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Sionnach rises to his feet, extending a hand. “Climb the tower with me?”
I want to draw courage from the well of purpose in my heart. He expects me to join him to bid Arthur Vicars farewell and hear the last soul’s story. My legs refuse to move. My hands shake so badly, I trap my fingers between my knees to steady them. The weakening of my senses, the sickness in my gut, signals the onset of crippling fear.
“I truly want to, but I can’t.” The salt from my tear sets off a throbbing pain across my burnt cheek. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”
He crouches before me, leaning in for a tender kiss. “You’re not to worry.” Sionnach stands and takes a few steps toward the tower, then comes back to me. A cheerless half-smile plays across his lips. “It’s not a fear of the high places that plagues you.” He shakes his head. “It’s fear of falling from them.” His bottom lip quivers. “And the falling I can keep you from.” He blows lightly on my burn. “I’m sorry I cursed you with such fear.”
The voice calling me into the skies over Times Square echoes through my mind—so clearly Sionnach’s now that he’s part of me. I’m not angry. I understand his impatience was desperation to help the souls. He meant no harm. I’m furious with myself for not being able to move past my fear even on our last night together.
We’re destined to climb those stairs hand-in-hand.
At least I can do one thing he’s asked of me. “I will watch the last soul. Come down right after, and we can finish this.”
His face droops with exhaustion and a sadness so deep, the weight of it presses on me. He returns for another lingering kiss. The heat from our lips flows through our bodies, erasing the outer layer of chill from the river. When he begins to draw away, I trace his lovely full bottom lip with the tip of my tongue. He pulls me to my feet and presses the length of his body to mine, finishing the kiss I began.
I watch until he disappears through the bottom door of the tower. The wails from the soulfall cut through the night.
Bracing myself, I don’t look away as the soul of Arthur Vicars holds a key aloft, then rises as earthly starlight. No matter what mess we’ve made of history, this time, Vicars’s artifact worked. I’m witness to the man’s unfailing diligence in professing his innocence until the end of his life. Soul and its virtue seek the heavens together.
I grit my teeth. The silhouette of the final soul grows as it nears the window. This last song of sorrow is unlike any other. It soars above the trees, deep and rich, infinitely more haunting than the ones that came before it. How can a requiem of such beauty belong to a spirit separated from virtue?
And then my heart steps onto the windowsill. Sionnach sings my name to the stars and falls into the night. His soul crashes against rock. Blackness of a spirit in agony drips down unforgiving stone.
“Sionnach.” I scream his name and fly across the grassy slope. I mount the stairs of the soulfall tower without hesitation. My fear of climbing is nothing compared to the torment of losing him to the churning water or the Glade of Chimes for eternity.
“St. Augustine, let him be there.” He’s the last soul. Sionnach will fall from the tower over and over with no other spirits to delay him. Halfway to the top, my legs threaten to stop carrying me.
What if tonight is different? From Éostre, the equinox, until the feast of Beltane, the window of redemption is supposed to stay open. If the rules changed and Sionnach isn’t in the tower room, I vow to hunt the rule maker through eternity. I press both hands to my heart. It still beats. If mine beats, I pray Sionnach’s does the same.
His words echo in my heart. “Step outside fear and hold tight to who you’re meant to be.”
I force my body the rest of the way up the stairs and through the arch at the top. Firelight from the ring of torches set into the wall at shoulder height splashes across stone. Sionnach sits on the floor next to the window, head upon his knees. In moments, he’ll rise only to fall again. I drop by his side, wrapping my arms around his body. “Anamchara, tell me your soul story.”
His head sinks onto my shoulder. Lips move against the skin of my neck. “You climbed.”
“You promised you’d never let me fall.” I’m here higher than I ever imagined I’d go in this tower or anywhere. Through the window, I see the river and field far below. My body doesn’t shake, there’s no nausea. At the Leviathan, Sion’s presence wrapped me in safety. Tonight, I took a risk for someone else and fear released its hold on me. Before I appreciate the absence of my lifelong burden, heaviness in my chest reminds me the Celtic day is not endless. “How can you be in the soulfall?”
“The guide is always the last soul.”
I want to shake him. This is the worst of all his omissions. “You should have told me.”
“I’m not to speak of it until the souls before me enter grace.”
How can redemption and so-called grace be wrapped in such cruelty? If I’d known from the beginning Sionnach was the last to be saved, I never would have left him. Tests, lessons, what is the point when decent people are damned?
I rub my nose against his temple. “This is one cosmically screwed up system.”
He closes his eyes and slumps as if the last of his energy was spent seeing me walk through the archway. “That it is.”
I shake him and press my fingers into the sides of his face. “How do we save you?”
Flames from the wall torches soften the green in his eyes. “Maybe I shouldn’t be saved. I’m the reason evil entered the Veil. If ever there were a sign some sins are not to be forgiven and virtues forever out of reach, we’ve seen it.”
“Dammit, Sionnach. Don’t you dare give up. I climbed the fucking tower. For you. Now talk.”
He looks as if he’s been stabbed through the heart. I drop kisses across his eyes down to the tip of his nose and end at his lips. I feel life bleed back into the flickering soul in my arms. “Please, my sweet fox.”
He stares out the window. “You asked why Ma feared for my soul. I told you I turned spy for a bit of money to keep Ma and Da from starving. What I did send was more than an honest living would bring. Ma suspected I wasn’t telling all. She had a sense for truth and lies.”
