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Chapter

Twenty-Three

Liv

One winter, while walking home after catching my first rabbit of the year, three keepers found me and took the rabbit as payment.

Payment for what? For being caught with wire.

Apparently, I could have used it to strangle someone.

I kept that idea and tucked it away. I hadn’t had meat in more than a month, and I went without food for another three days.

I needed to see the deck to know I was no longer dreaming. To know he wasn’t really here somewhere. I opened the heavy door, and the wind kicked up my hair as the stars shone back at me in the night sky. It washed away the racket in the back of my mind—this was real.

The dream had left me in pieces.

Alongside it was the shame after what Maev had said. “ Honestly, Liv, I’m starting not to like you.”

I scoffed. “Get in line,” I said, scraping a hand down my face. Catching the soft glow of my bracelet, I let out a long, deep sigh.

In the dark hours of the night, the faint edges of the magic barrier around the ship shimmered, shielding me from most of the wind. To my right, the distant horizon turned a soft pink.

The night was gone. I had spent it dreaming of the dead.

You’ve got to smarten up , I chastised myself. The twins are trying to help you. You aren’t alone.

Something caught my attention—a sound, a vibration—I couldn’t say what it was. It wasn’t the humming of my magic.

I followed the sound to the front of the ship and gasped.

There was a mass of shadows, and I checked the sky to confirm the stars were still there, that this wasn’t that dream place.

The shadow obscured the golden railing of the ship, swirling like water in a drain. It wasn’t like smoke—it was too inviting, too warm, too soft. It moved like it wouldn’t harm anything and made no sound.

I stepped toward it, and it whirled into a spinning storm before evaporating into the night air. The gold railing became visible again as if nothing had been there.

“Am I going crazy?” The night didn’t answer back.

It was not the first time I had seen a shadow that wasn’t there—the last time had been when I was in the boat, heading to Danuli. But … I was in more control now, wasn’t I?

I reached the front of the ship, vaguely recalling Nuo telling me it was called the brow. Or was it prow? I held onto the railing with weak hands.

Nothing. There were no shadows left on the ship, sky or trees below.

The faint colours of a forest came into view. Meaning we would soon reach the Temple of Mountain.

I closed my eyes, basking in the wind. Breathe. Hold. I wouldn’t let one hallucination—or multiple too-real dreams—ruin the feeling of being up here.

I made a slow path around the deck, my fingers sliding over the metal, facing the coming sunrise.

My grip on the railing froze.

The Aspis floated on a silent wind, a hundred feet to the right, higher than where I stood. It moved in a circle, drifting lower, unhurriedly passing back. For a moment, it blocked the sunrise until rising higher, and the first rays of day hit my face.

Had it been there the entire time I had been lost in thought?

The Aspis continued its slow circle. Why did it stay close but not attack? And had the Guards finally found transport? They would easily see the Aspis in the sky.

I searched, but in the early morning hours, it was difficult to see any sign of pursuit.

For several seconds, I watched the legendary beast. My mother’s stories taught me of dragons that were as large as mountains and could breathe fire and fly. Had the stories of the Ikhor and Aspis reached the Endless Forest and only changed over time?

It had been stupid not to reach out and sense the beast before coming out here. Concentrating now, I could feel it there—a slight tug in its direction.

I leaned toward the edge, and the Aspis turned, looking right at me. A chill ran through me. A deep-set scar ran down its left eye where I had attacked it with ice.

We stared each other down.

It moved again, worming its way closer to the ship, and the sky turned gold near the horizon as the Aspis stopped on the other side of the barrier. Ten feet away, it towered over me, making me feel like a tiny, breakable twig.

It was here. We were here. Two legends bathed in the glorious morning light.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked the beast, and it jerked with surprise. “All that time together. Had I known …”

Would anything have been different?

The beast didn’t blink.

“I guess nothing would have changed, except I would’ve been prepared. Or I wouldn’t have assumed I was the Aspis. I would have tried harder with you.”

Would I have guessed I was the Ikhor? Not likely since they taught me it was so evil.

I studied the Aspis, tracing the lines of scales over the beast’s snout. “You’ve grown. I could stand on Maev’s shoulders and not be able to reach the top of your head.”

“I would say you were the first.”

His voice filtered through the fog protecting my heart. His deep timbre rumbled through me even in memory. “ You are the first woman I’ve cared about. You could say that you were my first. Probably my last.”

