Authors: Rebecca Ethington
I tried to turn toward Talon, to move a little, but the lightness in my body had departed, leaving me with the heavy weight of exhaustion and residual pain. I knew at once I wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon.
A deep groan escaped my lips. The irritation of being trapped as well as being weak a death sentence. At the sound of my irritation, a relieved gasp filled the air around me, a gasp that was not mine.
My eyes snapped open in alarm at the sound, my heart beating a million miles an hour as they worked to adjust to the dimly lit space. The heavy buzz of agitated voices filled the air as my eyes went to the man who hovered above me, his cheeks stained with tears and long ropes of his hair pulled away from his face.
“You’re awake,” he gasped as the loud buzzing of voices disappeared into nothing. His lips twitched into a smile so rare I was sure no one had seen it in centuries.
I stared at him—at his eyes, his dimples, and the face that I had memorized hundreds of years before. My heart pulsed once in an emotion so strong it almost felt out of place given what I had left, what had happened, and the way my soul and heart and life had been split into two pieces of me.
Be happy, Wyn.
“Thomas.”
I had fallen asleep clinging to his hand, our fingers intertwined in a hold that was more friendship than passion. It was a grasp that was exactly what we both needed—a hand to hold, a reminder that someone was there.
When I woke, his hand was still there, the calloused skin rough and slightly sweaty from holding onto me for so long.
The room glowed with a few lanterns that were scattered over my desks and tables. The flashes of lightning blended with a slight orange glow, giving everything a haunted look and far too many shadows for my liking. Seeing Dennis DeYoung and the rest of Styx with half illuminated faces was a bit too much for me. Nothing should be allowed to mar his beautiful face, strictly speaking.
I stared at the poster as the abbey roared with the incessant thunder that the pained soul of the earth was reigning on us. I looked at all of them, at the necklaces that hung from the ceiling, and the brightly colored walls. My eyes moved from place to place as my mind slowly began to wake up. Everything that had happened over the last twenty-four hours came back so quickly it began to mash together.
Shifting my weight, I brought my hand to eye height. The shadows of the marks that were once so dark they looked like ink were now shadowed, making me wonder if I was seeing them properly, if I was remembering them the right way.
If I was remembering anything the right way.
Even through the ache in my body and the vivid imagery of a shadowed Talon standing before me, the reason we had come here slammed into me, my breath heaving as I gasped. I tried to sit up, although it became crystal clear it wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
“Wyn?” Thom’s tense voice ripped through my panic.
My eyes darted to him, narrowing dangerously as I tried to dispel the level of confusion I was having.
“I need to get to Ilyan,” I gasped, knowing I was speaking irrationally yet unable to stop it in my half-awake fog. “Tell him what happened … in Prague. What Edmund did.”
“He already knows.” Thom’s voice was full of regret, a dark cast moving over his features as he looked away from me, his hand tightening around mine. He sighed. “Sain told him last night.”
The tension in my chest left as quickly as it had come. I should have been happy that I had been spared that conversation, but I couldn’t be. Not with the way Thom stared into the darkness, his shoulders hunched and broken. Not with what I knew Ilyan had been forced to hear about Talon, Ovailia, and the city he had protected since he had first come into power and even before.
Thom sat beside me, lost in his own thoughts as he always was when he was brooding.
Part of me wished he would say something, to talk, to ask him a million questions, to dig into his soul and discover everything that happened over the past hundred and fifty years. However, there was another part that wanted to curl up in a ball, cry, mourn, and ask this seemingly unfamiliar stranger to leave.
And that was part of the problem.
I had thought I had it all figured out before in Imdalind when Sain and I had fought our way past Edmund’s army. I had thought I had managed to find a middle ground between the person I was for the centuries when I did Edmund’s bidding, when I smuggled information for Ilyan, and the person I had been for the last hundred years with Talon.
Nevertheless, there were too many parts of me now to have anything be that easy—the part that killed for sex and money, hunted, spied on my own people for centuries; the mother, the mourner, the lover; the part that loved Talon; the part that loved Thom.
Sitting here with Thom, in the room I had decorated with Talon, was making that abundantly clear in that irritating, “pretending REO Speedwagon is a decent band” kind of way.
I was sitting amongst band posters and brightly colored comforters, a life that felt unfamiliar, while staring at the man who owned my heart long before I had taunted the shadowed figure behind the tree.
I sat, looking at the way Thom’s lips twitched as they always had, seeing the bright blue of his eyes that were so much more expressive than Ilyan’s ever could be. I was having trouble finding the line between all the different parts and lives of me.
“I’m sorry, Wynifred,” Thom whispered into the dark chill of the room, his eyes not deviating so much as a millimeter from mine.
I jumped at his voice while the sky cracked with light again. My body ached at the quick movement, a groan escaping like a slow leak. Everything hurt.
While I was grateful for whatever Jos had done to save my life, it also seemed to be the equivalent of getting hit by a Mack truck covered in protruding knives. And probably a herd of deer following. I was sure, if I looked close enough, I would find a few hoof shaped bruises.
“Why?” I regretted the question the second I asked it. I regretted the way my voice snapped as it always had and the anger that flowed freely behind that one word.
I opened my mouth to apologize, to take it back, but Thom only smiled at me, his bright white teeth flashing in a straight line behind slightly chapped lips. I started at the response, my heart beating fast in confusion before it sunk in—the reason for his smile, and why my knee-jerk reaction seemed so comfortable to him.
