The Will and the Wilds(53)

He takes one of her icy hands, the one not holding the stone, and places it on the side of his neck, willing his warmth into it. To his shock, she smiles. It’s a barely there tilt of her lips, but there’s no mistaking it.

“You’re warm,” she whispers.

His grip on her loosens. “Enna. I . . .”

The guilt claws him raw.

He swallows. “The bargain—”

“C-Cold.” She shivers.

Pressing his lips together, Maekallus lowers her hand and scours the hearth until he finds quarter logs beside it. He throws three onto the dying fire, coaxing it into violent life. Then he lies down on the other side of Enna and draws her close. Her body is soft and fits well to him, something he might have lingered on were the damnable soul inside him not making his hands tremble.

Her shivering eases, but that grants him only a sliver of relief.

He holds her for a long moment, willing the warmth of her captured soul back into her. For a moment, he thinks she’s fallen asleep, or lost consciousness, but she stirs the silence by asking, “Do you believe in Shava?”

The mortals’ notion of an afterlife. “You’re not going to die, Enna.” Even if she loses her soul in its entirety, she won’t perish. Not right away. She’ll just be empty. Blank. Just like . . .

He shakes his head. No. He hasn’t thought about her in years, and he won’t start now. That had been . . . different. Enna won’t meet the same fate. She can’t.

He will guarantee it.

“I didn’t . . . ask that,” she says. She pushes her head back, resting the crown against his neck. “Do you believe?”

“No.”

She turns her head just enough to look at him. The fire tries to cast her blue eyes green. “No?”

Maekallus doesn’t know what happens to souls he consumes. Although he doesn’t understand the workings of human theology, he imagines they just cease to exist. Can a partial soul still find purchase in its afterlife? “For you, perhaps, there will be something beyond mortality. But not for me.” He lets out a long breath through his nose, lifting his gaze to the flames so he won’t have to see the pain in her eyes. “I am the afterlife. I was created by death. I am the end. When I perish, I am gone.”

He kneels by the young woman, her dark-blonde hair sticking to the trails of tears on her cheeks. He wipes the wetness away with his finger, crooked from that mishap with the ax in his boyhood. “Now, now, we’ll sort this out.”

The girl shakes her head. “It was the Factio. You don’t resolve anything with them.”

Maekallus shuts his eyes hard. A headache erupts in his right temple, like his brain is bleeding. The memories that have begun to awaken . . . and they aren’t from this life. He doesn’t have crooked thumbs. He doesn’t—

“No god would be so cruel.”

Maekallus opens his eyes. The searing flames fill his vision. “I don’t have a soul, Enna. I don’t have a god. I just am.”

She shivers. He holds her tighter.

They lie in silence for a long time, until Enna’s questions subside, until her eyes close and her breathing evens. It’s a slumber without nightmares. She needs the rest. At least Maekallus can give her that.

The guilt carves her name over his heart.

When she’s deep in sleep, Maekallus slowly pulls away. Moves the rug back from the hearth just enough to keep any sparks from hurting her, then wraps the side he’d occupied over her back. He stands, careful of the ceiling, clenching and unclenching his fist until feeling creeps back into his arm. The light from the gobler’s spell burns into his chest, beckoning him back to the glade. Even though she’s been left with a flake of a soul, her will had called to him. Not an order. A call. Almost like he was wanted.

He looks away and grits his teeth. Opens the door, ducks low under the entryway. The air outside feels wintry compared to the heat of the fire. He passes the oon berry, falls into the shadows of the wildwood. His eyes still penetrate the darkness. He wishes they didn’t.

He walks and walks, over hills and streams, listening to the howl of a wolf and the hoot of an owl. Brush rustles nearby, but he doesn’t heed it. He’s a predator, after all. Enna is his prey.

No longer.

He reaches the clearing. Stares at the spot where the thread of light pierces the ground. By that light he studies his right hand, the newly healed scar on the palm. Enna believes their bargain has tied their fates together. He’s convinced her the gobler’s spell will destroy her as surely as it will him.

He presses the thumb of his opposite hand to the bottom of the mark. Slowly draws it up toward his fingers, erasing the scar as though it were merely a smudge of dirt or line of charcoal. When he pulls his hand away, the line is gone, his palm unscathed.

He’s taken too much. Too much.

Kneeling before the thread of the binding spell, he closes his eyes, relishing the pain inside him, if only for its vigor, and waits for the mortal realm to devour him once and for all.





CHAPTER 22

Tapis root, though scentless, has some sort of aura that protects against the supernatural. I believe this aura to have a small range, but one can never be too careful.





I wake to a dead fire and early morning light. I shiver, colder than I should be. But the nightmares . . . there were none, only dreamless, black sleep. A long breath escapes me, stirring black dust that’s tried to escape the hearth.