He grunted noncommittally, squeezing her fingers as if to reassure himself that she was still there.
They hadn’t been this close in months, and the last time they had been, she had torn off his arm. Yet his skin hummed where it touched hers.
They stood in silence for a while, gazing upon the destruction she had wrought. Then she squeezed his fingers back.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m glad I found you.”
She gave him a ghost of a smile.
“Me too.” The words were quiet, and her sincerity caught him off guard. “You look …” she looked him over, then trailed off.
“Terrible?” he suggested.
“Changed. I mean… Good. I was going to say good.”
He frowned.
“You don’t.” Though her face and body were healed of the wounds and burns she had suffered on their journey together, he saw the shadows under her eyes, the tension between her shoulder blades even now. Her hair was regrown, but cropped short as though she had simply lopped it off where it got in her way. She radiated a constant vigilance, but the harshest difference was the glossy black eye that stared back at him along with the stormy gray one. The effect was disconcerting.
“Your eye? What happened to it?”
“I lost it. The Blade replaced it.” She shrugged. “It’s complicated.”
She too was changed.
“What about your arm?” Her hand ran along the black ink, and he shivered. “Your tattoos are gone.”
“I … there was … it’s also complicated.”
She snorted. “We aren’t very good at this whole open communication as a couple thing, are we?”
“It’s new. We’ll get better at it with more practice.”
With a wave of her hand, she plucked a shovel from thin air, then handed him a second, identical one in a similar motion.
“Here, help me bury the dead then, just like every normal couple.”
“I think you and I will never achieve normal.” He stabbed the shovel into the red earth. “In fact, I aim not to.”
She threw a shovel of soil from the mound onto the bodies in the trench. Then another. Then another.
“You gonna stand there all day and just watch me?”
“In case you missed it, I’m lacking an arm, so shoveling isn’t really my forte.”
She straightened and leaned on her shovel, looking him over.
“Why?”
“Why am I lacking an arm?” he asked incredulously.
“Why did you come?”
“You want to discuss this now? I thought you wanted to bury the dead.”
He took up his shovel, rammed it into the mound as though it were a sword, and tipped its contents into the trench, letting the red soil cascade over the black iron. Then he hacked into the mound again.
She pointed a finger at the mound and with a rumble it poured itself into the gaping grave. Within moments, the trench was filled in, dust rising around them in a cloud.
He choked and coughed and briskly walked out of the ochre mist around him, arm held before his mouth and nose, hawking up blood-colored spit as the dust coated everything, inside and out.
Nora followed nonchalantly, her shovel over her shoulder. She stood by him seemingly oblivious to the ochre dust gathering on her hair and shoulders while he coughed and wheezed and coughed some more.
Together they waited for the dust to settle enough to see each other clearly again.
“You could have done that anytime?” he rasped.
She nodded.
“Why didn’t you?”
She closed one eye—the black one—and squinted at the vultures circling in the sky above.
“Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you have to. I guess it seemed more honest to do it the old-fashioned way.”
“So you have it under control, then? The power of the Blade?”
“Ah. We’re back to control. Just like the good old days on our trek across the Plains.” She gave him another ghostly smile. “Yes. I have myself under control, Master. And you?”
“Me?”
“I’m heading back to Shinar. You know what happened there last time. I have some unfinished business with the Queen. What about you? Would you say you have self-control, Diaz?”
He tensed slightly, took a deep breath and was about to launch into long-winded explanation of the meaning of self-control when he caught himself falling back into his old self.
He shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not important.”
She cocked her head at him, then turned back to watch the birds.
She spat a gob of crimson onto the ground.
“See those birds? Vultures. They’re everywhere I go and they’re annoying as fuck. Look at them! Flying around and around. Circling, waiting for death. I hate them.”
Her features were suddenly distorted, as though she were possessed by an angry spirit, and her face darkened. Her hair hung over her light eye so that only the black one showed, and Diaz remembered his dream of the deep sea chasm and the huge black eye opening beneath him, drawing him in.
His breath hitched.
“Nora!”
“I hate them.” The eye narrowed on the birds. “They should die.”
“Nora, don’t!”
“Watch them die,” she whispered and her voice echoed with many other whispers crawling out of the darkest pits of hell.
Panic seized him as one of the vultures dipped.
“Nora, no!”
The bird spread its wings and flew its circuit again, gradually swooping lower and lower, lured by the carrion scent that hung in the air with the swirling dust motes.
Nothing happened.
He met her level gaze, and was shaken.
She laughed softly.
“You should have seen your face,” she teased, then sobered. “I have myself under control,” she repeated lightly. “And you’re wrong. You are important. To me.”
He felt the heat rise to his cheeks, and fumbled for a response.
“But that’s not why you’re here, is it?” she prompted.
