A Crown of Cursed Hearts (Kingdom of Blighted Thorns #3)

5. Vexxion

5

VEXXION

I lived, if floating somewhere could be considered living. That meant Fury hadn’t killed Ivenrail. Or she had, and I was locked somewhere between faerie and whatever waited for us after we died.

If I was dead, why did the pain and anguish about losing the woman I’d love beyond this lifetime still stab through me like a jagged blade?

I swore I could hear her calling to me, telling me she needed me, that she loved me, that she’d wait forever as long as we could be together again. Yet a vast wall stood between us, one so tall and wide, I’d never be able to scale it.

That wouldn’t do. Nothing and no one would keep me from my fury. Rage burned through me, and I called my threads, lashing them against the wall. I blasted magic at it, even beat on it with my fists. But she remained on one side and I on the other .

“Fury,” I bellowed until my voice went raw and tattered, until I couldn’t find the strength to shout her name again.

I slumped on the ground and peered around, taking in a vast desert stretching around me in all directions. Nothing broke the desolate, scraggly wasteland of sand and tiny rocks and dirt other than a few gray leafless trees pointing starkly toward the sky in the distance and the enormous wall behind me.

An inky sky bled overhead, punctured with what looked like stars, but they couldn’t be. The dim, muted lights felt like dreams unspoken, those whispered by the drained who’d come here before me. Those who were banished to wander this realm forever.

While I’d never been to the ether before, I recognized it from what I’d read, books containing the experiences of those who’d been here and somehow found their way home. Tipping my head back, I leaned it against the wall that felt and looked like stone, but stone could be chiseled. It could be cut away and destroyed.

My magic couldn’t penetrate this blighted substance.

I could still feel her pleading with me to come back, to be with her once again. Her face filled my mind as anguish gnawed at my bones. This desolate place was a mirror of my pain, every bit of the cold, emptiness inside me. This was the man I became without her by my side.

If I knew my fury, and I knew her potential almost as well as my own, she would never stop trying to reach me. She’d cast the spell she’d used with the trapped creatures, over and over until she dropped from exhaustion. And after only a brief rest, she’d try again. She’d keep at it until she had nothing left to give. Even then, she’d scrape at the bottom of her well of power to find more to throw my way.

How could I do anything less than keep trying to reach her?

Rising to my feet, I walked beside the wall, my bare feet sinking into the sand that tried to suck me down into its hot, coarse embrace. I studied the wall as I walked, looking for a crack or anything unusual that might tell me that here, my magic might make a difference.

I found nothing, just smooth stone almost the exact same color as the sand beneath my feet, the same sand that stretched away on my left forever.

I could hear her crying. Picture her arms reaching out to me. If only I could open my eyes and finally see her clearly. I needed to tell her she didn’t need to worry any longer, that I would come back. That I’d never leave her again.

That would be a lie. Even if I could stretch my hand out far enough to touch her, it would slip from her grasp. I was doomed, and only one fate awaited me, the one I’d found here.

A low, blood-red light pierced the horizon, chasing away the vast blackness overhead, leaving only murky desolation behind. It wasn’t a sun. I didn’t believe such a thing existed in this realm, but the light did make it easier to see where I placed my feet.

Things . . . shifted beneath me as I walked. They coiled as if they’d strike, but so far, nothing had. How long before I couldn’t keep going? How long before I gave up and let the ground absorb me ?

Then, I’d become one of the lights peppering the heavens overhead.

Never. Giving up wasn’t in me, or I would’ve sunk into that void long ago.

I kept walking. I’d do it forever. The wall would end. I’d find my way around it and to her and then—

I spied something ahead and to my left, pinched on the edge of the wasteland far enough away it could be a mirage. It might be something sent to blind or confuse me. Yet it could be real. I sensed this.

I also sensed I needed to travel there if only to satisfy my curiosity.

Leaving the wall wasn’t drawing me away from my need to reach her. No force ruling this realm compelled me, but I followed a call from within me. Pacing out into the sand, aiming for it, was the reward for my persistence.

With each step, the ground pulled me down to my ankles, and the things waiting below touched me, their claws raking across my soles, their muffled shrieks pummeling my mind.

Turn back before it’s too late, they whispered in a voice meant to lull.

If I stopped, they’d consume the only part of me left. My body was not here. Only my soul.

These things craved it.

Nothing but pain waits for you in this direction.

“Shut up,” I muttered, tugging my feet from the drowning soil and striding faster.

I walked forever, long enough to lose track of time. Or there was no time in this realm. Only sorrow and pain and endless desolation. I didn’t turn back; I kept going, my pace picking up to a jog and then to a full-out run.

Sand, jagged with tiny blades, cut the bottoms of my feet. One more thing determined to slow me down, to make me return to the wall where I would walk until I fell in defeat. Then, they would take me.

The mirage did not get closer, but I did not falter. I kept running, bellowing out the name of my love like it was a spell that could chase away darkness.

As I ran, the world lightened with blood-red streaks clawing their way up into the sky.

My breathing raged in my chest, and my heart beat much too fast, but I did not falter.

Finally, the images grew larger. I was close. I could almost smell, taste, and hear whatever awaited me on the horizon.

The soil erupted around me, snake-like limbs snapping up into the air before falling to strike the ground. A creature roared and snapped its long fangs, gobbling up the sand and rocks and dirt as it scrambled toward me.

Something struck the bottom of my foot, and I gaped down as I raced faster, snarling as an endless maw sucked at the sand beneath me.

Pillars and smooth stone loomed ahead, a two-story, a crumbling structure that should not be here.

As the beast flung its limbs around by legs and bit down on my foot, I sent out my threads, snapping them at the pillars. They encircled one . . .

. . . and I used it to rip me from the creature’s grasp, yanking my body up onto the smooth slabs of marble scattered with sand sparkling red and orange.

I lay with my face pressed against the cold stone while the beast roared out its frustrated rage in the wasteland behind me.