The Will and the Wilds(56)

That a mysting could ever love me?

I wipe tears off my face and fling them into trampled clover. Wheel on him. His stare remains fixed on that damnable magic thread.

“Can’t you give it back?”

It’s a weak plea, too heavy to carry far. A drop of rain hits the side of my nose, and it alarms me that it feels warm against my skin.

Maekallus finally meets my gaze. “I might.”

Hope flares within me, hot enough to scorch.

“But not while I’m bound to the mortal realm.” More raindrops fall, hitting my hair, my coat. They echo off leaf and branch, louder than Maekallus’s voice. “Attaby had a theory once. I’ve never . . . but I can’t, here.”

He sounds defeated. Rain douses my hope.

I shake my head, wishing I could deny the truth, almost wanting to remain in ignorance. This, this is what they meant, the poets and bards who wrote and sang about heartache. I feel it now, so much sharper than those flowery words. Like my very chest is being rent in two by long, rusted knives.

“I’m sorry.”

I laugh. It hurts coming up my throat. It’s made of briars and gravel and poison. I wipe more tears from my face. “Bastard,” I hiss.

“I am what I am.”

It might be the truest thing he’s ever said to me. I glare at him, clutching the Will Stone in my fingers, a violent array of possibilities whirling dark colors through my thoughts. But I release it, tired, aching, and defeated. Shaking my head, I whisper, “I wish I’d never summoned you.”

He flinches again, granting me some sort of pathetic victory.

The rain comes down hard. I flee into the wildwood, clutching the hilt of my dagger in one hand, the Will Stone in the other. I break the power that allows Maekallus to roam.

Let him rot in his prison.





I’m too tired to cry, so the rain weeps for me.

It resonates all around me, pattering logs and earth and trees until it sounds like a mess of insect wings or the shushing of a thousand mothers. It thuds without rhythm onto my skull, soaking my hair. It drips into my eyes and runs down my cheeks just like real tears.

I shiver and grip the front of my coat with frozen fingers. Cold, because of him.

Fresh mud sucks on my shoe. I rip it free. I barely feel the iciness of the Will Stone as it warns me of grinlers. I will them back to the monster realm with a single hard thought, and in seconds the stone warms.

I breathe deeply, both to fuel my already sore body and to fill the open chasm in my chest. The air doesn’t help the latter.

I curse him. I curse him with every obscenity I know, which isn’t many. I curse him with every step of my feet and shudder of my shoulders, with every drop of rain that dilutes my path.

I needed it to live.

I shake my head and curse my foolish interest in mystings and the monster realm. Where would I be now if I had never crossed into the glade that night, where Maekallus was a heap of gasping tar? If I’d waited another half day, and let him perish? I’d have a full soul. I’d have been with my father when he fell ill. I’d be able to look Tennith in the eye, happily.

And Maekallus would have been consumed by the blight.

A dark, twisted image fills my mind until it’s all I see. Maekallus, melting, devoured by a realm he couldn’t escape. His skin liquefying into tar. His yellow eyes desperate and pained. The sound of his breathing . . . even my father’s sickest breaths couldn’t match that sound. My nostrils burn in memory of the smell. I trip over a stone.

I think of the blackness that oozed from the cut on my hand—the cut I thought tied my fate to Maekallus’s—and imagine it seeping from my every pore. Imagine it bubbling and burning and popping, filling my eyes and ears and nose—

I gag, then choke on rain. It forces me to stop, to clear my lungs, to breathe until I can convince my weary legs to move once more.

Even then, Maekallus’s suffering had moved me. It was my fault he’d come, at least partially. It was I who drew the summoning circle, who saw beyond his invisibility.

And yet . . . he’d been shocked to consume only part of my soul. He’d been willing to kill me, just for another few days of health. Had he also known a soul wouldn’t break the spell? Undoubtedly, yes.

But he’s changed.

I curse the thought just as I cursed the mysting, but it sticks to me, resolute. Yes, I can admit that much. Maekallus has changed. Every kiss changed him, and not only physically. I remember being shocked at his first thank-you, his first apology. Like I was single-handedly making him more human, inside and out.

But how much can a soul change a person? A mysting? For even a human soul could not recreate him into a human. He’d already been that once. The blood of bastards.

And what happens if he descends? Leaves? Consumes the soul I’ve given him? Will he not revert back to a pure narval, a monster from the other realm? Will he forget all he’s felt here?

Will he forget me?

Do you think I’m a monster?

I remember the look on his face when he’d asked. The sorrow, the desire. The way he stepped into that circle and made himself look human to . . . what?

My steps slow. I’m so tired; I could lie right here in the mud and foliage and sleep, but the nightmares whisper from underground, and I rub wakefulness into my eyes. I force myself forward again, gauging the distance to my home. Rubbing the hurt in my chest through my coat, wishing I could reach the emptiness deep within and stuff it with . . . something.