“I’m here by your side because this is where I want to be,” he said warmly. “Because this is where I feel most myself. Because I knew that sooner or later you would turn to Shinar, and like you, I too have some unfinished business with the Queen. But yes, there is another reason on top of all that. The Blade, Suranna—we are part of something larger, an imbalance in the world that needs to be set right in order to stop the cycle that was put into motion in days of old, long before mankind, long before the wights even. The gods turned on their mother and we have been stuck in a repetitious cycle ever since. That has to stop.”
“Tell me,” she said.
They walked towards the Temple of Fire for the rest of the day, and on their way he told her everything he had witnessed and done on Nessa, even the parts where he wasn’t sure they really happened that way.
“A connection between all three kinds that is older than the gods? Sentient water? Fascinating.” Nora’s brow was furrowed with concentration and for a moment Diaz thought he saw an echo of her twin, Owen.
“It is fascinating, acquiring all this knowledge about the ancients,” he said. “However, while it would certainly have merit to pursue other traces of this lost knowledge for the rest of one’s life, I realized that someone should do something about Suranna influencing the connection through the divine treasure she has amassed.”
“You said you knew that I’d deal with it sooner or later.”
“Yes, but I couldn’t be sure it would be you or the Living Blade. I wasn’t sure you’d make things better or …”
“Much worse,” she finished his sentence for him, face pinched.
“Yes.”
They walked a few paces in silence while Nora seemed to mull over his revelations.
Dusk fell. Then night.
And still they plodded on in amicable silence, steal
ing glances at each other, and smiling when caught, walking hand in hand, arm brushing against arm, and it felt … good to simply be together this way, to share their journey. Under the moon, the desert held every shade of bone-white through grays to a royal blue. The silvery light let the shadows of the candlewood plants appear like long, thing cracks in reality.
After he had stumbled twice, he called for a rest, and they nestled into a space between two rocks.
He sat down and stretched out his legs with a small groan of relief. She crouched next to him, scanning the horizon, her black eye reflecting the starlight.
“I remember when you were the one who stumbled on wearily behind me,” he said, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm. “Now the roles have been reversed. Aren’t you tired?”
“No,” she answered, making sure she did not look at him directly. “I don’t tire. I don’t weaken. I don’t need food or drink or sleep for days on end.” She turned her head his way, her gaze inscrutable. “Ask me how I know.”
The pain in her voice broke over him, and he held out his arm wordlessly. She crawled into the tight spot between the rocks with him, and he put his arm around her shoulders while she rested her head against his chest.
He struggled for a moment to stay awake, to talk to her more, to tell her that the reason he had sought her out, though unsure of what she truly was, was that no matter what else happened, he knew his place was by her side. That meeting her had awoken in him the desire to be more himself instead of the sum of expectations everyone else around him and he himself had. That for a long time, he had merely survived, living his life from day to day, uncaring whether he would die the next day. Death had seemed like a release.
And yes, now there was pain. Now there was fear. Now he had something, someone to lose, and he had lost her, and so himself.
And now he knew how much better it was to be alive this way; well, there was no going back. He’d stay by her side for as long as he could. As long as she let him. Until the very end.
But he fell asleep before he could say all the words, content to have her pressed against him, listening to his heart beat for her.
Chapter 36
He woke to whispering.
“Who knows?” A woman laughed softly. “Maybe he’s right. The world really has grown crooked.”
“Crack and break and wreak and snap,” another hissed.
“How would we know?” A third whisperer asked, her voice unsteady. “How do we know what’s the right thing to do?”
“Hello?” Diaz shifted and the voices fell silent. A heavy weight pressed down on his chest, and for a moment, thought he saw black shapes scurry away into the night.
“Hello.” Nora spoke quietly, raising her head from his chest, and the weight lifted. “Did you sleep well?”
“I thought I heard something just now.”
She stiffened.
“What did you hear?”
He hesitated to speak the truth.
“An animal perhaps?”
She laughed softly—exactly like the first whisperer had—nestling deeper into his side.
“No animal would dare come near. I have put the fear of the Living Blade in them.”
The cold night wind blew through the cracks in the pile of rocks they had cowered behind. They were all alone with the wide expanse of the heavens rotating slowly above them. He didn’t say more, but pulled her even tighter towards him.
“Diaz?”
“Yes?”
A pause. She licked her lips.
“It’s a bit chilly. Do you need a fire? I can make one and keep it going until morning. If you’d like.”
“I’m fine.” He tipped his head and rested his forehead against hers. “Nora,” he said, her name aching in his heart. His voice had a raspy quality to it, but he felt some of her tension fall away with the sound of her name in his mouth.
He wanted to kiss her. Longed for it. Her breath warm and moist against his lips.
“I’m scared,” she said, her lips brushing against his.
“Of what?”
“What if I hurt you? Again. I—I couldn’t bear it.”
He thought about this, gazing deep into her mis-matched eyes.
“We have already hurt each other,” he said, slowly, softly, savoring her nearness. “And yet, look, here we are. Both of us. Together.”
