Torn between his hurt for Vlunn and his worry about leaving me all alone soon, Rock frantically sped up our preparations.
As he had promised, he left me to plant the garden for a day, while he went hunting from dawn to dusk. He returned way after dinnertime with a dead brualdak, an ixilip to make an extra cover for me and two more animals I hadn’t seen before. They looked like two-legged giraffes with enormously thick, long necks.
“Their meat is mild and tender. I thought you’d like it,” he explained to me when I helped him haul everything into the cold cave and then watched as he taught me how to properly skin the prey.
“There is an ice-cold stream running under this cave. The meat will stay fresh for days in here. To make it last even longer, we will have to dry it. I’ll show you how to do it tomorrow morning as well as what the internal organs of each animal can be used for.”
It was like a crash course on surviving in the wilderness. Only the wilderness was some light-years away from anything I’d ever known on Earth.
We spent the following day slicing the meat then drying some on the rocks in the sun outside and smoking the rest over the fire.
The next few days, Rock took me to the forest daily, teaching me as much as he could about the local wildlife.
Most of his knowledge regarding Sonhadra’s flora was on how it applied to the planet’s fauna. He could easily point out the plants that attracted certain animals, but knew very little about the plants themselves. Often, he couldn’t even tell me about how any particular plant reproduced, and I ended up collecting seeds, fruit and cuttings from them all to plant back at the garden and figure out what would work in the end.
I welcomed the frantic activity, which took all of my time and chased away any immediate feelings of deep sadness and panicky fear. Sometimes, foraging for food in the woods, I would be able to suppress the dreadful thoughts about the ultimate reason of all this collecting, hunting, and preserving. But then we’d come back home and find Vlunn in bed, and my heart would break all over again.
He’d stopped eating days ago. His skin turned hard and dry. It felt even rougher to the touch than it used to, resembling more and more the texture of the mountain rock around us. It was as if he was already turning into stone even before the life had left him completely.
He hardly spoke at all, and when he did it was just a word or two pushed out past his rigid lips. I suspected the bones in his jaw had begun to fuse as well. It must have been the reason why he never smiled anymore either.
His smiles were what I missed the most when I lay next to him in bed, my forehead pressed into his hard chest, longing for the sound of his cheerful voice.
Soon I missed his hugs too, because his arms got too stiff for him to wrap them around me.
Still, I thought I would be ready when the time came. I convinced myself I could be strong. I desperately hoped that their quiet acceptance of their fate would have rubbed off on me too, giving me strength to make our last hours together peaceful for them.
When that day came, though, I didn’t feel prepared at all. I was not ready to accept any of it.
I WOKE UP TO VLUNN’S getting out of bed. He lowered his feet to the ground and pushed himself upright. His movements were stilted and awkward, but he was moving.
“Are you feeling better today, honey?” Hope shone through my every word.
Rock stirred at the sound of my voice and then shot up in bed, staring at Vlunn who stood in front of us.
“Rock, look, he got up! He’s getting better.”
The expression on Rock’s face remained grim.
“We won’t go to the forest today, Zoya.”
He got up to face Vlunn and placed both hands on his rock-stiff shoulders.
“Where would you like to go, my friend?” he asked softly, and I realized it was the first time he ever addressed Vlunn by anything else but his name since I met them.
“Rock?” My voice was pitifully small.
Vlunn tilted his head towards the tunnel entrance to the city, and Rock nodded.
“Do you want to go to the garden?” he asked Vlunn. “Zoya can come with us and have her breakfast there. Don’t forget your knife to cut the vegetables for breakfast, Zoya.”
“Breakfast?” Who could think of breakfast right now? Still, I grabbed the makeshift sheath with my diamond knife from the rock by the fireplace and tied it around my waist over my night tunic.
Slowly moving on unbending legs, Vlunn shuffled down the tunnel towards Corfoha. Rock held on to his hand, which had fused into a solid fist days ago.
