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“I am here, Elina,” he said thickly. “I am here.”
She looked down. For the first time, he noticed the blood between her thighs. With the ribbon in her hand, she drew her fingertip through the crimson smear on her skin. New tears slipped down her cheeks before she took a deep, shuddering breath. Resolve hardened her silver eyes.
She flung the ribbon into the fire.
Heart ripping open, Warrick plunged his hand into the flames even as the ribbon flared bright and hot. The burning satin slipped through his fingers.
Then there was nothing of it left to save.
“Onward,” Elina said wearily, and picked up her axe as she rose to her feet.
Warrick remained on his knees, staring at his blistered hand. In his palm were a few crumbles of ash. Never could she tie the ribbon again. Never could she remarry him, or see him or hear him. Always it would be this way—watching his wife, protecting her, but unable to touch her or speak to her. And Elina would forever believe she was unloved.
He had not known what agony was.
She cried herself to sleep that night. Warrick held her as best he could, his body enmeshed with hers where they touched, sharing his warmth. She stirred ever so slightly when he pressed a phantom kiss to her hair.
“Warrick,” she sighed against his skin.
Asleep. Yet not completely. A few times before she’d seemed aware of him at the moment she hovered between sleep and dreams. Just as some people from the corner of their eye saw ghosts that disappeared when looked at straight on, Elina sometimes sensed him.
He swallowed past the ache in his throat, breathed past the devastation that had settled into a crushing weight upon his heart. “I am here. I love you, wife.”
“Wished for a child,” she mumbled into his chest. “To have you.”
Then she’d bled. Understanding sliced through him, splitting open his chest. “You will always have me. Never will I leave you.”
“It hurts so much.” A sob hitched through her breath. “I think I might die.”
“You are too strong for that.” As she’d been during the purge. As Warrick must be, too. No matter the agony. The burning of the ribbon changed nothing. Always he would be her husband. Never would he want anything else. “Sleep now, my wife. All will be well.”
“My husband.” Sighing contentedly, she nestled deeper into him and murmured, “I love you.”
Then all would be well. Mayhap Elina could not believe in the powerful magic that was her love.
But Warrick did.
The glyph on Warrick’s chest began glowing brighter in the foothills of the Glass Mountains. And brighter.
Elina had once spoken to Serjeant Iarthil of these mountains being haunted, yet by her tone she’d believed the haunting was nothing but a tale told to frighten children. Had Warrick not been pretending he understood nothing of what she said, he would have told her what he’d already known.
The Glass Mountains were swarming with ghosts.
The first time he’d visited Galoth—the same journey that he’d been named the Trollslayer—Warrick had heard of the haunted mountains. He’d learned not to dismiss such tales, whether they were called blights or children’s stories, or whatever name they were given to comfort those who would never rest easy knowing what resided in their midst.
So Warrick and Bannin had ridden north. Such a young fool he’d been then. After his pride had taken the beating of becoming the Trollslayer, Warrick had indulged in a vision of himself striding into the mountains and righting countless wrongs, then returning triumphant to Galoth and earning a name that wasn’t a jest.
Upon seeing how many ghosts there were, however, he’d known something was different. Most never traveled beyond where they’d once lived or where they’d died; they haunted the spot where their bodies lay or where something important was hidden. And whether a wrong was righted or not, the death of the one who’d wronged them—or the death of the person they’d wronged—often marked the end of their haunt.
Yet the ghosts in the Glass Mountains had not lived or died here. Instead they’d been drawn to the mountains from every corner of the world. By what power, Warrick knew not. He’d only been able to talk to a few, as many spoke in ancient tongues that no one alive still used. Because in these mountains, death was not an end to their haunt. Every ghost that he’d spoken to had committed wrongs for which there was no hope of making right—the slavers and tyrants and invaders whose wrongs compounded generation after generation, long after those directly harmed were long gone.
Warrick could do nothing for these ghosts. He did not want to do anything for them. Let them wander aimlessly. Eternally. With all their ambitions of greed and power reduced to naught but a children’s tale.
It would be a fine unresting place for Elina’s uncle, as well.
