Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 19

I don’t stay long enough to see who it is.

I jump.

The fall is simultaneously quicker than breath and longer than life.

In my frantic escape I'm ill prepared for the brutal hardness of earth as it meets me. I collapse onto my front, something in my left ankle popping. My pack breaks my fall on my front, saving my face from the impact.

Run.

I see them all, like I see the world before me: Mariana, her frantic eyes and fluttering movements saving me, hands kneading bread, too-full sacks of meat, and that flaming hearth with a wizened old woman sitting beside it, saving me. They all saved me.

I grab my pack and stumble to my feet, my ankle giving out a bit under any pressure.

Gritting my teeth, I hobble forward—faster and faster with every step. Muffled cries leave my mouth with every shooting pain .

The lightest of thumps breaks the sounds of my flight as my pursuer lands on the ground behind me.

“Alyxara, stop,” her rich voice says. I should have known—nobody else is made of shadow in the way Elva is.

My footsteps come faster, every step punctuating the chant in my mind of unpayable debts, of inescapable responsibility.

A gentle but firm hand grasps my arm. I whip around to the side, landing hard on my bad ankle. I gasp in pain and try to jerk my arm from her unyielding grasp.

I try to reach for any power left. There are no candles, no trees or plants. Elva’s energy is firmly behind a wall. I reach for my own energy, hoping it’s enough.

All I get are frosted puffs of breath and less energy than I started with.

I continue my struggle, pleading, “You have to let me go. You have to let me do this. I promise, Elva, I won’t put you at risk. You of all people have to understand, these are my people.”

“I’m sorry. I was given an order.” Elva’s voice is as steady as the earth. Effortlessly subduing me, clasping my arms to my sides from behind and holding me in place.

All fight flees my bones. I can never win a battle against this woman, this ageless warrior who walks between worlds. She only has one soft spot.

“You could help me. There must be some left, they have to be wandering Wynedd. We—we would just help them find somewhere safe. We could be back here or in Raith in a matter of weeks. It’ll just be a detour. These people have worth. They have lives to live, however brief in the scope of yours.”

There’s a moment of silence before she rebuts.

“Do you think there is any corner of this realm that is safe?” Her voice is cold stone. “I would help you, girl, but what you ask is impossible. Whoever made it out of that blaze will have enough grit and cunning to save themselves. There is no amount of putting yourself in harm’s way that will sooth this ache. None. You just learn to live with it.”

A laugh so cold comes in the sound of my voice. I sound like a Crow, a Fomorian.

“Is that what you’re doing? Living with it? It seems to me that you have all the power and ability to help people, yet you do nothing. You wander these lands, searching for what? A way back to your doomed homeland? What are you living for? There are people right here who are living under the thumb of the same people who tore your word apart and you do nothing to stop them from doing the same to my people. You’re all cowards.” It ends on a sob and a weak thrash of my shoulders. Hopeless fury. Fury at them, fury at the Crows. Fury at myself for not being strong enough to save them yet.

Another voice, seeped in a coldness I had hoped never to hear again, comes from behind us, “We do what we can, Alyx.”

Fionn, bathed in moonlight, steps into my field of view. In this moment, I hate him.

Why do I want so desperately for him to hold me?

Through the haze I recall what Elva had said first.

“You were given an order?” I look at her over my shoulder.

I meet her midnight eyes. She nods once, then turns a cold look to Fionn, releasing her grip on me.

“Do you think I don’t know you, Alyx? Did you think that you could fool me so completely with pretty words that I would think you had just dropped it?” Flat apathy is all he is made of as he runs his blade over the palm of his other hand. “I meant what I said earlier. I meant all of it. But it seems you did not hear me when I said that I would not allow anyone to get in my way.”

“I told you; I would die before I said anything to anyone about you!”

Pointless—it’s pointless to keep trying. I’ve lost my opportunity.

“I cannot allow that either.” He’s just the leader of the Fianna now. Not Fionn, the man who kissed me sweetly only minutes ago.

“Why? Why! It’s my choice.” I’m sobbing, unable to maintain chilled anger.

“I mean what I say, Alyx. Always. Even when you have no qualms about lying.” He doesn’t look at me anymore.

I don’t have any room to think about that. It’s all taken up by screaming, helpless fury. I feel like a caged animal.

“So what, we just keep training? Keep wandering? Get on a ship to fucking Ashvynd and leave everyone here for dead until they inevitably reach there, too?” I ask, throwing my arms to the sky.

“We will reassess your training, considering your willingness to use it against us.”

“What?” I ask, aghast.

“We don’t even know what you are. Much less what you’re capable of.”

That blow hits harder than anything he’s said up to this point. I suspect he wanted it to. That perhaps I had hit him just as hard with my escape attempt after his declarations.

I just nod and look back at the sky. Cruel stars on an early summer night. How they watch me make a fool of myself over and over. Watch me fail over and over.

I give one succinct nod, unable to form words. I’ve lost this battle—completely and utterly .

I walk back to the inn.

When Fionn shows up in my room after a while, I don’t speak to him.

Words don’t exist to me anymore. They’re all gone. Used up.

“You won’t be leaving my sight anytime soon,” he says as he settles into the bed.

I lay down on the floor, its familiar hard boards giving some pathetic comfort.

He snorts, thinking I’m being petty, making a point. I wish it was that. But the thought of feeling his heat at my back, accidentally brushing his skin in sleep… It’s suffocating.

So I sleep on the ground.