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“I’ve stolen part of a god’s power to stop time with my dying breath, and you’re arguing with me?” Brad asked.
“That was a complete sentence. It can’t be your dying breath,” I pointed out.
Brad chuckled, which turned into a cough, and fresh blood spilled out of his mouth to coat his lips. I looked down, finding a hole the size of a dragon claw in the middle of his chest. He was dying. The part of me who spent twenty years at the giving artist's side grieved. But the weeks I spent as a zombie bimbo, ending with the disaster he’d unleashed on the world, made me pretty okay with the situation.
“Why’d you do it?” I asked.
Brad put his hand over his heart. “Because I love you, Jaiy. I wanted us to be together for all eternity. I didn’t want to grow old and die like everyone else. I wanted your life. For both of us to have the power you took for granted.” He cupped my face with his ancient hand. “You were my everything, Jaiyana. But I wasn’t yours. You’re not even yours.”
I opened my mouth, but Brad’s weak squeeze on my arm made me close it.
“It makes sense in context. Do not derail this conversation.” He said with more strength than I thought he had.
More blood bubbled on his lips. Despite everything, two tears dropped from my eyes.
“In the end,” Brad continued. “I became someone I didn’t recognize, and you still didn’t love me because you didn’t love yourself.”
A second set of tears ran down my cheeks. He wasn’t wrong.
Brad coughed, and the light in his eyes dimmed. “You made that same face when you left me. But you don’t have to let them die today.”
I jerked back. “Let them die? Gorm’s a bloody god, and I have diddly squat for magic.”
Brad just looked at me.
Denial bubbled in my gut before shame flooded it. Maybe, on some level, I’d known that not winning was the easy way out of my emotions. The world was full of wars. Bad shit never stopped. Who caused it just shifted.
You’re an asshole.
I am.
Tyson’s first dragon paw left the ground, and Og’s back muscles lifted to pump his wings.
Brad coughed. “I cursed you, Jaiy. Not Gorm. He wanted you here to take your magic like you tried to take his. I didn’t want him to have it.”
“Am I supposed to thank you for that?” I asked bitterly.
Brad managed a single shake of his head. “I left you a way to break it. Did you find it?”
My bitter resentment grew. “No.” I scrubbed the tears from my face. “I banged those guys in every combination known to man, and all it did was improve my eyesight.” I snorted. “There has to be a joke in there somewhere.”
“The curse has nothing to do with dragons, Jaiy.”
I bit my lips together, already knowing the truth in his words.
“I just told you that so you wouldn’t ditch them,” he continued. “If you knew they were with you of their own choice, you would have run.”
I narrowed my eyes, hating how right he was. Once I thought I’d trapped them against their will, freeing them had become my only goal.
Had it?
I took a deep breath.At first.
Brad opened his eyes a final time. “Don’t let the world burn because you can’t find value in the only thing that matters… yourself.”
A puff of air bubbled in the blood on his lips before his body went still. I watched the light leave his eyes until only the outline of my reflection stared back at me. The same outline I’d seen in the mirror for the last thousand years.
I forced myself to breathe.
