DESPAIR. THE MINAX NUMBING IT away. Grief. Too much! Too much!
I rocked back and forth, huddled in a ball. I’d fallen where I stood, on the stone rampart, praying for oblivion. The battle raged below, but it wasn’t real. Nothing was real anymore.
“Don’t touch her!” Kai said to the archers, who’d rushed closer when they heard my screams. “Let me see to her.”
Nothing matters nothing matters not real not real not real
“Ruby?” Kai’s voice, soft, barely audible. His hand, reaching out. I wanted to slap it away, but I would have to unwrap my arms from around myself and then I would fly into a million pieces and no one would ever be able to put me back together again.
Not real not real not real
“Ruby? Let me take you to him.”
I shook my head in frantic denial.
“They’re bringing his body somewhere safe…”
His body? No! I shook my head harder. Not real not real not real
“….and we’ve sent someone to get Lucina.”
Lucina! That name broke through the chaos. Lucina was a healer!
I looked up at Kai, meeting his eyes with desperate hope. He looked so devastated, I had to look away.
“Come on,” he said gently, bending to take my arm. I let him pull me to my feet.
“Lucina,” I said hoarsely on a wave of incandescent pain.
“Yes, we’re going to see her,” he reassured me. “Come with me.”
Somehow we made it from the rampart to the area in front of the Gate. They had laid Arcus near the Gate itself, its light shining over him. He was just as beautiful as always, but his eyes were closed and his chest didn’t move.
The people clustered around him moved off as I approached, giving me room. Brother Thistle knelt among them, but he didn’t matter right now. Falling to my knees, I bent over Arcus, taking his face in my hands. His skin was so cold, but it was always cold. Blue blood soaked his tunic. I wouldn’t look there. Not real
“Arcus?” I whispered. “Wake up, love.”
Kai let out a quiet, agonized groan, and I heard him whisper something to someone. Familiar faces stared at me, members of our ship’s crew.
But they didn’t matter. No one else mattered. I fixed my gaze on Arcus’s eyelids and willed them to open. “Wake up wake up wake up.”
Dimly, I heard myself. I ordered and begged him to open his eyes. After a few minutes, a stark and ugly thought came into my mind, settling in like a carrion bird.
He’s dead.
NO!
With unsteady feet, I lurched to Lucina and clutched her arm. “Heal him.”
Her golden eyes dimmed with a look of profound regret.
“Heal him!” My hoarse shout echoed off the cliffs, the words doubling over each other. “The stories say… you can heal… any wound.” My breathing had shattered into gasps. “Heal him.”
“I can heal his body,” she said huskily. “But the spirit leaves soon after death. Even if I mend his wounds, well… your Arcus has gone to the afterworld—”
“He hasn’t!” I grated fiercely. “He would not leave me behind.”
She sucked in a breath, her eyes widening at whatever she saw in my eyes. “I will try.”
She lifted her arms up to the sky. The sunshine filled them, turning her gold once again. Then she tilted her hands down and released the light into Arcus’s wound. I gasped, worried that she was hurting him, unable to comprehend that he couldn’t feel pain.
Everyone was silent as his body glowed with light. Waiting. I was strung up in terrible suspension, either ready to fly or to be dashed to the ground in pieces.
“It’s done,” she finally said, panting. She lifted his tunic to check, wiping away the blood with the hem of his shirt, and nodded. “His wound is healed.” She put her hand to his neck, her ear to his mouth. Slowly, she looked at me. And shook her head.
That’s when I truly understood. He was gone.
I doubled over in agony, falling next to Arcus again, unable to see past tears. I placed my hand on his cheek. He’d always responded to my touch. Even in his sleep, his eyelashes would have fluttered. Or he would have nuzzled my hand, would have tried to get closer.
“Come back to me,” I begged, whispering soft words, trying to lure him to my voice. Minutes passed while I babbled—pleading, enticing, threatening. “I won’t leave you. I won’t give up on you.” I pressed my lips to his cheek, watching as salty tears dripped and slid down his skin, turning to drops of ice as they reached his ear.
My chest heaved with sobs. I shook uncontrollably. Pain pierced my midsection, as if a stiletto were being driven between my ribs. My temperature flashed from hot to cold as if my gift were breaking along with my heart. My hands went to my chest, as if I could claw out the pain.
Unbearable. Reopening the old, festering wound of loss after my mother was killed.
This loss would break me.
Already, black despair swallowed me from within.
“Cirrus, please!” I begged, tilting my head up to the sky. “Sud! Fors! Bring him back.”
Nothing.
I called on Tempus and Neb.
Nothing.
No no no this can’t be real!
But I knew it was. Sometime in the past few minutes, my wall of denial had crumbled. And I had broken with it.
After a few seconds, numbness eased the pain.
The Minax! I’d never been so grateful. Relief spread through me, inch by torturous inch.
I sank into its consciousness. It whispered sweet words of relief. Quietly offering. The Minax would cure me. It would keep me from feeling this terrible ache.
I could choose never to feel anything again.
The creature waited. Alert. Poised to act. It only needed one word from me.
A second of hesitation stretched to two.
A world of unending pain? Or blessed numbness?
The choice was easy.
Yes, I told it. Yes, take it all away.
The barrier between myself and the creature burned into ash. The Minax slammed into place in a way it never had before, filling my mind and heart to the brink.
Grief faded into a misty soup of unfeeling, the pain a distant twinge. Sensations and impulses crowded my mind, then faded as they were replaced with the creature’s wants and needs, stirring the chaos.
I looked up, taking stock of my surroundings for the first time in many minutes. Shouts and clangs rose from the lava field, not so far away. I breathed in the smells of smoke and blood, pain and lost lives. An intoxicating perfume.
Yes, we—the Minax and I as one—would survive this loss.
“Ruby?” Lucina said, concerned.
I rose and turned my back on her. She was inconsequential now.
The Gate pulsed in front of me with an audible hum. Its honey-gold surface bowed out, shivering as if a battering ram slammed on it from the inside.
Countless shadows, struggling to escape. Spirits of people murdered by the Minax, clawing to get out. They threw themselves at the crack, desperate, wild, mad for freedom.
It was all clear now. I had killed today, with the Minax possessing my heart. If Lucina’s theory about proximity to the Minax was correct, those deaths had added to the volume of spirits, all bashing at the Gate to get out. I might have played right into Eurus’s hands, helping him unwittingly.
If I’d realized this sooner, I would have been disturbed by the idea.
I waited, half blinded by the pulsing light.
Lucina yelled. She saw the danger too late. She threw a band of light at the Gate and shouted orders for help. For frostfire.
I kept my eyes on the Gate. The surface bowed out over the crack, once, twice, like fabric pushed and pushed by a dull knife. Finally, the knife penetrated. The crack tore open, the slice grew, and shadows streamed out, wraiths dancing on air, pouring free.
Kai and Brother Thistle rushed forward, arms raised, fire and frost meeting and blending into a swift and rudimentary version of frostfire. They directed the sparking column at the opening, trying to contain the damage. The shadows shivered in the blue-white light, but kept up their assault until one slithered through.
The Minax reveled as they burst free. Connected to all of them, I felt their raw elation, heard their untamed thoughts.
No more imprisonment! No more starvation! The world is our banquet, and we are hungry.
The agony of death would be our life.
The long, dark night had begun.