So, when the shadows solidify and slick back from their faces like hair coiling around their shoulders, I’m not scared.
I’m not horrified.
I can see why they would think I would be, but, if anything, their faces are exactly how they should be.
Strong.
Dangerous.
The kind of inhuman features that were carved into the shields of warriors to terrify the enemy.
“This is better,” I tell them softly. “No more masks. I want this.”
It’s a crazy ask, given I will never see them again. But that’s a thought for later as I step forward and extend my arms up like it’s the most natural thing in the world to do.
The one in front scoops me up. Long, clawed fingers curl around my middle and hoists me to the winding shadows. I’m tucked into a wide expanse of muscles.
Eyes the polished whites of moonstones watch me from the heart of absolute darkness. There are no features. No lines. Nowhere I can definitively find a mouth. They are overlapping tendrils. Rolling wisps of smoke that lift off an elongated frame. Bodies woven with thin red threads that weave and bind beneath their ... skin? At the very center where a human heart would nestle, the vines knot around a deeply carved symbol.
“What’s this?”
I raise a hand and lightly stroke the deepest carving dug across his chest. A faintly glowing pattern that pulses ever so slightly like a heartbeat.
“Your name.”
My breath catches even as I jerk my head up to meet his gaze. “Does it hurt?”
“Only when you leave.” He tucks me more securely against his warmth, swaddling me in his cloak and in my blanket even though I’m not cold. “It will cease to beat once you’re gone.”
Tears burn. They clog my throat with a pain so deep I almost can’t breathe.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out.
A hand as big as my entire body lifts and sweeps over ... all of me, but I think he meant to brush my tears.
“The time we’ve had with you will always be more than we deserved.”
I wedge my face into him, wishing I could burrow beneath his wisps and hide from everything, but all I can do is breathe in the familiar scent of myrrh and cedar.
Aamon.
No one speaks as we resume our stride through miles of endless forest.
I can’t be sure, but I may have dozed under the gentle rocking of Aamon’s arms. When I open my eyes, we’re passing beneath a shady arch. Snow gives away to warm dirt the color of red clay. A bonfire roars at the center. A blazing column snapping at the tangled canopy overhead. The sweet scent of pine, smoke and cloves intermingle in the most familiar way.
“I know this place,” I croak around a yawn, bunched fist rubbing the grit from my eyes.
Carefully, I’m lowered to the ground. The trio sweep back and leave me to center myself.
It’s all here.
Everything from my dreams.
A movie set displayed exactly the way I remember, except there is no horned beast by the fires, waiting for me to give myself to him. His absence is a cold, iron fist coiling around my chest.
“Where...?”
I pivot to face my boys only to have my attention snagged on the row of stones winding away from the fire and beneath an archway heavy with crimson leaves and ivory branches.