“Vlunn, not today,” I whispered, hurrying after them. “Rock, please . . . not today.” I wasn’t ready. He was doing better. He got out of bed for the first time in days.
I swerved to avoid a twin-peaked heap of rocks near the entrance into the city and stopped in my tracks.
Those were not just boulders. I knew enough to realize by now that those were Stone Valos who, after their death, turned back into the mountain rock they had all first come from.
There were always two peaks on each because when one of the couple died, the other lay next to him, never to get up again, unable to break the bond and go on without his lover.
Almost all of the twin-peaked mounds lay on the streets and plazas of Corfoha. Hardly any of them remained inside the homes. They all must have been able to walk out onto the streets before they perished. Like Vlunn . . .
Not today.
I dashed down the street leading to the cave with the garden. Even as slow as they moved at the moment, the men’s long legs gave them an advantage over me, forcing me to hurry to catch up.
“Rock, please,” I called after them, forgetting all about my resolve to make their last hours peaceful.
I ran into the garden as Rock helped Vlunn to sit down by the stream, propping his back against a protruding stone.
“Rock, please. It doesn’t need to happen today. Can you stay just one more day with me? Please?”
He closed the distance between us and gathered me in his arms, without saying a word.
“Please, don’t leave me,” I pleaded in a whisper.
From behind his bicep, I could see Vlunn’s citrine eyes watching me intensely. Pain and longing clouded their usual crystal gold. The sunny sparkles I loved so much had long gone.
“There has to be something we could do,” I said forcefully, dismissing everything both of them had told me about this day.
“We’ve talked about it. This is the way it has always been done, Zoya.” Rock kissed my forehead tenderly.
“Is this where he will remain now?” I sobbed. I didn’t remember when the tears had come, but my face was wet, salty drops rolling down my cheeks, dripping onto Rock’s bare chest and my night tunic. “Is this where you will lay with him? To form another one of those double mounds of rocks?”
“Every Stone Valo before us went this way.” His hand smoothed my hair.
It’s not fair!
The thought turned the hopeless misery into anger inside me.
“The Stone Valos before you didn’t have me. I have to do something.”
“You are the most wonderful gift from the Universe, Zoya. I am grateful I lived long enough to have you in my life.”
His words sounded too much like a goodbye for me to accept them. Denial vibrated in me with a feverish intensity.
There has to be something we could do!
I grabbed his forearms and looked up in his face.
“Rock, this can’t be it. It can’t be the end. You can’t simply lie down and die.”
“Vlunn and I are connected in life and death, like mates—”
“But you’re not fated mates. That was not how Ilena intended it.” God, I truly hated that woman right now. With a passion. “You managed to form a bond anyway, despite her intentions.”
“A fated mate was supposed to be a valo woman.”
This might have been Ilena’s initial plan, but everything had turned and changed in quite a fe
w ways since, hadn’t it? She didn’t plan on dying before her larger-than-life project came to fruition.
She surely didn’t foresee the lonely valos pairing up with each other, unable to resist their fierce need for a companion and incapable of surviving in solitude.
And she most certainly could not have imagined a human woman’s crash-landing on Sonhadra a millennium after her own death.
Whatever Ilena intended the mating bond to be, it could never be the same anymore.
‘There are no rules but what you make them to be.’
“Make me your mate, Rock.” I demanded, my voice low and firm.
His eyes narrowed at me, and his jaw flexed. He didn’t seem surprised at my request, leading me to believe that he had considered it himself. The stubborn set of his mouth told me that he had already rejected the idea.
“Rock!” I shoved at his shoulders, unyielding as they were. “We need to at least try.”
My gaze shot to Vlunn. His eyes were closed, and he slumped to the side, resembling even more the mound of rocks he was destined to become.
“No!” My piercing scream bounced off the hard walls of the cavern. I ran to Vlunn and dropped to my knees, cupping his face between my hands. There was no give to his skin anymore, his cheekbones felt hard and sharp like the edges of the rock around us.
