Page 11 of HeartTorn (WarBride #2)

ILSEVEL

I sit upright in the saddle, gripping a handful of unicorn mane, as Taar strides away from me and climbs that slight rise in the terrain to where a sword protrudes from the earth. He takes hold of the hilt, draws it free, staring at it with an expression such as I never would have believed possible on the face of one so fearless. He looks as though he’s seen a ghost.

Elydark paces underneath me. The soul-song between him and his rider is alive with tension. It’s dark and elusive, and had I any choice in the matter, I would simply shut off my awareness of it, go back to the woman I was mere days ago, before I’d ever heard the song of a unicorn.

No sooner does that thought cross my mind, when a sudden cacophony of sound bursts in my head like a clap of thunder. I nearly scream, but choke on the sound when Elydark reacts in the same moment. Rearing, he tears at the air with his hooves, and only the fact that I’d already latched hold of his mane keeps me in the saddle. He comes down hard, jarring all the breath out of me.

Before I have a chance to make sense of what has happened, he turns his great head about, puts his horn down, and gallops. Somewhere in the back of my awareness, I hear Taar’s voice calling out after us, but I can’t pay attention to that. Nor can I offer any but the faintest heed to the sudden tightening about my forearm, the painful stretch of the velra as I am forcibly dragged away from him. My whole being is suddenly consumed in another burst of broken sound, quaking through my bones.

I know that sound. The realization comes over me in the silence that follows, a brief pause which gives my addled brain a chance to think. I’ve heard it before, once, on the banks of the river on the very edge of this world. Only then it had been multitudinous and distant, a chorus of devastation sung from many broken hearts. This sound is singular. And not nearly distant enough.

Elydark comes to a halt, lungs heaving. His soul reverberates with painful song which I can barely hear above the tumult of broken sound now erupting in my mind again and again. I shake my head, desperate to clear my mortal perceptions, to make sense of the world around me once more. The magic-stricken fields come back into hazy focus, the little clusters of surviving brush, the skeletons of trees, the riven furrows and spell-burnt patches.

And the dead woman.

I see her first, lying broken on the ground not ten yards from where we’ve stopped. From this distance I cannot discern if she is young or old, fair or ugly. Only that she is dead. The song of her soul is shattered, gone from this world. I blink and look again, this time taking in the Licornyn armor she wears. For a wild moment I wonder if she is Shanaera, come hunting for her prey. But this corpse does not rise and move, the living soul forced back into its decayed habitation. She is truly dead.

A fresh burst of broken song hits me like a blow, nearly knocking me from the saddle. I scream and throw up both hands to cover my ears, but it does no good. This song is not heard with the ears, but the heart alone. And it’s enough to break my heart in two. I lift my gaze from the dead woman and see that which stands over her. Shimmering, almost invisible, as though shifting in and out of this reality, uncertain how to hold on.

It’s a unicorn. Not quite as large or powerful as Elydark, but delicate-boned, almost dainty in her proportions. Her flesh seems to be falling away from her skeleton, burning up in the heat of the broken song which explodes in radiating waves from her core.

Nyathri. The word sings out from Elydark, rippling through the ether between us and that beast. Again and again he sings that same word—a name? Nyathri, Nyathri.

It’s like he’s reminding her of who she is. He takes a step nearer, cautiously, his head lowered, ears cupped forward.

The burning unicorn looks up from the corpse. Though her skeletal head is monstrous to behold, I cannot seem to feel the horror such a sight should inspire. My heart is too full of her song. A song so broken and yet . . . and yet . . .

And yet I think I hear how it might be made right.

“Stop!”

I don’t know if I speak the word out loud or sing it. Either way, Elydark pulls up sharply, his eye rolling back to look at me, shocked, perhaps, that I would issue him a command. “You’re going to drive her off,”

I say a little more gently.

I’m not wrong.

I can sense flight building up in her soul.

She does not wish to leave behind the dead woman’s corpse, but she will not let Elydark approach her.

She’s poised, on the brink of making a break, her savage song whirling around her in rapid burst after burst of brokenness.

This must be the velrhoar—the hearttorn state which Taar described.

The same fate which befell all the wild unicorns I saw across that river.

