And where was Marielle?
As the last strains of the horn faded away, the people – formerly statues – changed again.
They began to sing. It was a low, urgent song. A dirge, he thought. The sight of a thousand frozen people, unmoving, grey and frozen in time, but singing the same song together, sent shards of icy fear through his veins.
This was a disaster.
This was the end of the world.
But was it him thinking that, or was it Ram?
If they were waking, then any moment now the dragons would wake, too. Hundreds of them – an entire mountain range of them. And what would he do then?
Die. We will all die together. The world will burn! Burn! Burn!
Ram was ranting in his head as the light of the portal grew unbearably bright and it swelled to a full moon – a bright round circle. Strange currents swirled in the pouring water that streamed out of it like a dam bursting.
Tamerlan barely had time to gasp and then his boat slammed into Jhinn’s gondola and he trembled at the look of sheer awe in Jhinn’s face.
“Isn’t it amazing!” the boy gasped. His voice was full of joy. “She’s setting them free.”
Oh, sweet Legends!
You called? That was Lila. Free us Alchemist! Let us stop this!
But would they?
Freeing these dragons won’t free us. The only dragon I want free is the one holding my soul captive – and only if you replace my avatar. No harm. No trickery. Just a simple exchange. Doesn’t that seem pretty decent and honest compared to this madness?
He shoved her thoughts aside and leapt past Jhinn to the stairs mounting the tower.
The horn blasted again, and he flinched from it. His heart sank as he realized who it must be up on that platform. Who it must be who was destroying everything. But no, he didn’t dare believe it.
Whatever happened next would be horrific. He could see in his mind the people of the city finally free and walking as one to surround him, to rip him limb from limb.
He shivered, aghast and not able to stop himself from turning to see what the horn had done.
He froze.
The song died on the lips of the masses, a silence – heavier than before – descending over them. The person closest to him – a teenage girl at the base of the tower looked up at him and he bit back a scream.
She lunged forward and then mid-movement, she slumped as if she were a sail with the ropes slashed apart, falling to the ground in a heap. Behind her, another person fell, and another and another, like dominos across the city.
He gasped.
No!
Tamerlan spun and raced up the steps, taking them two at a time.
Please don’t be right. Please don’t be right! He hoped with all his heart that he was wrong about this, that he had misjudged, that he was somehow blinded to an enemy within their midst.
He turned the last step and saw her there, her lips parted and her eyes wide as if waiting for something.
“Sweet Marielle,” he gasped, his chest heaving as it tried to make up for all the breaths he hadn’t taken as he raced across a city to her side. “What have you done?”
There was a rumble from above them like the movement of rock on rock.
“What have you done?”
27: Betrayal
Marielle
She turned, shocked to see him there. She was almost finished. The dragons were almost free. And when they were, she would have to flee this place or risk being killed as they fled this world. The magic, though only an echo had already taken its toll.
Her vision had narrowed as the edges darkened and closed in. Her sense of scent had been so overwhelmed with the fullness of magic that she hadn’t smelled Tamerlan at all, didn’t smell anything even now. And the pain – the pain tore through her as if it meant to break her bones inside her body and grind her to dust.
“What have you done?” he asked, his face etched with betrayal.
“I had to make a choice,” she said, swallowing. Surely, he must understand. He’d had to make choices, too. He’d made choices that had destroyed cities. If anyone knew what that was like, wasn’t it him?
But then why did he look like she’d taken his other eye?
He fell to his knees. Grief and then anger whipsawing across his face.
“You’ve killed them all, Marielle. All those people. Children. Parents. People who gave themselves to stop these dragons from hurting anyone else – and you threw that all away and destroyed them. How could you?”
A loud hiss like a waking snake filled the air and then a beam of light – bright as noon but narrow and shifting opened to them. The world seemed to flicker from shadow to light as she tried to focus on Tamerlan’s face. The dragons were waking above the city. And they’re movements were opening up the cave to the sky.
“I had to,” she said, pleading for him to understand. “I didn’t have a choice!”
“Of course, you had a choice! You could have not blown the shell!” His words were angry, brutal. Fury made his eyes black, his jaw thrust out with hurt.
“It was justice! These dragons were victims, too!” she pled.
“They killed people!”
“They were kidnapped and brought here. They were just trying to get home.” She was crying now. Angry that he didn’t understand. Disappointed that the only person who knew what she’d just gone through somehow didn’t understand. “I had to weigh it out. I had to think about the injured parties – and who might still be injured, and I had to choose the most just choice I could. Sometimes the Real Law doesn’t line up with what we think should happen.”
“Those are just stupid excuses to justify what you did.” Pain swallowed his expression, leaving it drawn and agonized. He wrapped his arms around his head as if he could block out the sight and sound of her. “You’ve ruined everything. You’ve freed them all! Marielle, you just destroyed the world! After everything – every sacrifice.” He was gasping now and she almost thought he might be close to sobbing. “Marielle, I gave up my eye!”
“I know.” Her voice was small. The light was growing brighter as the dragons woke and began to rise from where they had completely encompassed the city.
