by H. D. Gordon
And the last thing she heard was someone calling her name, but it must’ve only been in her mind, because it was spoken in the voice of Charlie Redmine.
Then the darkness swallowed her whole.
Chapter 59
Charlie
The night dragged on for an eternity, and by the time the sun finally rose over the horizon, Charlie had been convinced a new day would never come.
It was as if time had stood still, drawing out the horrible happenings. It had seemed to him that the rain would never stop, the sky would never lighten, as he sat at Surah’s bedside and waited for her to open her eyes. Prayed to the Gods that she would open her eyes.
But time was a funny thing, a construct of the mind, not existing outside of consciousness, and it was the part of us that kept going, no matter the circumstances under which we physically and emotionally stood.
The new day had come, the sun beginning to rise with utter accountability, as if all the events of the previous day equated to nothing. Lost in the fabrication of time.
All of these thoughts were just to keep him off the real things he was avoiding pondering. Like the fact that Surah might never wake up. Or how he had stabbed his own brother to death.
The last time Charlie had cried had been as a child. On the day after his parents had died. He remembered because he had promised himself he would not do so ever again, could not take the vulnerability it made him feel. And so he had not shed a tear since, not in over a decade.
And, yet, as he sat here staring at Surah’s face, at her still, unresponsive body, thinking about how everything had gone so wrong and could never, ever be put right again, he felt like he could cry. He felt like he could cry until the sun refused to shine.
Someone behind him cleared their throat, and Charlie was jerked out of his thoughts. Turning his head, his body slack in the chair, exhausted by emotion, he saw Bassil, the Warlock, standing in the doorway. He was holding a guitar in his hands.
Charlie turned back the way he’d been facing, didn’t respond.
Bassil entered the room and shut the door behind him. He took a seat in the chair beside Charlie’s and set the guitar down next to him.
Silence hung while both of them sat looking at the unconscious Sorceress Queen laid out before them. There was a heaviness in the room that one could feel on their shoulders.
Samson was lying at the foot of Surah’s large bed, and Charlie had the distinct feeling that the tiger was contemplating eating him, and that maybe that wouldn’t be any more painful than what he was feeling now.
“You are not helping her condition, Charlie,” said the Warlock, in that deep, calm voice of his. The words were not spoken with any malice, only stated as fact.
Anger boiled up in Charlie with a haste unusual to him. But then, these were not normal circumstances.
“You’ve already told me that,” he snapped. “I don’t get what I’m supposed to do.”
“Try again,” Bassil replied.
“I tried all night!” Charlie yelled.
Samson lifted his head off his paws. Charlie took a deep breath, trying to calm himself and failing. He managed to lower his voice to a reasonable level.
“I played the song. I played it a thousand fucking times. I poured my heart out, professed my love in a million different ways.” His shoulders sank and his voice lowered to a whisper. “And she hasn’t woken up. She hasn’t batted an eye.”
Bassil’s face remained relaxed, a small crease in his dark brow the only indication of his worry. “There’s someone who’s offered to help,” he said.
Charlie looked up now as Aria entered the room. Her face was somber, lacking its usual light, and she looked as scared as a mouse entering a cat’s lair. With the way Samson was looking at everyone, he supposed this wasn’t too far from the truth.
“How can you help, Aria?” Charlie asked, and hated himself for the desperation that rode his words.
He’d already allowed the Halfling girl to give so much, and here she was again.
Aria slowly approached the bed where Surah lie, as if Surah might jump up and bite her at any moment. She rubbed Sam between the ears, and the fact that he let her surprised everyone in the room.
A pained look came over Aria’s face as she looked down at Surah. She bit her lower lip so hard Charlie thought it might bleed.
“I’m an Empath,” Aria said, her eyes locked on the sleeping Sorceress. “Most Halflings are to some extent, but my ability is stronger than most. We call it the Touch.”
She paused, and Charlie stared at her as if she’d spoken some alien language. Like most others, Charlie didn’t know much about Halflings, and he’d never heard of an Empath.
“It means I feel what others feel… directly,” Aria continued. “I feel the emotions of those near me as strongly as if they were my own.” A tear rolled down her cheek and she swiped it away quickly, her gaze still stuck on the Sorceress queen. “And, I can absorb emotions.”
Charlie opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. He didn’t know what to say to this.
Finally, he managed, “Are you saying you can pull the darkness out of her?” he asked, and again hated himself for the hope that filled his voice.
Aria shook her head, and Charlie was simultaneously relieved and despaired.
“Not out of her,” she said. “She’s under a blanket of magic so thick I can’t get through.” She looked up now for the first time, her green eyes meeting Charlie’s.
“But you,” Aria continued, “I can pull some from you. I can take away the dark emotions you’re feeling right now. They’ll come back after a day or so, but I can take them for now.”
“Why would I let you do that, Aria?” Charlie said. “Why would I want to subject you to this? You’ve already done so much. I can’t ever repay you.”
