The sun is not yet rising, but it is over now. I can hardly think what to feel now. I am very tired, and still angry, but mostly I am just numb. It is over, and Asoharith is dead, but how close I came to losing everything, indeed!
She struck where I did not think to protect. It was too horrible even to consider this loss, so I did not. I thought her safe in heaven, safe in her role as healer. But when one of her charges took a terrible fall, Brid did not stop to consider that it may not have been an accident. She simply went to ease his pain. I did not even know that she had gone.
But then Asoharith threw open the thread between us, and I felt Brid screaming.
I wonder now if it was this training that made me able to sense her pain so strongly. Having taught myself to connect my soul to Freya’s, have I learned to open myself entirely to those I love most? Or was it my connection to Asoharith that made me feel what she was doing?
It was the most horrible moment of my life. I felt the tearing and the hands that tore, the twist of a mouth that screamed and the hellish grin facing it. It was two very different souls, both desperately crying out to me for different reasons.
Freya felt it too, the waves of shock bursting from me and into her heart. Her soul lit like an explosion as my wings sprang wide. “Bring her to me,” she ordered.
I wasn’t certain who, precisely, she meant. It didn’t matter.
As all eyes turned to Freya, I leapt through the world and found where Asoharith had hold of Brid. She turned as soon as she sensed me, her long hand wrapped around Brid’s throat. It nearly wrenched my heart out of me to see the deep wounds on her chest and shoulders.
“Is this yours?” Asoharith asked. “Shall I tear out her throat?”
“I will tear yours,” I snarled, and I threw out my wings, which stretched farther than they ever had before, shrouding all of us in their light.
And then we were back in Esther’s yard, and Asoharith staggered back from Brid, shuddering from the brilliance flowing through me. I caught Brid in my arms as she fell, using my wings to shield her from any trace of Asoharith’s taint. Freya bounded across the yard to join me—and then she joined with me.
She slid into me, and my arms became hers, and her heartbeat was suddenly thundering in my chest. Once before we were aligned this closely, but while the urgency was the same, everything else was different. I could feel the heat of Freya’s flame, searing through me, moving into Brid, drawing her toward us.
Brid gasped and opened her eyes, looking up at us. We laid our hand alongside her cheek, and somehow together, we could touch her, could feel the warm of her soul, still strong even as she struggled for life.
“Show us how to do it,” we said, our voices ringing in unison.
Brid’s gaze sharpened on us both, and she took our hand and brought it to the deepest of wounds.
And then I felt myself stretched, drawn into a thread, thin and taut between the two of them, used to braid all three of us together into a white-hot cord of power. I know nothing more of what happened, for Freya was the force and Brid was the guidance and I was simply what held them together, and I have never been so very close to snapping.
I held, though. And a moment later Brid let us go, and she was glowing brilliantly bright, all traces of the wound gone from her soul. Only a moment had passed.
We got to our feet, fists clenched tightly, wings spread to their full extent. Now all that burned inside us was rage.
In a rueful echo, Salathiel was now holding onto Asoharith, who was nearly transparent with horror. The Elder’s very touch was draining her strength, and yet we knew that it was us she feared.
But she met our eyes, and she bared her teeth, and then we could feel her there between us, a parasite under the skin, a skewer under the nail. She was there, and her hand tightened around my heart, and she wrenched me away from Freya. It was agonizing, and the moment my soul was separate from Freya’s, exhaustion overwhelmed me, and I collapsed.
Freya fell backward, but her mother caught her, and on either side of her were George and Kara, aglow with determination. “Chew on this, bitch,” Kara snapped, throwing out a hand, and the blow knocked not only Asoharith to the ground, but also Salathiel. “Sorry, Sal,” Kara added, grimacing.
Salathiel winged upright with a grin. “It is my honor, sister,” she said.
George touched my arm, and energy rushed into me once again, and I surged to my feet. Asoharith was scrambling up, too, her eyes darting around, but she was utterly surrounded and there was no chance at escape.
I saw the instant that she gave up hope of life. The darkness fell into her eyes, and she drew her blades of blood and bone and flew at me.
Freya screamed, and the blood shattered, and the bone flew from Asoharith’s hand. I reached into the air and seized hold of the scream, a bolt of purest hot light, and I drove it straight into Asoharith’s heart.
We collided half an instant later, she falling into my arms, her hands soft now and shocked. For just a moment, I held her, and I looked into her face, and I saw Shannon.
All the pain and the horror had vanished, and I recognized the woman I had so loved and admired. Fierce and funny and yearning and snappish and brilliant and beautiful—all the things that Asoharith had twisted were laid straight again, and she was as she had been. She saw me, and she smiled, lifting one hand to press over my heart.
“Ha,” she said, and died.
The silence that fell was stunning. I knelt there with empty arms, staring at the place where my enemy had been, at what she had shown me in her last moment. Was it one last trick, meant to punish me for killing her? Or had there been more of Shannon surviving in Asoharith than I realized?
It was Freya and Brid who came to me after I could not say how long. Freya knelt beside me, and her eyes burned on the side of my face. “Ace, at least it’s over now,” she said.
“Yes,” I murmured. “It is over.”
Brid put her arm around me, and Freya leaned forward so that her brow touched mine. I felt their love and comfort, but somehow none of it warmed me.
“We must not let down our guard,” Salathiel called out to the others. “There was something else planned among Asoharith’s co-conspirators. Until we know what that is, we will continue to watch.”
I closed my eyes. More watching, more searching. In that moment, I couldn’t bear the thought of it.
“Asa’el, you needn’t stay,” Brid whispered to me. “Your part in this is done. Take time if you need it.”
“I started this,” I protested half-heartedly.
“And we will finish it,” Salathiel said, firmly but with warmth. “Go, Asa’el. Be to yourself for a while. You have done well; now rest, and trust those of us who have joined you in your fight.”
It had the ring of an order to it, but still I hesitated. I lifted my face to Freya, who smiled at me. In her eyes, I thought I saw a trace of myself, left behind from the moment when we had been one. I wondered if she saw something of the same in me.
It was that thought, as if some part of me were not raw and exposed and alone, but protected by none other than Freya, that made me able to stand up. “I will be back,” I told her.
“Take all the time you need,” she answered me.
And so I came here, to this safe place, this quiet corner of heaven where I have always been able to write and to think. I have never spoken of this place, where the clouds are soft between me and the stars, where the knowledge of the universe opens to me, and I can bring my own knowledge to the great store.
Even in this place, it has taken me many hours to find enough peace and calmness to write what has happened. On Earth it is night again, and Kara is just breaking out a bottle of wine she has been saving for the occasion. Even Freya is merry, though part of her worries for me.
I am glad for their relief, and in days to come I am sure I will feel it too. A cruel enemy has been destroyed, and now the world is safer for the people I love. But I do not think I will ever celebrate Asoharith’s death. For the sake of what she once was, what she could have been, and what she suffered, I cannot rejoice.
The place where she touched me still burns, a brand over my heart.
And it is growing hotter, sharper.
Such pain—I should call—
No, something is
wrong.
Someone is there, looking down at me, standing in a gap between the clouds.
There are no stars in that darkness.
My heart is searing,
as if a thread were tied around it, a thread of ice. And someone is coming up the thread—many someones.
“Hello, Asa’el. Thank you for the lift,” Neige says.
And from behind her
all hell
bursts forth.