She laid a hand on his chest as she retreated inwards, grappling with herself, with the many selves trapped inside of her, and he could feel her heart racing, feel the energy crackling through her, through him. Her body sparking against his, igniting them both with heat.
One leg slid between his, her chin tilted upwards, lips parted.
“Telen,” she said, halfway between a whisper and a gasp. “I need you.”
He kissed her, then, and did not hold back.
When he had imagined a kiss before, it had been a gentle opening, a subtle touch, tender and controlled.
But this—this was different.
The brush of her lips against his made him hunger for more. He wanted her, he desired her, he craved her. He was so tired of running away from his life, running without sense and direction, and so gave himself over to running toward her with all the strength he could muster.
And she caught him.
Returned his kiss. Deepened it, a moan escaping from his lips.
Her arms around his neck, pulling him over her, pressing her body into his. He caught himself on his elbow, hovering over her breathless. She reached up and caressed his face, running her fingers across his brow, down his cheekbone, her fingernails opening his lips. His hips cut into hers as she squirmed out of her loose trousers.
“Nora,” he rasped into her ear, running his tongue along the soft skin of her throat while her hands slipped beneath his shirt, fingertips scratching his sides, across his back, searching for something, exploring him.
Her breath hitched as he pinned her against the ground and her nails dug into his nape, into his skull. She sank her teeth into his bottom lip, drawing a little blood as it cracked and tore under the onslaught.
He heard her give a nervous, wicked laugh, and still he kissed her, hard, deep, because he needed to, because he wanted to. Gods, he wanted to.
He kissed her until the cold night fell away and their bodies sang with heat, until her fire finally burned up all the fear and the anger and the sorrow in his chest, until he could breathe again, freely.
He kissed her until his body ached, until she broke upon him again and again, the sound of her cries of pleasure ringing throughout his body, tingling down his spine.
And after, when he thought she was done, as heat blazed inside her, he looked down at her, for a long, searching moment, as something rose inside of him that he couldn’t hold in much longer, their bodies trembling—even then he bent down to smother her mouth once more.
And finally let go.
Chapter 37
They lay pressed together beneath his coat, her back against his chest, his arm looped around her. The intense heat of the moment was gone, replaced by a pulsing, steady warmth, though their breath still came uneven. He brushed his lips against her jaw, planting yet another kiss, thinking he’d never tire of tasting her. He was rewarded by her small shiver of pleasure.
She had propped her head on her one arm, and held his hand intertwined with hers over her heart.
Her fingers played with his, the black ink in the moonlight a stark contrast to her light skin.
“I tried to kill myself,” she started, her words faltering. “I mean … I tried to destroy the Blade. That’s how it’s always worked, right? Someone would be sacrificed to reforge the Blade, its wielder would gain untold power to change the destiny of the world, but in the end, it’d take the wielder’s sanity and they’d take their own life. That’s how it always started all over again, whenever someone set out to find the Blade, regardless of the cost.”
He said nothing, letting her speak.
“I crawled into the desert
to die of heat and thirst, but it just kept me going. So I threw myself into a ravine and lay there for days, racked with pain as the Blade slowly mended my broken bones. But I didn’t die.”
He squeezed her fingers.
“I think something went severely wrong when Dalem originally forged the Blade, maybe there was something in his blood or in Scyld’s blood or in the blood of her child … I think it has gone far beyond its purpose and is confused by all the shards and fragments of all the people it has connected with in all the times it has been remade. And now, us. Owen and me. Our twin blood has led to wielder and Blade becoming one and the same. For the first time ever, the Blade knows mortality. It reckons that if I die, it will probably die with me, but it’s far more petrified of being abandoned.”
Her voice trembled a little, and she fell silent for a while, their hearts beating as one.
“Do you still seek death as a release?” he asked, watching the sunrise paint the horizon light blue and gold.
Her chest rose and fell a few times, and he thought, despite her words to the contrary, she had fallen asleep.
“No,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to die. But I’m scared of the future.”
“Why?”
She moved a little, so that she could look him in the eye.
“I’m about to confront the power of Shinar, and I’m not scared of death at Suranna’s hands because the Blade is alive as it never was before, and it will not let me die. But what then?
“What if all our plans succeed, all our hopes prove true? What if I kill Suranna and destroy her Temple, disperse her cult, root out the very memory of her name? What if I bring down every godsdamn temple in this world, and set your ancient sentient water thing free to flow wherever it wants, and everything becomes what we want it to become—what then? In a hundred years time, I will still be here and you will be with me. But in five hundred years? A thousand? What if I can’t die and have to watch you grow old and die?”
Her hand caressed his cheek again, and he kissed her passing fingers.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly.
They lay next to each other for a another hour or so, until the sun had fully risen and had started its journey across the sky. They rose and dressed, and she helped him fasten his laces and buckles, without any sense of awkwardness.
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