I looked and glimpsed hunger, it would only shake my resolve, and though my eyes long to look, to know whether they should scream at my feet to run, I don’t let them.
Running won’t do me any good at this point, anyway.
I am going to succeed.
Or I won’t.
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.