It was me.
The me he knew, anyway.
The knowledge only made my stomach flip, my body shaking in exhaustion as I looked toward the faded poster I had purchased on the Fleetwood Mac world tour.
“They said you had changed.” Calm washed through me at the slight laugh in his voice, the familiarity seeping deep into my bones. “I’m glad to see it’s not too much.”
“I have changed.” My voice was distant as I my focus dodged from the faded poster to the goofy picture of Talon and I that had been framed in the 70s, back when every picture came out sepia toned and far too yellow. We looked like we had taken a bath in yellow mud, and it didn’t quite wash off.
I stared at that picture with the calm rhythm of Thom’s breathing the only sound in the room.
It was true. I had changed. There was no denying that. However, it was more than that. More than just someone growing up, learning more about themselves and how to survive within society.
“I had a different life … a hundred years…” My voice faded away as I looked from the picture back to Thom who still looked at me with unexplained awe in his eyes, as if I was back from the dead. Of course, I guess that was true no matter which way you spun it.
The thought sent a shiver of tension up my spine, picturing the image of Talon standing in the white shadows of my dream.
“Ilyan told me,” Thom’s voice cut through the dark as he shifted his weight, the old bed frame creaking under the movement. “Right after it happened, he told me about how you forgot everything, how you fell in love with Talon…”
“He fell in love with me, too.” The words were out before I could stop them, as if they had a life of their own and needed to be heard, as though I needed Thom to understand.
I did.
I needed him to understand.
Saying I had changed was one thing, but with our past, we couldn’t pick up where we had left off. There was no way that would happen.
“I’m not surprised. You’re easy to fall in love with.”
A laugh with a sound far too rich mixed with the smugness I always had. The parts blended together in a way that almost seemed psychotic to me. Thom seemed to think so, too. His hands tightened around themselves as he leaned away from me, as if he would run away from me at any moment. There was the reaction I had been expecting a minute ago.
The thought only made me laugh more.
“That’s rich, seeing as making people fall in love with me used to be the last thing they would remember.”
I let it flow—the haughtiness, the warning, the irritation that had been trying to fight its way out of me for the past few minutes. Memories of blood flowing down my hands came with it, more questions and confusion rising right alongside
I needed to destroy something, the heat of the fire magic rising to the challenge at once.
At least I still had that, I supposed. A strong desire to wring necks, strictly speaking. I was fairly certain it wasn’t a good thing, either.
“At least they had one good memory before they left.”
“False love is no good memory,” I snapped.
“I’m still in love with you,” he spoke as the sky rolled with sound. It was the power of the earth seeming to magnify his words, to make them seep into me and ignite something I had forgotten I still possessed.
I looked to him, my eyes wide as the words slammed into my chest, sucking my breath away into the chilly air, and the images of blood and death left with it.
I searched his face, his eyes, my focus running over old scars and the dreads that were quickly growing on me. Part of me was frantic to find the lie in his eyes, to have him break out into a laugh and declare his words only in jest. He held my gaze, instead, the warmth in his eyes wrapping around me so tightly that he himself might as well have been holding me.
I couldn’t move if I tried.
I needed to, though. I needed to move away.
I couldn’t let those words float between us with hope, commitment, and devotion on their backs like the lifeline I needed.
I couldn’t let him think that everything was the same.
It wasn’t.
Not anymore.
“That’s part of the problem, Thomas. Like you said, I’ve changed. Everything has changed.” I tried to keep my voice strong, to keep the same depth of the person he knew intertwined with each word, but the person I was faded into nothing as I wilted under the warmth he projected toward me.
I might as well have been singing a 1920’s love ballad for all the good my attempt did me. The 20s were a terrible time for music.
“Change is not always a bad thing, Wynifred. Sometimes, it has to happen to show us who we really are and set us on the right path.” He spoke as if my foolish attempt to push him away had been nothing more than batting at a fly.
Everything felt heavy as his words began to sink in, my already pained heart beating faster. I tried to project my pain into what he had said, project that agony and the loss that I was doing my best to keep hidden in the pit of my stomach.
Right then, it wasn’t doing any good, though.
I didn’t want this change.
I didn’t want Talon to die and say it was meant to happen, that it had to happen to set us on the right path. It upset me. I could feel the anger rising, Even if I knew it shouldn’t.
I knew that was not what he meant.
I clenched my teeth together as I looked at Thom and saw the man I had spent so many years with, whom I had cried against. I remembered Talon, the man I had bonded myself to, the man I had said goodbye to and watched disappear into a fog with a smile still on his face.
Be happy.
The anger vanished as the memory of Talon faded back into the dark recesses of my mind. Then the part of Thom’s words that I had so diligently ignored banged against my skull like a bass player on a sugar high.
Sometimes, change has to happen to show us who we really are.
So we can find ourselves.
I knew it was true, but it still didn’t mean I wanted it.
“Well, this change hurts,” I gasped, my voice breaking as I clung to the blankets that lay over me, the soft cotton that I was sure would still smell like Thom if I got close enough.
“I know.” Thom reached forward, his hand smothering mine in a heart stuttering motion that sent both uncomfortable tension and eager palpitations through me. “I know. To lose someone you love—”
“It’s more than that.” My voice was stronger as I pulled my hands away from him. “He was my mate. He was my other half. And I loved him as much I did Rosaline, as much as I did you.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It’s confusing trying to decipher if the love was real, if any of it was.”