I need to do something!
The drive was unstoppable. I yanked my knife from its sheath and slashed across my palm, assuming in desperation that the blood bond was supposed to involve a blood-letting in some form.
Holding the wounded hand in front of me, I faced Rock again.
“What do I have to do?”
“Zoya—”
“What do I have to do, dammit?” I punched his chest with my fist, making blood from the cut splatter across his skin. The impact against his hard chest plates only hurt my hand. Rock didn’t seem to notice my blows at all, but my desperate pleas finally broke through his calm façade.
Fists clenched, he bellowed back at me.
“A blood bond is nothing like the human marriage on Earth, Zoya! Don’t you understand? There is no recourse, no divorce. Even if it worked, you would never be free. Tied to us for the rest of your life, you’d die the day we die.”
“But it wouldn’t be today!” I shouted back. “We’d all die, together, but not today.”
“Zoya, I know it feels monstrous right now.” His voice pleaded with me. “But it will get better with time, I promise. After a while, you will stop mourning us. You will be happy again, and you will remain free.”
He was letting himself and Vlunn die to protect my freedom, which he thought was the key to my happiness.
“You can’t make this decision for me, Rock. It’s you, who doesn’t understand. Let me tell you something about the bond that humans form. It’s called love. It may not be sealed in blood, but it can be just as strong. And it can be for life. I love you, more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I love Vlunn, more than I ever thought I was capable of loving at all.”
“Zoya, you’re not a valo.” His voice was softer now, giving me hope he’d waver. “What if you get harmed?”
“You told me it’s my world! And I don’t want this world—any world—if you’re not in it! If you two die today, yours would be the stone pile topped with my own weathered bones. Because I don’t want to go through life without you.”
I believed every word I said.
His brow furrowed into a deep line between the ridges as he just stood there, eyeing me in astonishment.
“Get it in that hard granite head of yours. I love you. I want you to live!” I pounded his unyielding chest with both of my fists now. “I love you more than any fated mate ever could. I’ve got to try, Rock. Tell me what I need to do. Make me your mate.”
The chest under my fists turned harder, rougher, larger. I took a step back and craned my neck to watch Rock expand into his fighting form in front of my eyes.
“Rock? What are you doing?”
“Take it.” He pointed with the humongous boulder of his fist at the dull crystal in the middle of his chest. “You said you love us. You said love is a bond. Try to take it again.”
I tightened the grip on the diamond knife in my left hand, determined to use it to pry the heartstone out of his chest if necessary. But when I reached for the crystal this time, if fell into my palm as soon as I touched it.
Bewildered, I looked up at Rock. His mountainous shoulders slumped in relief.
“It’s yours.” He said with a great sigh. “Just as my heart has always been yours, Zoya.”
I squeezed the heartstone in my bloodied fist.
“Now what?” I whispered.
“Vlunn’s.” Rock gestured behind me.
I dropped my knife and scurried to Vlunn’s side. He had fully shifted into his fighting form by now. Only he wasn’t going to fight. He was preparing to die, to let the remaining spark of life in him trickle out into the mountain.
“Vlunn, honey,” I called to him, worried he wouldn’t hear me. The stone statue of his form had slumped sideways, with one of his arms falling across his chest. I couldn’t see his heartstone behind it and reached under his arm, searching for it blindly.
I felt Vlunn’s heartstone drop in my hand and pulled it out from under his arm.
Two large crystals lay in the palm of my bloodied hand. Only there was not a speckle of my blood on either of them. Everywhere my blood touched them, it seemed to have been absorbed into the smooth facets, which made the crystals increasingly brighter. The cloudy dullness gradually disappeared inside of them. My blood saturated them both with color, and light shone from their centers, bright as life itself, casting myriads of colorful dazzling sparkles on my hands and arms.
Ruby red and citrine yellow. One for each of my men, just like the color of their eyes. I smiled through the cloudy veil of drying tears and looked up at Rock again.
