Page 40 of Zel (The GriMM Tales #2)

Zel swept forward to give chase like a streak of sunlight the same way Ulrich could move like shadows.

Rudy had climbed the tower using a coil of Zel’s own severed hair left at the Thieves Guild and tied it to a grappling hook.

That must have been what Zel had heard earlier—the hooks lodging into the stone.

As Rudy plummeted, slowing his descent by still haphazardly holding onto the rope of hair, Zel extracted the grappling hook just as Rudy landed, so his final descent was harsh enough to stun him.

Zel leapt from the window, descending like a blazing star, hair wildly whipping around to grab hold of the perimeter wall and launch him over it to land where Rudy had fallen.

“Whyyyyy?” he demanded, imagining he must look as awesomely fearsome as Ulrich once appeared to all those who crossed him.

“He bewitched you!” Rudy coughed, holding his ribs like a few might be broken. Good . “He must have! He must have bewitched you! He’s a monster!”

“I love that monster!” Zel snarled. Outside at this hour, the area should have been cast in darkness, but Zel’s figure lit up the clearing as though it were midday.

“Now I am one too. How could you have gotten here fast enough—?” he started to ask, but with how Rudy had fallen, he noticed in the stretch of Rudy’s shirt the chain of a necklace beneath it—gold like Zel’s.

Zel fell upon Rudy and ripped the necklace out from under the fabric. It was an identical emerald pendant to the one Rudy had given to him.

“This lets you port to somewhere nearby wherever its twin is, doesn’t it?” he guessed.

Rudy’s glance aside said all Zel needed to know, but still Rudy added, “And return to where I started when I wish it.”

“And here I believed it such a thoughtful gift.” Zel grabbed his own pendant, broke its chain as he tore it free, and threw it at Rudy to join the other.

“I only wanted to be close if you needed me!”

“I do not need you! Why do you persist when you know I can never be your bride? I am no woman, Rudy!”

Rudy looked up at Zel with the worst of emotions, because it was soft and kind and full of devotion. “Who or what you are could only ever be beautiful to me and worthy of my love. Learning your secret could never change that. But do you truly love him ?”

Why now, when Ulrich might be dead already, did Zel spare tears for his friend? He could feel them making his eyes grow hotter than his anger.

“Please, Zel, I only ever wanted to see you happy and safe,” Rudy continued. “Even if not by magic, how can you be certain the sorcerer hasn't been manipulating you by having you locked away with him all this time?”

That at least made Zel smile. “Because I wasn’t locked away.

I have had more freedom this past month with Ulrich than in my entire life.

Even if I had been free to love you, Rudy, I never could have as more than a friend.

But I do love him. I was never bewitched, and the only one manipulated between us was you, letting Lothar control you with whispered lies.

Can you understand that? Can you respect my choice?

Or were you only ever my friend in the hopes of one day convincing me to be more? ”

It clearly pained Rudy to be asked that, even seemed to horrify him. “I would always still be your friend, Zel.”

“Lothar said you didn’t know your spectacles could spy on me.”

Rudy’s look of horror intensified, proving he had not. “I assumed they did something, or he wouldn’t have given them to me. But I didn’t—”

“I don’t have time to hear more.” Zel looked up at the tower, then back at Rudy. “I want to believe you. I want to always be friends. To love each other as friends. But you better hope he is not lost to me, or I know not what I will do to you in the moments that follow.”

ULRICH

U lrich had lost all sense of time. Whether Zel had been gone moments or hours, he did not know.

The curse was spreading rapidly, with pain worse than any he had ever known coursing through him, originating from where his arm had once been, but making him throb everywhere each time he gasped for breath.

This was what he had wanted. This was what he had planned.

But now, in his final moments, knowing he might never see Zel again, he realized he would give up every good year of his distant past along with the monotonous torture it became if he could simply touch Zel's cheek once more and see his smile.

Yellow light shimmered before Ulrich's vision, and he turned to it, struggling to focus. Golden hair, a sweet, feminine smile...

But that was not Zel.

Was it?

“Ulrich!”

That was Zel, calling from the window. He had returned, but who was this golden apparition? And now there was a hint of orange to its left, now green to its right...

How was all this color spilling into the tower in the dead of night?

“Ulrich?” Zel was touching him, holding him, but Ulrich could barely feel it. “How do I fix this? Can I return some of the magic to you?”