I hadn’t understood then what he was saying, how I would be his last of many things.

The Aspis regarded me, pupils dilating. Was it relaxed? Was it listening?

“Let me figure out where this threat is coming from and stop it. Then I’ll make love to you in every way that you can imagine.”

“Watching you fall to pieces like that was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

When you changed, it scarred a part of me.

Something of me died with you that day. I watched my mother beaten to death.

I watched the Keepers do awful things to people back home.

But nothing hurts like seeing you as a beast every night in my dreams.”

It wasn’t him I was talking to. It was obvious now there was no humanity behind those eyes, yet I needed to speak to him. There was no grave, no place of worship to unburden myself—just a black beast who gave me its time.

The sun rose higher, the gold shining off its glossy scales. The Aspis’s curled horns pointed sharp tips to the clouds above.

“I care for you, Liv. More than I should after so little time. It’s suffocating, the need to have you. But there’s something stronger beneath that, and that feeling controls everything.”

“I miss you,” I whispered, but it came out as a cry. “I wish I had told you how much I cared. I miss Nuo, too. I felt safe with you two and felt I had a place in the world.”

A single tear left my eye. Or was it the rain?

I looked up to find clouds forming. Rain hit the magical barrier, streaking down it. The movement caused the Aspis to shift. Its head was so close, unmoving before me, as its body slithered side to side.

“Do you remember that night by the fire in the Oracle’s village?

It’s my favourite memory with you. I know I could say the time we kissed or our time in the caves, but our walls came down that night.

We said we would be friends. But a friend wouldn’t have hidden what you did.

I’m mad. I’m so mad. The fog in my head, the lack of control of the weather, is not only from missing you.

I’m trying not to, but I really hate this world.

I hate everything that’s happened to me. ”

I peeked up at the Aspis, relieved that the beast didn’t know how to judge me, and wiped away the moisture gathering on my cheek.

“I am not going to live in my sadness anymore, though. I’ve done enough damage living inside my head.

The twins hate me and are the only ones left willing to lend me a hand.

And this magic …” I looked to my wrist, where my bracelet glowed.

“It responds to my emotions somehow. I can no longer keep them in. I think they’ve poured out of me and into this bracelet.

I think the crystals are absorbing the magic I can’t control. I don’t know what that means.”

“Go, Olivia. You won’t get far once the beast wakes.” Those were the last words Brekt spoke to me.

Ice-cold sorrow squeezed my heart, but I forced it away—put walls up against it. I built myself a stronger box to bury my unwanted feelings and emotions. I didn’t care that the box had drawn in the Ikhor’s magic. It was my only defence.

“I know you’re not him . And I hate that you stole his body.

But it may not be long until I join him.

I’m losing my own battle. I feel it, growing stronger every day.

It’s alive inside me.” I raised a hand and placed it over my chest. “The magic. The pull to you to end this. It’s consuming me.

I can’t breathe around it sometimes. And the pounding in my head is getting worse.

The Ikhor wants to take over my body and mind.

It searches for you. What I wanted to be love for him is instead a killing need.

I will do everything I can to fight against becoming the Ikhor.

But if it wins,”—I shrugged—“maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to see him again. And my mother.”

The beast inched closer to the ship. It was a few feet away, pushing against the magical barrier. The barrier shimmered above me in a rainbow wave, and the Aspis winced. But it pushed again, trying to move closer to me.

“Do you know that I don’t want to kill you?”

I leaned forward, and the beast did the same. I could feel the heat of its breath now, see the saliva collecting where its fangs hung over its bottom jaw.

“Are the dreams … him ? Is he in there?”

The crystal in my bracelet pulsed with magic. Was it from the beast? From the pull? The bracelet glowed, bending toward the beast as if the light of the magic was reaching out for it.

“Do you feel the pull to me? It doesn’t feel like hate.” I lifted my hand.

The Aspis shifted back, sizing up my trembling fingers, then moved forward again, nudging against the barrier. It couldn’t push past it, so I leaned over the railing a little farther. My hand slipped through the barrier, and I rested it against the beast’s snout. “Hello, you,” I smiled up at it.

That’s when the Aspis changed.

Its eyes constricted, pupils turning to slits as it opened its giant maw, and before I could pull my hand away, the beast tore through the barrier. Its jaw closed with a sickening crunch, severing my arm from my shoulder.