“Now what?” I repeated.
Still in his stone form, he looked relaxed now, putting me at ease too. I didn’t hurry anymore, the restless, desperate anxiety dissipated in me.
I smiled wider when he leaned down to me and spread his arms, exposing the wide expanse of his chest for me.
“Place it back, so I’ll always have a part of you inside of me.”
I held up the bright, red crystal to the cavity in his chest and kissed it after setting it in.
“Always,” I agreed, pressing the side of my face to his chest. “You are my freedom, Rock. You and Vlunn. You give me the courage to be myself. It’s the only way to be free.”
His chest softened under my cheek, as he reverted back to his usual form, sealing the heartstone inside him.
Together, we kneeled at Vlunn’s side, and I reached under his arm again, returning the brilliant yellow heartstone to his chest.
“I love you, Vlunn,” I whispered, stretching my arms around his massive form. “You’ll be okay now. I promise.”
Chapter 23
“It will take some time for the life force to fully return to him.” Rock’s voice sounded calm and reassuring. Still, I refused to take my arms from around Vlunn’s motionless frame.
“How do you know?” He might have witnessed the life force draining from valo men hundreds of times, but this was his first time watching it return. “I’m not leaving him until he talks to me again.”
“We share a bond, I can feel him.” Rock caressed my cheek with the back of his hand. “Soon, you will too.”
“All right then,” I replied and stubbornly shifted closer to Vlunn’s hard, cold body. “I’ll stay with him until I feel him too.”
“It may take a while. How about I get your gardening tools and you tell me where you wanted to replant those bushes over there,” he suggested, obviously humoring me while trying to distract me at the same time.
I couldn’t tell exactly when and how, but sometime while I watched Rock dig out the bushes, I felt the worry for Vlunn ease in my heart. Slowly, a steady, warm stream of his presenc
e settled inside me, filling me with a definite assurance that he was here with us.
Eventually, I released my death grip around him, and went to help Rock with gardening, confident that Vlunn wouldn’t disappear on me as soon as I took my eyes off him.
Rock helped me to move several berry bushes closer to the stream and plant out a few cuttings we had brought from the forest.
Overall, the garden was beginning to look much more cared for. Over just a few days, we had turned it not only into a functional place to grow food, but also into a relaxing sanctuary of harmony and beauty. I could see myself coming here just to sit by the stream and enjoy the soft greens, pinks, and purples when I needed a change from all the hard stone surrounding me inside the mountain.
For the first time in days, I was looking into the future without the fear of being possibly the last sentient being left on the planet.
“Maybe we could build a bench by the stream here?” I asked Rock, eyeing the perfect place for it.
“Why? There are plenty of rocks to sit on.” His practical mind had a hard time seeing beauty beyond functionality.
“Because it would make the place look even prettier, silly.” I smiled. “We could add an arch over it, and I’d plant some of those turquoise vines with fuzzy flowers from the forest. It will be like a beautiful, cozy nook to enjoy the view.”
“Anything you want, my love. Seeing you relaxing in it would truly be a sight to enjoy,” he agreed, setting my cheeks aglow. I could never get used to the reverent sincerity of their compliments enough to take them for granted.
The frobi found us by lunchtime. We had left the poor thing alone, sleeping on the bed, when we rushed here in the morning, and he must have been scurrying all through the city looking for us, or more likely for me to feed him.
“Frobi! You found me,” I exclaimed seeing him wiggle in atop the mop of his tails.
‘Food!’ the fur ball squeaked and bee-lined straight for the nearest berry bush. The magic that the valos claimed had kept animals out of the city didn’t seem to stop my frobi from moving freely anywhere inside it. Maybe he wasn’t big enough to be bothered by it. Or maybe it was because I had claimed him as mine, just like the last two Stone Valos had claimed me when they found me near death and nursed me back to health.
Enduring (Valos of Sonhadra Book 8) Page 14
