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No. I try to shake the voice away, but I’ve run the words over so many times in my mind, they’re etched into the very fabric of my consciousness.
I stand, placing my hand against the cool wall of the cavern. As if I need that to guide myself in the dark. As if my fae sight doesn’t adjust on my behalf. As if I can’t make a light source out of the air between my fingertips.
I can save her, whispers the voice, and my heart stops in my chest.
That’s impossible, I mouth back, but I can’t say it aloud, because I know it isn’t true. Not when Blaise, living evidence contrary to my point, sleeps soundlessly across the fire from me, the flames highlighting her features. Though nothing about her pallor indicates health, at least she’s alive.
Here.
With me.
It’s the here with me part that Asha won’t be. Not in a handful of decades, at least.
Bring the girl. She can help too, says the voice, and I find my feet crossing the cavern to obey. When I lean over and scoop Blaise into my arms, I’m shocked that she doesn’t stir, but the thought quickly flees from my mind.
I step over Evander, still fast asleep on the ground, and carry Blaise into the depths of the cave.
The voice calls me, and the further we draw into the recesses of the cavern, the more familiar it sounds, though I can’t quite place it.
Sometimes it’s Asha calling to me, sometimes it’s my mother from the grave. Sometimes it’s a mixture of Lydia’s and Fin’s voices, or how I imagine they would have sounded if they held any affection for me during childhood.
My footsteps hardly make a sound against the damp floor of the cave, though moisture dripping from the stalactites does.
I can help her. I can save her, whispers the voice, and I find I believe it.
The dark tunnels break off into a series of paths, but there’s no question which way is forward, not with that voice tugging on my heart like an anchor to the bow of a ship.
So I follow it into the darkness.
I’m not sure how much time passes before I arrive at what I somehow know in the recesses of my soul is my destination.
The bowels of the mountain swarm with a substance that appears as shadows one moment, a thick mist the next, depending on how the dim lights from the glowing fungi that crust the walls of the cavern shine on it.
You came, my child. You listened. I can help you.
I shake my head. “I don’t need your help. It’s my wife.”
Ahh. Humans die, and Asha is human. This is your fear, your problem.
“Yes,” I say with a shudder, staring into the gaping hole in the center of the cavern, where nothingness swarms in a void.
There’s a sense that pricks at the back of my neck, one that signals that perhaps I should be afraid of this creature, but I am not afraid.
This creature knows me.
It sees and hears the darkness and does not judge me for it.
“How do I save her?” I ask, and though part of my mind wonders how I can expect this creature to know, the thought is quickly blanketed in silky sheets of trust.
Shadows lick from the creature, reaching out. At first, I think they’ll consume me, but then they stop at Blaise, caressing her pale cheeks with the care of an adoring mother.
This child is one of mine, it croons. She does not know her mother, though I wish she would.
“I could wake her for you.”
That won’t be necessary, the being snaps.
“Who are you?” I ask, suddenly dying to know who this being is who promises help to my wife.