Ulrich was struggling to stay conscious, let alone think clearly. “I-I… do not know.”

“Please. Let me try.” Zel leaned over him and pressed his lips to Ulrich’s.

He barely felt that either, and at first, nothing seemed to be happening.

Soon enough, however, Ulrich felt the presence of the magic Zel was attempting to force into him.

The way it soothed him only for the throbbing pain to immediately return was such cruel mockery.

Zel was giving him too much, yet none of it was making a difference.

With Ulrich’s arm gone, such efforts were too late.

Zel kissed him harder, tried to push his magic into Ulrich faster, but it only meant he was left gasping breathlessly too.

“Z-Zel…” Ulrich sputtered with a turn of his head. “Stop. It isn’t working. You will only die with me.”

“Then I will die—”

“ No ,” Ulrich commanded, wincing as the effort sent a fresh spike of pain lancing through him.

He tried as much as his dwindling lifeforce would allow to focus on Zel’s face, but more colors had joined the first, red and blue now, and they were taking on clearer shapes behind Zel.

Figures. Faces that Ulrich remembered so well. ..

Not the cruel grimaces and unfeeling sneers from what had become of his friends—what had become of him—but the grown men and women they might have been if those young orphans had accrued more than power and the corruption that accompanies it.

Ulrich had seen this version of them in their final moments as he’d sucked the last of their magic and souls into himself, like phantoms of what had been lost.

“No more,” Ulrich said, perhaps as much to them as to Zel, if they were even truly there or just visions borne of his rotting mind. “I will not have my life extended in exchange for yours.”

The pause in Zel's attempt to replenish Ulrich’s magic was already allowing the curse to spread faster again. It was better this way than for Zel to ever end up as they had.

“Perhaps eternity would have been worth it with you at my side, little cabbage... but to live without you for even one day would be my worst torment yet. My life… could never be worth the loss of yours.”

“Then how about mine?” a new voice called.

“Rudy! What—”

“I couldn't stay down there and leave you to weather this alone. You are my friend, Zel, and I wronged you. I wronged your beloved.” As he came into view, his eyes moved from Zel to Ulrich. “Please let me fix this.”

No . Ulrich tried to speak it, but his voice had left him with the renewed spread of the curse. Consuming Rudy would be no better, even if it was a friend's willing sacrifice.

Unlike Ulrich’s.

Was this truly them? Like blurry colored lights with faces fading in and out, as barely discernible as Zel's familiar features, though still clearer than Rudy's unfamiliar frame.

Was it them… waiting for him to finally join them as the boy whose greatest exploit was once his superior skill at infusing trinkets with magic?

“No, Rudy... it won't make any difference,” Zel’s voice quaked. “If my magic is not enough... if I am not enough, then... then n-nothing…”

“I am so sorry, Zel—”

The room exploded in color and sudden focus.

Then it faded again.

What...?

“There has to be something we can—”

Another explosion of prismatic brilliance, and Zel's radiant face appeared in perfect clarity, which Ulrich could see was twisted in anguish as he wept.

“Zel, look!” Rudy exclaimed. Ulrich could see him clearer now too, something about those bursts of color having cleared his mind, however minutely. “It's your tears! The curse recedes whenever one falls on his skin. If we had more or something else—”

“My blood!” Zel unsheathed his dagger and carved it across his palm.

Wait! Ulrich wanted to protest, too addled to understand why Zel would do such a thing, but before he could object, Zel pressed the smear of blood on his palm to the spot where Ulrich’s arm had been cleaved by Rudy's axe.

The brilliant prism of Ulrich's vigilant friends exploded in a blinding light, but with their departure, he thought perhaps he heard a voice.

“What’s one more life… if it’s worth living?”

When the light finally returned to normal for Ulrich, he knew the curse had abated to what he imagined was merely scar tissue above where he no longer had an arm.

He had not felt such peace in… more centuries than he could hope to count.

He also had a terrible throbbing in his head and a general ache about his body that he had not known in just as long.

It was a far cry from the pain of almost dying and a different sort of ache than his arm used to cause, one honestly easier to tolerate because it was corporeal, grounded.

Ulrich felt oddly freed and unburdened by having to experience it, not as powerful as he once had been, but not devoid of magic either.

And although it took a moment longer to register than his aches and throbbing head, Ulrich also realized that Zel was kissing him.