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I took the stone in my hand, and the sky fell down on me.
Abdiel wailed asIplunged a short sword into the wall of his heart. Twisting it deeper, I hummed appreciatively as his breathing staggered and a warm gush of blood spurted from the wound onto my hand. In a last-ditch effort to thwart me, he pulled mercilessly at the long, braided rope of my hair.
“Give,” I propositioned. The crack of his left forearm bone underneath my boot vibrated up my spine.I watched the violet color in his eyes dull.
“Gwynore,” he gurgled.
“Have it your way, then.” I jerked my leg from his arm to get a better angle, and pushed deeper into his chest, mentally searching for that sweet spot that would cleave him from his life force.
“Honestly, Gwyn. You’re a sadist,” Owen barked from the corner. “You know you can’t kill him.”
“Not until he gives,” I grunted back. Abdiel was always so damned stubborn, the other Astralites were much easier to break. He was the best of the King’s soldiers, after all. Abdiel protected the Astral Plane as if it were the embodiment of his one true love. Perhaps that love had made him strong. Or perhaps if I put my knee down on his testic—
“Enough!”
By thefuckingMother. Abdiel heaved when I yanked the borrowed blade out of him and rolled flat on my back to the cold marble floor. Staring out through the skylight at nothing in particular, I kicked my legs childishly.
“Why don’t you ever just let me have my fun?” I whined. Crossing my arms atop my knees, I sat up to get a better look at the very annoying and self-absorbed King of the Cosmos.
“I’m not going to sit by and watch you torture my best men all to cure your boredom, Gwynore,” Gabriel huffed.
“Oh, come on, it’s not like he really dies or anything.”
The look of concern on his face was starting to rub me the wrong way. We both knew he couldn’t care less if I actually did murder one of his Astralites. Maybe not this particular one, but even so, it wasn’t like he couldn’t Yield another one. Spoiling my training was another way to ensure Gabriel got his cut of the entertainment.
“The fact that henever really dies or anything,” Gabriel’s porcelain fingers curved in the air, “makes this show you’re putting on all the more unnecessary.”
“Most of the things you do in your leisure time are unnecessary, Gabriel, but you don’t see me plucking the fruit from all your wine glasses, do you?”
“Oh please. When will you ever need to put on such a grotesque performance?”Gabriel made a sweeping motion to the bloody mess that was starting to seep into the cracks of his carved insignia—the crescent moon pierced with the arrow of Time.
“I do not train because I fear a threat,” I replied simply. “I train because when circumstance finally comes to force my hand, I’ll be able to shove that hand down its throat.”
I knew as well as he did that no one in the universe was strong or brazen enough to attempt a coup on the Sages, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t daydream about what a real battle would be like someday. The feeling of victory in my palm as I held the heart of the last traitor.
“Lovely as always, dear Gwynore,” was all Gabriel had the patience to say.He and I would always bicker about this. I would forever be a time-wasting troublemaker to him, and he would never stop being incurably naive. With the nudge of his chin, I was dismissed.
“Tell me,” I said, instead of leaving him. “Who do you say will triumph? Fate or Gwynore the Brave and the Ruthless?”The question brought a small smile to his lips, but he quelled it with a roll of his star-flecked eyes.
I stalked away feeling indignant, my mind already strategizing a war that did not yet exist. A war between destiny and myself. Just as my hand clenched victory tightly in my fist, a biting gust of wind kissed my right ear and a clean blade shanked the door frame in front of me. It gleamed, the light refracting off the deep amethyst gem of its hilt.
“Gwynore?” Gabriel chimed. “Use your own bloody dagger next time.”
When I came to, my ear stung angrily where the blade had grazed it in the dream—or was it a dream?It seemed very real, like a vision. Like my part of my life had rushed back into me. My stomach rolled at the thought. Bouts of forever spent on top of a damned mountain trying to remember and all I had to do was touch a stone.
Just like that, a piece of me fell back into place. Still, it didn’t fit exactly as it should have.I looked down into my lap where the stone sat heavily. Turned clear, its insides no longer churned, like it was relieved to have finally let out the life it was holding onto.
I wasn’t so thankful to have gotten that life back.
The Brave and the Ruthless Gwynore. I didn’t know that brash and violent girl the stone had shown me. All my years in the Binding was peaceful and quiet. How was it that both of those things could live inside of me without knowing one another?
“Gywn,” Kalen’s voice focused me. Warm hands braced my knees as he kneeled at them now, watching me. He said nothing else.
“What is this?” I asked, not finding the courage to look up from the stone.
“It’s part of your soul, hidden in this stone for safekeeping.” He volunteered the information without any hesitation.
“Why?”