The same fate which took Mahra when the queen of Licorna died.

It is truly horrible—worse than I could have imagined.

Hearing that song is like feeling my own flesh being slowly blistered and burnt away, unable to withdraw my hand from the fire.

To endure it must be a torment fit for hell itself. No wonder Taar said death was a mercy for such creatures.

But what if she might be healed? He did also say that, sometimes, a hearttorn unicorn could be bound to a new rider.

Could we not calm her enough to bring her with us, back to Taar’s city? Surely there are people there fit to bring wholeness to this broken song.

Before conscious thought has a chance to catch up with the rest of me, I slide from Elydark’s saddle.

The unicorn looks sharply at me, but something in my face makes him hold his peace.

He watches as I step forward, slowly making my way across the barren dirt toward the dead woman and the burning beast.

The nearer I come, the worse the heat grows.

I stop in my tracks, halfway between her and Elydark, uncertain how to continue.

Self-preservation urges me to retreat.

But when I look into that creature’s eyes—into Nyathri’s eyes—I see such pain there.

And I understand it.

I begin to sing my own broken song.

Halting at first, a sad little whimper in the back of my throat, hardly melodic.

Something about it feels truthful, though.

Real.

I sing it again, louder this time.

The world around me fades until there is nothing here but me and that skeletal unicorn.

My song and hers.

I take a step nearer, allowing the music to trill across my tongue, through my lips.

Wordless pain.

Sorrow, and deeper than sorrow. Guilt.

I could not save her.

I should have saved her.

If only I had saved her.

My fault.

My fault.

My fault.

The song reaches out from inside me, touching the explosive bursts of song from the unicorn, mingling with that terrible sound. Becoming something like, but not quite, harmony.

She watches me. Those eyes of hers are endless pits of hellfire, red and raw. Her mane is tongues of black flame, whipping in the wind of her own pulsing energy. The flesh on her bones burns to ash, reforms, and burns again, casting endless red sparks into the ether.

I draw nearer. It’s almost unbearable. My mind tries to insist that my skin is blackening, peeling back from my bones. But this pain is not physical. It’s that song of hers, ringing in my head. I know the difference. That doesn’t mean it won’t kill me. But if I can find just the right counter song, maybe I can douse this fire. Maybe I can bring her back.

“Nyathri,”

I whisper, sending the name out with my song. The instant I do so, I realize how wrong it is. Nyathri, whoever she once was, is gone. Burned away in despair. This creature is new. And she must be discovered.

I’m close to her now, closer than I would have believed possible. In the physical world, my feet stand just beside the fallen corpse of her rider. But I see none of that. There is no room for such things in this space of song we share.

The unicorn dips her head, her horn pointed straight at my heart. Fire licks up its coils, bursts in black tongues of flame from the tip. I do not back down. I sing, and my song breaks the flames and sends them off to either side. And there I am, staring into her burning eyes. Her name, her real name, is just on the tip of my tongue. I don’t know if I dare speak it. It feels heavy, like a hot coal. I fear it will burn me up from the inside to give voice to it. My lips part, move to shape the new sound.

A roar erupts the atmosphere. A blinding flash, sudden and hot, bursts from the unicorn as she throws up her head. I stagger back, arms outflung in hopeless self-protection as I fall to the ground. Between my hands, I see the unicorn angle her head, and I know she means to skewer me on the spot.

I love her. It’s such a strange, upswelling of emotion, I can’t explain it. But I know it’s true. I love her and her burning song, so horrible and so beautiful. So far beyond my control. I love her because something in me recognizes her. In that moment, as she lunges to kill me, I am glad that she is the one who will deal my death.

“Ilsevel!”

That voice. It’s been calling my name for some while now. A voice of earth and air and physical existence, like a bedrock on which my stumbling feet may stand.

The next moment, Taar’s arm is around me, and his sword is swinging. It connects with the unicorn’s horn even as it plunges. There’s a moment of contact, followed by a shockwave. I’m jolted back into my physical body as we are flung through the air, me still gripped in Taar’s firm embrace. I have just enough awareness to feel the velra on my wrist suddenly burning.

We hit the ground hard, rolling. Darkness enfolds me.