by Welcome Cole
“I can’t prepare if I don’t know,” he whispered urgently, “He gave me so much, and in the same breath denied me so much more. I have to know! You have to help me see the truth!”
She eased back a pace. “No, I won’t do that.”
He watched her like she’d just slapped him for no reason. “What do you mean you won’t do it? You have to do it! I can’t see it without you! I can’t prepare if I don’t know.”
The dead women’s hushed voices murmured to her at the perimeter of her thoughts, rising gently but deliberately in her mind. They told her to deny him, to back away from him now, to divorce herself from his company before her own weakness compromised her.
Instead, she eased closer to him. She placed her hands on his face pulled him nearer. “Beam, the Father’s blocked your memories for a reason. You can’t know this memory. He’s protecting you, surely you see that.”
Beam’s face flushed. He tried to push back from her, but she didn’t release him. “It’s not right,” he said, his voice on the edge of terror, “I don’t give a good god—”
She slipped her hand over his mouth. “No. You need to have faith. You said the Father told you I’d be your strength when you need it most. How can it not be the truth? After all you’ve been through, how can you fail to trust him now?”
He stood there looking at her with red eyes, his mouth still sealed by her hand. His oteuryns shimmered in a distant light, like extensions of the God caeyl itself. He tried to speak, but she tightened her seal on his mouth.
“I don’t know why I’ve been given this ability,” she whispered to him, “I’m not a mage. I wouldn’t know my way around a caeyl if it handed me instructions. I don’t know what happened to me in that time I was dying from the venom. I think… no, I believe the caeyl did something to me while I was gone. I had queer dreams, dreams so real and yet so utterly foreign. I visited strange places in distant times. I saw things, wonderful things, terrible things. I saw… I saw you and… ”
She paused as her mind fell back to those ethereal images. It seemed a lifetime ago since their encounter with the beasts back in the tunnels, back when she thought Beam a savage and a brute, back when all she wanted to do before she died was to choke the life from him.
“What I’m saying,” she carefully resumed, “Is that I’ve changed. I don’t know why, and it doesn’t matter that I do. These gifts were given to me because they couldn’t be given to you. They were given to me because you can’t be trusted to own them alone. They were given to me so I can protect you.”
He again tried to protest, but she again tightened her seal on his mouth.
When it was clear he would offer her no further resistance, she slowly slipped her fingers from his lips and pulled him in closer. Placing her cheek against his, she whispered, “You only need to know this, Be’ahm: I serve at the pleasure of memory, at the pleasure of his memories. When your time of need comes, I’ll serve him exactly as he’s directed me to. I’ll be your strength. I’ll save you, even if from your self. I’ll save you so you can save us, I swear it under Calina’s heaven. I will be your shield.”
THE END OF BOOK TWO
THE BLOOD CAEYL MEMORIES