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That got his attention.
“And yet, here I lie. Mortal, and even now…” Kalen plucked a lily and tossed it. “Anything. You know I would do anything.”
I sighed, knowing it was true. “Performing the Rite won’t take away the possibility that I would lose you, still. I can’t—”
I can’t lose you. I’d almost admitted it, finally, and out loud. But Kalen pulled himself from the space between my legs, and the feeling crawled its way back into my heart, back to safety.
“Kalen.”
“I have to go.” He stood suddenly, dusted his breeches, and threw his shirt back on. “Can’t spend all day behind enemy lines or the Shadowfaders will start to get suspicious.”
“Wait!”
Kalen halted his step so quickly, that it was almost like he hadn’t meant to leave at all. I rummaged through my satchel for the slender box I’d smuggled into our meadow without him noticing.
“Happy Birthday,” I whispered, slipping the plainly wrapped present into his large hands. Kalen opened it silently and removed the dyed cloth inside—pale blue, for the Light faction and Kalen’s eyes.
The blade glinted off the sun in the brightest flash. Metal made of the Otherworld always shined like that, a quick warning when it was drawn. To remind immortals that only one thing in this world was promised, and it wasn’t everlasting life.
“It’s forged with Silverwood,” I said and watched what little joy I had given him dissipate.
Kalen was only turning twenty-six but already his body was aging; a faint crease ran across his forehead, the forked impression of a bird’s foot on his left eye he’d gotten from squinting too long under the sun. I could erase every single one of them. He’d asked me to. Countless times. Countless more, I had truly thought about it. Thought about how the Rite could guarantee us a forever of afternoons in this meadow, talking and laughing until our cheeks burned. Throwing small glances each other’s way. After a while, one of those looks would turn into a gaze full of longing that brought us more than our friendship ever could. I’d stop pretending we were nothing more and I’d let him trounce me into a bed of flowers until our entire bodies were on fire.
But in this life, where forever meant watching him die, I was a coward.
Until my work with the Cleaver was done, if it was ever done at all, I would not Yield him. So I gave him a blade instead of my heart. An out instead of an in. I gave him a gift that said;Stay mortal.You are meant to live and die and hate me for it.Part of me hoped that one day he would find a way to give the dagger right back; plunge it into my heart with frail and withered hands, hurt me the way I continued to hurt him if only because it would feel a little bit like the love we would never have.
The silence between us was becoming unbearable, Kalen’s thoughts about the dagger and its meaning mirroring much of my own. He fiddled with it in his hand, taking careful notice of the hilt’s edges and runes so that I might not read the pain written so plainly on his face.
“I pulled some strings and got Dario to bring me a stem from the Silver Branch. It’s a twin to mine,” I said and brandished the dagger he’d seen me wield a thousand times before.
I had no comfort to offer him. I barely had any for myself. Finally, he looked up at me, and I watched his pupils fightagainst the color of his eyes.
“You remembered?” He said it so quietly, that I almost didn’t hear him. The softness left me unnerved. They were just words, but there was a note of resignation in them.
A feeling of something forever breaking between the two of us.
“Well, you know me...” my reply came out breathy and inelegant. I rocked on my heels to keep the feeling in them.
Kalen turned away from me, nodding once in appreciation and grasping so tightly at the box that the tendons atop his knuckles were bone-white. The emptiness I felt as he took his first step to leave hit me like nothing I’d ever felt before.I should go after him, I thought.I should yank that dagger from his hands and toss it into the deepest canyon in Leoth. But I stayed put. I watched him go. As he crested the hill out of our meadow, I swore I heard his voice whisk downwind.
“Better than anyone,” it said. Then he was gone, and I was sure all of it had been a dream.
“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, Gwyn?” Kalen’s voice tugged me back to the surface of our world.
“What?” I said, turning my face towards the sound—towards him, and felt suddenly like I was looking through a window far outside the castle.
Kalen’s eyes were gold, not blue, and the glittering flicks of moving Light startled me for the first time since we had met. In fact, everything about him startled me.
I looked again, slowly letting my vision reach out from the center of his face to the hair braided around his ears. I’d never noticed he was so blond. When he was mortal, the colors always seemed muddled together, turning the gold streaks far duller. I reached out to touch his cheek because it was blushed, and Iremembered that was the same as it had always been.
But when my fingers met his face, I jolted back.
We felt the same. His skin was not as soft and mortal as it had been in our meadow just seconds before. Was it seconds? No, it was a century. Kalen’s face tightened with unease.
“You said,Better than anyone,” he replied, moving closer to me. I backed away, feeling the breath leave my chest in a hoarse gasp as I suddenly realized where I was...whenI was.
Turning about the room I realized that we were not alone. The tall trees encircling our meadow melted from deep evergreen to the jaded shades of sea people. Merlords, servants, performers...they were all staring. At me, at the ground where Tyr remained, grasping at the puckered skin around the lower part of his neck where Kalen’s blade had grazed him. Ione stared, too, her expression somewhere between amazement and absolute fury. The High Mer’s hands were clenched at her sides, water dripping through the levee of her fingers, the sea ready to burst forth at her command.
