Page 44 of The Endless One

She stared at him for a few moments more, then lowered her voice so only he could hear her. “Are you sure you can manage this?”

“I can.”

Jessamine pursed her lips, and then nodded. “If it becomes too much, you will tell me.”

“Jessamine, I have been here a hundred times in my life. I have had centuries to deal with how this room makes me feel.” Except he hadn’t ever dealt with those emotions. He’d just buried them deep, deep down until he hadn’t thought about it anymore and therein lay the issue.

He wasn’t going to tell her that, though. Not when he was certain there were a lot of good reasons for her to be here, and it made sense that she might find something. All he had to do was keep her here long enough for the old souls of the gravesingers to realize that one of their own was within these grounds.

Except, all the gravesinger souls were trapped in his own realm and they couldn’t get out.

Maybe he had been foolish to bring her here.

But then she walked away from him, into the sunlight, and he saw how it curved around her, holding on to her body like an old friend. Even the sun didn’t want her to leave its sight, and he knew that feeling well. Elric himself didn’t like watching her leave. Only there seemed to be more to that sunlight than just rays that beamed down upon her. It clung to her too deliberately, as though it were trying to tell her something.

“Jessamine, don’t move,” he called out, walking up to her and reaching for those golden tendrils. He had never seen anything like this before.

The moment he touched one, they disappeared. Similar to the tethers he used to see connecting the two of them, but these were gold. They were strong as well. A thrum of magic thrilled through his body as he touched them.

“What are those?” Jessamine gasped, immediately trying to rub one away from where it had attached to her shoulder.

“Don’t do that.” He touched the same one, feeling it vibrate at his gentle flick. “These aren’t mine.”

“No, I suspected they aren’t. Why are they on me?” All the hairs on her arms had visibly risen. “Elric, I can feel them sticking to me. Please, for the love of all the gods, get them off.”

“Loving any god other than me will get you in trouble,” he murmured as he circled her, trying his best to find a way to remove them. “I don’t know what they are, nightmare. So I don’t know how to get them off.”

Sybil walked around the altar and looked with him, her brows creased in confusion. “I have never seen magic behave this way.”

Strange. Everything in this room was strange, however. He asked, “The other gravesingers in this place didn’t have tethers?”

“No. They didn’t really seem to do much in here. They hummed, they chanted, they rocked side to side. Regular witchcraft.” Sybil’s frown creased even deeper. “If I didn’t know better, I would say this is something else entirely.”

Jessamine looked between the two of them, her eyes growing wider with every word. “What do you mean, something else? If we don’t know what it is, then how do we get them off?”

He lowered his voice and scolded her, “Don’t panic.”

“When in the history of time has telling a woman that ever worked?” she hissed.

“Just breathe.”

“They’re writhing against my skin. It’s like I’m covered in snakes.”

But they weren’t moving. At least, not that he or Sybil could see. They were just draped across her body. But the more he looked, the more he realized maybe they might not be seeing the same thing as Jessamine.

“What do they look like to you?” he asked.

“Snakes,” she repeated. “I know they aren’t real snakes, because they’re golden. Their eyes are slitted, though, and they keep flicking their tongues at me and staring.”

“They’re just ropes to us.”

“I don’t care what they are to you, Elric. Get them off!”

Her shout echoed through the room, and before he could stop her, she flinched away from him. Two steps, that’s all it took, and suddenly she froze. Jessamine now stood in the shadows away from the sun, staring at the back wall.

He wasn’t sure what she was seeing, but he couldn’t imagine that it was good.

“Jessamine?” he asked, hoping that he might guide her through whatever affliction had settled into her body. “What’s the matter?”