The sounds of their movements were so loud that she had to strain to hear Tamerlan. Was that Jhinn calling to her? It was so faint she wasn’t sure if it was her imagination.
“I gave up my sanity.” He lowered his arms so that his hands were planted firmly on the ground, his head hanging down so that it looked like he was going to retch.
Marielle sank to the ground in front of him, on her knees now, too.
“They’re going back to their world, Tamerlan. They aren’t staying here. We can send them all back to where they came from and all this – this killing and death and blood magic – it will end.”
“How do you know?” he wasn’t looking at her. It was hard to hear his voice.
“They told me.”
“You’re madder than I am, Marielle.” He choked out a humorless laugh. “Don’t you know, the voices in your head are all liars? Mine are. They lie to me all day long. But I don’t listen to them.”
“Don’t you?” Sometimes she didn’t know if it was him or his voices that made the choices. Sometimes she didn’t know if she knew him at all. Even though she’d been in his mind. Even though she’d seen him as a child. Even though she thought she might be falling in love with him.
“I don’t –”
His voice faltered like he wasn’t sure, either. She knelt on the ground in front of him as the noonday sun rushed to fill the dead city. Snow was drifting down in tiny diamond flakes, swirling around them as the shadows – not clouds, she was sure, but dragons – swirled above.
“At some point, you have to trust someone.”
“Not dragons,” he spat. “Not Legends.”
She reached for his face but he jerked away, shoving her hand to the side. She flinched, feeling the sting of rejection so deeply that it cut through t
he magic scent around her. Suddenly, she was smelling him – golden and addictive, honey and cinnamon and shattered hope in blueberry blue and aching failure in bitter mustard yellow. And all of that was streaked through with rage that smelled of pitch – but that rage wasn’t him. It was tinged with Elderflower – with insanity and Legend. She could almost imagine what he would be like if he’d never smoked the spice and opened the Bridge. He’d be all the good things she loved about him and none of this brokenness.
But as his lower lip trembled in the bright light, as he shied away from her touch like a wounded animal that very vulnerability made him so human – so precious that she wanted to cup him in her hands like a bird with broken wings and keep him tucked away safe.
“Tamerlan?” he flinched at her voice, shaking his head. Bitter tears leaked from his eyes and the scent of Elderberry was strong.
“I killed so many to keep them down. I shed so much blood. When I found them here, I knew it had to be that way. That I’d been right to do that.”
Did he mean himself or Ram the Hunter?
“It was all the right choice. I made the right choice!” He was yelling now, slamming his fist into the rock again and again until the knuckles were bloody.
“Tam, stop,” Marielle said her own lips trembling now. She’d done this to him. He’d been balancing on the edge of sanity and it had been her choice that sent him hurtling over the edge. “Please, stop.”
“You ruined it all,” he looked up now, his hurt, trembling lips cutting her to the quick. “With one choice you made it all for nothing! All those deaths! All those lives.” He wiped his face with his hand, leaving a trail of his own blood across it. “All that blood on my hands.”
He looked at his fist like he didn’t know why it was a battered mess. He was shaking his head. No, all of him was shaking.
The world was shaking.
A wind tore across the platform, sweeping the light snow across them so fast that the ice particles stung her cheeks and she had to close her eyes against them. When she opened them, Tamerlan hadn’t moved except to grit his teeth. He was shaking all over, shaking his head wildly as if he couldn’t compose his thoughts.
“Nothing. Nothing. Nothing,” he muttered and with every word he said, her heart seemed to shred.
She’d thought she’d made the right choice. She’d been sure of it.
Until now.
She looked up into the sky, at the swirling dragons high above. There was no more mountain over the city. The mountains all around it seemed low and jagged. She could no longer pick out tails or heads or legs.
But they weren’t flying away, were they? The portal was still there – hard to see in the noonday sun. The waters still gushed from it like a flood. But the dragons were in the sky, circling, with no sign of leaving the world at all.
A chill of fear ripped through her and she gasped, trembling now, too.
Had she chosen wrong?
Had she truly destroyed the world?
Captain Ironarm had said that it was these moments – when you worked outside the written law trying to grasp a hold of the Real Law that an officer found out who they truly were. Maybe she had meant that Marielle would find out she was a monster.
“I can’t,” he said, choking on his own words. “I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t.”
He was gasping in breaths so fast that she thought he was going to pass out, spasming as if something inside him was rebelling. His forehead was pressed against the cold stone, his tears slipping across the rough surface.
She bit her lip. She didn’t know how to fix this. She just knew that she had to because the idea of going on without him was unthinkable.
“Tamerlan,” she said gently.
He ignored her, gasping as if he couldn’t get enough air.
“Tam,” she put her hand on his shoulder and he shook it off violently. It hurt to be rejected like that ... again.
Especially now that she realized something she’d been trying to ignore. She was utterly in love with this tortured man.
Maybe she had been for a while now.
If he truly went mad ... she couldn’t think of that. She had to hold it together.
