Page 25 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

I pointed a hand to the massive building behind us. “After you, my heart.”

“I’d rather not give you my back. After you.”

“You are not sleeping,” I almost hissed out when she swayed a little on her feet. Purple marred her under her blood shot eyes, no tinge of colour on her face beside those striking golden rings.

“There is no time to sleep when you plan war, Your Majesty,” she said, moving around the half-battered building facing the Volants. “How can I sleep with that noise piercing my ears?” She’d muttered the words that were probably spoken to herself rather than me.

“How long has it been calling to you?”

Her head jerked in my direction. “What?”

“The ringing, I can hear it as well.”

“That is impossible. Zgahna is the call of my ancestors. The only other people that would be able to sense it are Thora and Eren. Other than that, perhaps—” Her words got caught in realisation and she stared wide eyed at the fog-covered mountains.

“Your husband,” I finished for her. “And that I am.”

“Not for long.”

Sliding my hands onto my pockets, I leaned against a wall. “You were mine and will remain mine. To joy, to sadness, to live. Remember?”

“Are you pleased?” She perched on a broken window ledge. “To have first lied to me, then trapped me?”

“I didn’t trap you. The marriage was set to take place and if I remember correctly,” I said, pointing to the visible black ink on her arm, “you couldn’t have avoided marrying me because of that bargain. Just like you can’t avoid this bargain. Just like you couldn't avoid what happened between us and what you felt for me.”

Her stare grew dark, and rootlets of white mist filtered through the cracked walls and open spaces of the ruins around us. The zgahna poured out of the Volants onto Myrdur, creeping and blanketing the ruins under till nothing but porcelain clouds were visible.

It slithered below my feet in Snow’s aim where it pooled and conjoined till the mass grew tall enough to measure to her height. The mist slowly took the shape of a white serpent, it hissed as it slithered around Snow protectively.

A sense of threat touched the back of my neck, but my magic didn’t stir in response. To her, it never would. For her, always.

“Down,” Snow ordered, her voice vibrating in the air, turning to a spectral whisper that vibrated all around Myrdur. “I command you.”

At those words, the mountains shook, the gravel beneath me shivered and the misty serpent hissed one last time before blasting in a gust of wind and dispersing into thin air.

“I played a game when I was younger,” she started, her voice empty and so was her attention. “The first person I killed was a soldier who used to guard me. No older than fifteen. He was like an older brother to me. Father knew what he was doing by choosing him for my first kill. I learned two things that day. Dried blood is hard to get out of your nail beds and that the only thing between me and becoming my purpose was emotion.”

She continued, “The game started at dawn when I woke up. I’d rid myself of fear at dawn and learn hate, so every dawn I went to face my fears—Murdoc. I’d let him beat me till I was unconscious, and soon I was numb of fear. By sunrise I’d grown numb of pain, too. Hate grew like an overgrown weed, it didn’t even need much encouragement.”

My eyes drew shut in pain. I didn’t need to see to know the hurt. And I ached all over for her. “Snow.”

“Noon was a special time,” she said, staring into the distance. “If I wasn’t skinning animals in the kitchen, I was skinning traitors and enemies of my father’s. So, each noon I'd learn to convince myself that I was rid of feeling disgust, horror and empathy. I thought I was already the perfect soldier, but fear and pain and empathy are not the emotions that make you weak. No, father was right, they often made you stronger. Happiness, trust, care—those were true weaknesses. I spent my dusks, my twilights and my nights fighting them too.”

“That is not true.”

“Because I loved my mother, my siblings? Because they made me happy?” she asked, turning to me. “Because I cared?”

“I know you did.”

“Exactly my point, Your Majesty. I was never the perfect soldier, and I failed my father every day. They were my weakness and you got rid of them. You made me the perfect soldier, the one my father was never able to create. It took me many dawns, sunrises and noons to train fear, pain and empathy, but it took me one dusk, one twilight and one night to lose joy, trust, care and my happiness. It took me less to lose what I felt for that lie of yours.”

Her chest rose fast, and the thrum of her heartbeat matched the thunder that was gurgling above. “Are we to bargain, or do you still have another trick to play?”

“There will be terms,” I said.

She scoffed humorlessly. “I’ve never dealt a hand with you that I haven’t had to bargain for the loss of something, Obscur Asteri. Lay your terms and I will lay mine.”

“You will hold off your attacks on Adriata. I cannot help you while I have my hands tied in all four corners.”