Page 60 of Shadows and Flames (Twin Blades #2)

Chapter Thirty-Six

MELINE

I f I’d feared Elián hating me before, it didn’t come close to the way I now certainly hated myself. The way Elián’s strength, even when he was lamenting what I’d done as we faced down those tricky degenerates, crumpled. His hands went slack between mine, only held up because I kept them.

But, goddess, it felt so devastatingly good to say his name again. Instead of leaving it screamed over the lapping waves of the Ralthan river. Where I scattered the first of his ashes.

“Soleil,” Elián whispered after a long moment, countless breaths.

The sound of our son’s name, curling from his father’s voice. That was more my undoing than admitting the truth. Never, as I’d imagined this moment, had I been able to capture how it would sound from Elián’s mouth. It was music.

And the rest of the story tumbled out of me, like a rock slide.

“Tana sensed him first. As we traveled.” I closed my eyes, continued to let the tears fall as I transported back to those days.

When I tried my best to process Mathieu’s betrayal and my greatest mistake.

“We were in Carthas, then. I worked at a tavern, and Tana sold goods and simple spells at market.

We were regrouping and licking our wounds, but then there was him .

“I…when my belly grew, there was no room for ignoring it. Even as I still expected the pregnancy to end on its own, we…” a sob hitched my chest. “We went on. He grew, and though my body weakened, though I berated myself every day for telling you to go, I became,” I winced, “hopeful. My search for you, for a Shadow who could lead me to you, was fruitless. I still didn’t trust the guild as a whole, so I kept my name, my state, and my connection to you a secret.

Of course, they wouldn’t divulge any information to a nameless female. Wouldn’t carry any messages for me.

“Th-The strain on my body became too much, and Tana and I were forced to stop in Ralthas. Life slowed, and I turned into myself, turned my dreams of telling you to bringing him to you. Or you finding us.”

My grip on Elián became so intense that it was unsteady.

My vision was all but completely compromised, but El’s sorrowful stare pushed me to finish.

To reopen the wound I had been wrapping with dirty bandages.

“And then… I—the pains were so intense that I don’t remember much of the labor.

My throat raw from screaming, my body drenched in sweat as I labored on the floor.

Tana’s steady instruction. Later, she would tell me that it was twelve hours.

Like that. But it felt an eternity condensed in a blink, before he was in—” I clenched my eyes and mouth shut, then.

I’d never had to speak this aloud. The only person who knew was Tana, and she’d been there to witness it.

Had drenched her hands in my blood to help me bring life into this realm when I’d ended so many.

El didn’t say anything. But he didn’t have to. He permeated my awareness. The Fire confused and disturbed by this loss I’d lain at his feet.

When I’d resolved to give myself over to that flying beast, I regretted it the moment I saw the horror on his face.

There was no question that I would die for those I loved.

But that instant of time, where the dense fog in my mind and heart cleared to almost nonexistence, I realized that the choice I made was not a selfless one.

That by sacrificing myself, I was just transferring my pain to him. To them.

Voice thick, I finished the story for Elián.

Gave him the full truth that he deserved.

“And he was beautiful. So, so, s-so beautiful.” I could see him now, smeared with the parts of me still clinging to his pale brown skin and matting his black curls.

“And I chanted his name, whispering and claiming him while he was warm and wriggling in my arms.”

I was there now, standing in the corner while I watched myself hold him to my chest. Somberly looking on the moment of joy while Tana helped me deliver the rest that connected my son to my body.

Ushering him from the universe within me to the one we were supposed to share together.

El’s question was spoken as if he stood beside me.

Two specters with grim knowledge of what would inevitably come.

“What happened?”

I saw it, the moment I’d realized something was amiss. That as soon as our physical connection was severed, Soleil stopped breathing.

I narrated it for El, as if it was happening, as if he was watching it for the first time with me. In a way, he was, because as many hours I’d sat by the Ralthan River with my swollen belly shrinking, I never revisited the actual moments it’d happened.

“And…” my face was a mess of mucous and tears, my eyes swollen.

Yet, my chest was the lightest it’d been since I’d known what it was to be a mother without her child.

“And when he took his last breath—what I knew later to be his last breath, these appeared.” I twitched the blackened fingers, marking a loss so deep that it’d changed me inevitably.

Irreversibly. I had started over, time and time again, confronted my own death, and with Soleil, I had given life. If only for a moment.

Then, at last, something I hadn’t even told my cousin.

I whispered, “His soul did not linger. H-He was in my arms, and I felt the brush of his soul being pulled from them.” I’d spent many days being thankful that he knew nothing of this realm but safety within my embrace.

And I spent many nights mourning every second of lost time Elián and I could have had.

Even enough time with my son’s soul to say goodbye.

And now, now I shared that burden with Elián.

