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My voice is lost in the breeze. My stiff is a fucking dragon!
What does this mean?
Did I do the right thing by helping him? How could I have been on the right side by helping to eliminate him?
The questions keep coming, without ever finding a logical answer.
Magic exists, but dragons?
“Dragons exist, Believ.”
“You’re reading my mind again! Frankly, you're overdoing it!”
“Please forgive me.”
This is the first time he's been so familiar. It's as if something has changed, as if the accomplishment of this mission has sealed the bond we established when our paths crossed. And yet, it's not a bright future that awaits us...
“What is it, my sweet?”
“My sweet?” Where did that come from again?
At the same time, I feel exhilarated by this new-found intimacy. I bite my tongue. Time is running out, and I'm not going to let myself be lulled by sweet words. I straighten up, trying to adopt a firmer posture.
“Nothing you can't handle. You're a dragon, and you've got your body back. Your life is back on track. As for mine...”
“Yours promises to be long and lovely. I'll help you find your son, I promise. I'll never leave you again.”
Fine promises he'll never be able to keep. And for good reason: if his life is enjoying a revival, mine seems fatally compromised by my simple allegiance to the Sin Eaters.
“I don't understand,” he laments. “Please explain.”
Will he ever get out of my mind? He chuckles slightly, and it echoes strangely in my head.
“I'd never do that. I love you too much for that,” he says, his tone now serious.
What did he just say?
My heart has just missed a beat. I freeze as I stare at him, magnificent and majestic. A dragon telling me he loves me is incongruous enough, but for it to be Ember, a ghost who's become a man again without really being one... It's just... No, in fact, I'm stunned, mainly because no one down here, apart from my son, has ever told me they love me. For a first-timer, I should be exploding with joy and euphoria. I should be jumping into his arms, doing or expressing something, but I'm still stunned.
That it comes from a chimerical being accentuates the exceptional nature of this moment. What am I saying? This whole adventure was extraordinary and pretty much doomed from the start. So, to add to this incredible story, the fact that three magical little words came from an equally magical being seems almost logical.
What about me? Who am I fooling besides myself? Because what I feel for him is genuine, and it's eating me up. I know the beginnings of a state of love; I've been in it enough to be able to identify the symptoms. And right now, as I stare at this heavenly creature, my heart swells with immense love and sorrow because there will be no happy ending for us. As I was pointing out, it was dead before it even started. What irony! What shitty timing too!
One day, I'm going to have to come to terms with this fate that's haunted me since birth. But I can't! Everything in me revolts at the thought of this tear that's about to begin. I need to scream my rage and distress. To cry out to heaven for a reason that's about to fall flat. The blatant injustice I've suffered for so many years finds an outlet in the outcome of our story. And there's nothing I can do about it. In this single moment, I hate Eltz, the whole Brotherhood, and the Church as a whole. If there really is a God in this universe and He's good, let Him help me, because I can't do it alone.
I pull myself together, clearing my throat, although a ball of distress clogs my windpipe. Damn! I feel like a part of me is going to be torn apart, and I'm going to suffer a thousand pains if I speak out loud. I contemplate the being for whom my heart has been beating for a few days—or has it always been? Time is playing tricks on me, and it's with a barely suppressed sob that I tell him my implacable truth.
“Ember, you don't understand. There is no ‘us.’ What we shared was an enchanted interlude in a sea of troubles, but I'm going to die,” I exclaim, frustrated that I can't let myself dream because my situation is so shaky.
“One day, perhaps. And yet, nothing is less certain.”
Although I can't make out his features, I can hear in his voice the certainty that he'll put his heart and soul into finding a way. I'm getting to know him. His conviction is the law. He's unwavering in his actions; he'll go through with it, whatever it takes. And it's this powerful personality that I've fallen in love with. Where I’ve simply followed a path laid down by others, he follows his own and never deviates from it.
I speak of him as a man, despite the aspects of his personality that I don't know. What do I know about magical creatures and their powers, other than what folklore has bequeathed us? But since they’re all lies woven by the Church, I find it hard to put any faith in them. Speaking of faith, I haven't got a shred of it left.
“Not one day. Soon. Too soon,” I assert, my voice firming.
There's no point in prolonging the suffering. I'll try to cope with mine, added to the lack of my child. I don't know how, but I'll find a way to survive. His, on the other hand, will destroy me. That's not a figure of speech. His pain will literally overwhelm me. I already felt it when we met. As long as it didn't leave him, it clung just as tightly to my heart. At this moment, I pray that the pain I'm about to inflict on him will be less intense than the loss of his identity and his body.