“Listen to me, you thick-headed fool! You made these decisions, too. You made these choices, too. You sent people to their deaths! You did that.”
He looked up at her with haunted eyes.
“And I pay every day for it.” His voice was rough over lips thickened with emotion. “All I ever wanted was to keep you safe, Marielle. All I ever wanted was to keep this,” he tapped his own chest. “From happening to you. To keep you sane in a world tearing apart with madness. To keep you whole when I’m splintering apart. Don’t you see? It’s all been for you. Every bit of it from the first time I fought Etienne’s guards to rescue you. Every sacrifice. Every death I’ve caused was all for you.”
She swallowed.
“And it wasn’t enough,” he choked on the end of his words. He was still fighting some internal battle, still wild in his eyes and scent.
Another gust of wind threatened to knock them over, Marielle swayed, blown across the pillar on her knees until she almost tumbled over the edge. Hands reached out of nowhere, snatching her from the brink and pulling her in a tight embrace.
Tamerlan held her in arms thick with muscle, tucking her in tightly to his chest as the winds battered him.
“Why save me, Tamerlan, when you hate me so much? When I’ve ended your world?” she asked as she braced against the wind. She wasn’t even sure if he could hear her.
“Hate you? Aren’t you listening to me? This – all of this was for you. Does that sound like hate? But if you want it to be hate. If you want me to leave you, I will go.”
“No!” Her tone was harsher than she intended. “No.”
He pulled his cloak around her, tucking her in even tighter so they could look at each other without the wind blinding them.
“There isn’t much of me left, Marielle. I can see myself peeling away layer by layer. I can’t tell sometimes if it’s me or them that’s left. I can’t tell. You asked me to trust. You should know by now – the only person in all the world I trust is you.”
“Then you should trust that I chose the right path.”
“Right won’t save you from the guilt or the nightmares. It won’t save you from crumbling inside.” His voice broke for a moment. “I wanted to keep you from that.”
“You aren’t a god,” she said gently, reaching up to stroke his face. He didn’t flinch away. “Not even a Legend. You can’t save me from having to make choices, Tamerlan Zi’fen. You can’t save me from the consequences.”
“You’re right, I can’t.” He sounded broken when he admitted it. He was so young when his lower lip trembled like that, when the fear in his eyes shone through, when his overwhelmingly attractive scent stole away all her inhibitions and masks and opened her up to his words so that every one seemed to mold her into the shape of them. “I can only offer you what I have to give – the last shreds of this miserable soul, the last tatters of this broken heart, the last pathetic words of this stuttering tongue.”
“I take them all. Every one,” she said, solemnly, like it was a vow. “I’ll never say no to you, Tamerlan. That’s my promise. I’ll take all your shreds and tatters and someday I’ll help you weave them together. Somehow.”
WE FLY.
The dragon words in her mind startled her. She’d forgotten there was anyone but her and Tamerlan.
SEND THE REST AND SEAL THE PORTAL. DO NOT FAIL.
She swallowed. “Will you look at something with me?”
“Yes,” he whispered, pressing his lips to her hairline. “Will you forgive me?”
“For what?”
“For everything?” His voice cracked.
“Yes.”
“Forever?”
“Yes.”
She kissed his lips, gently then deeper until she felt like her heart was tangling with his in knots that couldn’t
come undone. She pulled away after long minutes, gasping. Her desperate reluctance to keep going was mirrored in his eyes.
She asked again, “Will you look?”
He nodded, but his gaze was locked on her, like a starving man watching food just out of reach. She pulled the cloak aside, blushing as his intense gaze never left her.
She looked out and up. The winds tore at her and the snow shredded her skin – made strong and violent from the passing of dragon after dragon over their heads as the dragons dove one by one into the portal.
“Look,” she said, with a ghost of a smile on her face.
He tore his gaze from her for long enough to look up and the stunned hope on his face made her heart soar.
“This promise,” she said, “was kept. The voices in my head weren’t lying to me.”
They were silent a long time, just watching, watching, watching as the dragons left their world.
“Then it’s over?” he asked. “All over?”
“Not yet. There’s more that needs to be done.”
“What?” His gaze watched her with obsessive hope. She felt a tingle in her belly as she realized what that was – love. Love from a man whose gorgeous scent was tangled with madness and fury.
“I can’t tell you what we’re doing next, Tamerlan. Not with those Legends in your head. You’re just going to have to trust me. And you’re going to have to help.”
He was nodded and he tried to smile – though his smile was as broken as he was. “All my tatters, Marielle. They’re all yours.”
Epilogue
Tamerlan
Tamerlan watched as the last dragon from the mountains dove through the portal, seeming to almost swim into the current of the waters still pouring out of it.
Wrong! This is all wrong! Ram screamed in his mind. He hadn’t stopped raving since the first dragons began to plunge into the portal. But shouldn’t he be glad about this? It was ridding the world of some of the dragons. But not all. Never all. You will still have to deal with the ones on the plains, and for that, you will need to make avatars. And you will start with the little witch who blew that shell.
Bridge of Legends- The Complete Series Page 78