Maybe even doubled it in his lap because at least I’d gotten to hold Soleil.

Name him. My grief already felt like too much to hold.

He didn’t want me to say I’d rather die than hurt him, but it killed me nonetheless.

To feel his agony that was too big for this room. For this world.

I drew a breath. “I am…sorrier than words can express, El. I did not—” my breath hitched “—w-want you to feel this. To know this sorrow.”

A hot weight fell on my brow, pressing, and I fluttered my eyes open again, cutting my view of the past.

Mango. Honey. Embers.

His mouth opened several times, closing then starting again. I gave him time, and as he cried, his voice was rougher than I’d ever heard it. “D-D-Do n-n-n-n—” I dropped his hands to grab his face, to caress his jaw that was tensing as he fought for his words.

“It’s okay, El. I’m…” I almost told him that I was okay, but we’d gotten to this place because I had run that lie ragged.

“I will be okay.” The assurance, surprisingly, rang true.

I said it again. “I will be okay, and I—I hope you can forgive me one day for not telling you sooner and for preparing to leave you once again. I did not want to add to the ones you’d lost but was willingly putting myself on that list instead.

I have…I have had nearly three years to come to terms with our son’s death.

Please, take the time you need. And I…I will be here.

” For as long as he needed. If he never came back.

I did not count the breaths, didn’t even want to impose that sort of pressure on him.

So, I’d only the measure of the uneasiness in my gut.

It was a different sort, now that I was on the other side of this fear I’d grown so large in my mind.

He was touching me, had allowed me to hold him as I told the whole sad tale.

But was this the kindness of a farewell?

Elián stood abruptly, so much so that I had to flinch to avoid colliding with him. I twisted my body where I knelt, tracking him as my sobs shot to the surface. His hands were trembling, and his footfalls were—loud as he went to the door. “I-I-I-I w-wi- will be ba-a-a-ack.”

And he was gone.

I couldn’t bring myself to cry any longer. My worst fear in this was what just happened, me telling Elián about our son who I’d lost and then him leaving. But I clung to his assurance. That hope he would return.

For a while, I used my senses to follow the sound and scent of him as he moved further away from me. Through the corridors, outside, into the woods surrounding until even my hearing was no match for the distance.

I looked down at my hands in my lap, the blackened fingers signaling a closeness with my Goddess gift at the expense of my child.

In all the years I’d seen, motherhood had not been a title I felt worthy enough to have.

Even as I nurtured my body and babe to the best of my ability, readying myself to live and be differently.

What was I now? I still hadn’t found the answer to that question. Tana tried to assure me—before I’d wept and told her to stop—that I was still a mother. She’d said a mother did not disappear once her child stopped breathing.

But what if they never opened their eyes?

My knees were aching by the time I rose and stripped.

Washed my skin with lukewarm water and harsh soap.

I lay my wet head to pillow, eyelids swollen and lips bitten raw.

This was a familiar position, too. Curling into myself, arm around the home I’d tried my best to make for him. Soleil. My little sun.

Sleep, surprisingly, came swiftly. Tana, Tomás, and Francie were asleep as well, and the silence was welcome instead of oppressive.

I’d done it. No more secrets impeding my view of Elián. No guilt as I looked into his eyes, imagining the particular shade of Soleil’s, had he been able to show them to me.

I dreamt of papayas. Of sitting on the same white sand of Rhaestras where I’d once dreamt of a relentless serpent.

Tonight, I sat under the warm rays of the sun as I fed the orange fruit to a child sitting in my lap.

I dreamt of kissing a mass of black, silky curls and inhaling a scent that was warm and peppery. Ocean and forest.

Of strong arms hugging me from behind and a different kiss planting on top of my own head. Of deep, lilting microtones carried off into the wind that chased the waves.

The child started to turn, already giggling as they were about to say something up at me, but I blinked awake. About to see my son then blearily taking in the rumpled quilt around me.

But the arms around me, they were still there.

Elián settled the quilt over himself and burrowed closer against me. Holding me. I’d not made a sound, but he knew I was awake.

“Will you…one d-day. Draw him for m-me?”

I wondered where he’d been, how long he’d been gone, but I said I’d give him space. He smelled strongly of smoke and flame.

And he kept his promise, that he would come back. I could at least keep mine.

I pressed back into Elián’s chest, like I’d done in my dream, and nodded, hair shuddering against the pillowcase. My hands had not wrapped around pencil since those days filled with wary hope. When I drew portrait after portrait of his father for Soleil.

If I could have spoken in that moment, I might’ve admitted that I’d been too afraid to draw our son. Of what new injury it would cause.

“This…I need to share this p-pain, Meline.” His voice sounded so small, cracking and vulnerable.

And I loved him enough to do this. Finally.

“I think,” I cleared my throat and admitted into the stillness of our room, “I think I need that, too.”