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“I’m sorry,” he started to say, a painful expression twisting his face. “I can’t… This can’t happen—"
“Why?” I asked, my voice demanding.
He muttered a curse under his breath, the air skimming my face as I rested it beneath his chin in disappointment. “I can’t start caring for someone with the realm sitting at a tipping point. There’s too much at stake, too much to lose if I let someone become more important than the fate of humanity, no matter what I feel for that person.”
What he felt for me.
The thought soothed the sting of his rejection. I let my hand drag across his chest, above the place his heart raced beneath my palm. “Do you know why I ran to the clearing that day? Do you have any idea why I chose the path I did?”
“I assume it was because I’m irresistibly handsome?”
I smiled against his shirt. “It was a contributing factor, I admit, but no. Under the mountain, I was forced to live someone else’s life, yearn for someone else’s goal, train for someone else’s future. To become a chosen, I stuffed myself into a mold someone else created so I appeared, acted, pretended to be someone I wasn’t. But the day I stepped foot outside of Grimsbane, when I looked toward the path leading me to you, I realized I was tired of living for the queen’s desires. This was my life, and I wanted to live it the way I chose.” I pushed off his chest to look at him, to let him see the virtue in my words. “You can exist for a thousand years, Az, but you’ll never live if you keep trying to fill someone else’s mold.”
“It’s not that simple, Arya,” he murmured.
“Nothing is simple,” I smiled, returning my temple to the crook of his shoulder. “That’s what makes it worth it.”
He didn’t reply for the longest time, and I let my eyes close against the heavy weight of blissful exhaustion. I had never known what love was, other than the familial love I shared with Loren. But what I felt with this ancient man, this divine being with hands literally created by the gods themselves, was something entirely new.
The fire grew low at our feet, and in the growing darkness engulfing our intertwined figures, blessed hands pulled me close.
11
I fellinto a dreamless sleep that night, wrapped in a fleece linen on a bed of down feathers. The world melted into a chasm of darkness, and I slipped along a black stairwell leading deeper into its depths.
Arya.
Hmmm?
Come to me, little one.
I staggered on my feet, startled by the awareness of her presence in my dreamland. It was happening again. She had created a connection inside the void of an alternate world, a world where nothing existed besides the form of our souls and the whisper of our thoughts.
“Leave me alone.” I begged shamelessly.
The words echoed repeatedly in my mind, commanding her to leave, but she was relentless in her pursuits. She was the type of queen who always got what she wanted, inexperienced in resistance, unacquainted with disappointment. A pressure wrapped around my skull, pushing inward and threatening to blast my brain matter across the black abyss.
I just want to talk, my Chosen.
“I do not belong to you. I know who and what you are now, Adzehate, and I will never serve you again.” I groaned beneath the pressure.
Where is he taking you, Arya?
“Who?”
Azriel. The deceitful demon who wants to ruin you, us, and everything we’ve worked for. He’s lying to you, little one, using you to kill me. He noticed your calling even sooner than I did, and he wants to wield you like the weapon you are for their fight.
“What calling?” I gasped.
You can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me…Huntress.
The pressure became unbearable against my temples, and my legs twisted underneath me as the weight overcame my strength. My knees hit the hard floor of the void, the only solid space around me as the bony planes of my skull splintered and cracked, echoing in the darkness now trapping me.
I know what you’re after, Huntress. Bring me the stones, and I will continue to make you great—greater than the watchers, greater than the gods. You and I will become one in spirit, flesh, and power. We will become invincible as well as immortal. Beautifully cruel and equally terrible. And nothing, divine or mortal, will be able to stop us.
In the chasm of my mind, a breeze blew. A light dust trailed the air, settling in place next to where I crouched. The ash collected on the form of a shadow, giving it body and life until the visual shape of the queen was a hazy figure before me. Adzehate smiled, then slowly lifted her hand to help me up from the floor.
Take my hand, complete the connection, and I promise the pain will stop. Together we can bring back the sun and create a new world that serves humanity, not the divine. Come back to me, and let us voyage to the dawn of a new day.