Aria smiled sadly, more tears spilling down her face, but her shoulders squared and set. She gestured at Bassil.
“Because the Warlock tells me that love is the only thing that’s powerful enough to fight black magic,” she said, “and you can’t produce the amount of love needed to save her with all the guilt and heartache you’re feeling over your brother.”
She paused, took a deep breath, wiped the tears from her face, and held out her hand to him. “So let me take it, and then you can play a song for us.”
Charlie looked at the girl, thinking that if he ever had a daughter, he hoped she was just like this generous, kind-hearted Halfling girl.
“I don’t know if you understand what you’re offering,” he told her. “I’ve never felt pain like I’m feeling now.”
Aria let out a slow breath. “I’m an Empath, Charlie, and even though I’ve only lived for seventeen years, trust me when I say that being an Empath comes with its own special kind of torture. I’m no stranger to emotional pain. We’ve actually become something like old friends.”
The way in which Aria said this left no room for question. A deep voice filled Charlie’s head, the first words from the tiger since Charlie had jumped into the portal to get Surah out of the Fae Forest.
“Do it,” Samson told him, also leaving no room for question. There seemed to be an unspoken or I’ll eat you attached to the words.
Charlie looked at Surah, then back at Aria, and took her outstretched hand.
“I owe you one,” he told her.
Aria grinned, that glow that was so natural to her appearing for a moment before dying back out. “Actually, you owe me five, but who’s counting?”
Chapter 60
Surah
She was floating, surrounded by nothing, lost in the darkness.
There was no sound, no light, no smells.
She was aware of only the pain, the anger, the terrible monster that was eating at her mind. She was bodiless, just a consciousness with no way of healing itself.
Screaming silently. Crying without tears.
And she would be here forever. Wherever here was. There was no escape, no entrance or exit.
There was only the void. The void and the agony. An eternity of it.
There was no way to calculate how much time passed, no such thing as time in this place that was not a place. Her soul was dispersed in the ether, broken down to the raw thoughts that had made her who she was. Who she’d been…
When the music came to her. It came slowly, note by note. At first, she was not sure at all it was even there, or if her mind was so far gone that every experience was a construct of it.
But it kept playing, and eventually grew louder. A melody she felt she’d heard somewhere before, in some distant lifetime on some distant plane.
Then it was all she could hear, and she latched onto the sound of it, afraid to let it go. More afraid than she’d ever been.
A voice accompanied the melody. A deep, soft, familiar voice. Just a humming, really. A humming that sounded like home.
But she had no home. She was nothing. Just a consciousness floating free in the vast universe, a dying star shooting across a black sky.
Charlie, she thought, and held tight to the name that reached her through the darkness, surfacing in this galaxy of despair like a life raft in an angry sea.
Surah’s eyelids fluttered, and the first thing that registered was the soreness of every single muscle in her body.
A familiar voice filled her head, and it sounded more relieved than she had ever heard it.
“Oh, thank the Gods,” Samson said. “I was getting ready to eat your boyfriend.”
“Sam,” Surah said, but her voice came out a rough whisper. Her throat felt like it was on fire.
Sam’s black and blue head appeared over her, his amber eyes staring at her as if he’d feared he’d never see her again. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
Surah replied silently, the method easier than speech at the moment. “You came back.”
“Did you ever doubt I would?”
She pulled herself up to a seated position, wrapping her arms around her tiger and noticing for the first time that they were not alone in her room.
The music she’d heard had stopped, and Charlie sat beside the bed with a guitar across his lap and a stunned look on his handsome face.
Bassil and Aria were also here, and they too looked slightly shocked, if a touch wary.
Surah felt as though she had not seen any of them in ages, and her heart settled slowly down to her feet as the memories of the past day came flooding back to her.
Then she was crying, the tears falling from her eyes in rivers, all the things she’d stored up for when it was all over bursting free and wracking her body. The others sat with their heads down, tears filling their eyes as well.
She supposed they had won, but at what cost? Was there ever really a victor in war? Surah was sure now that there was not.
Aria broke the silence first, and Surah noticed that the girl was not glowing in the way she usually did. Her face was drawn with grief.
Aria wandered over to the doors of the balcony, and as she looked out, her breath caught in her throat. When she turned back to face Surah, some of the light had returned to her pretty face.
“You should come see this, your majesty,” said the Halfling girl, to whom Surah would later learn she owed her life.
Aria turned back to the glass doors, holding her hand up as if touching something only she could see. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
Charlie helped Surah out of bed, and Bassil held the door open as they all stepped out onto the balcony.
Below, thousands of Sorcerer people stood holding candles. They lined the streets of the city, overflowed into the fields beyond, so many of them that it seemed nearly everyone in the entire Territory had come.
When they caught sight of their queen, they erupted into cheers.
Chapter 61
Surah
Surah hated goodbyes, but at the same time, understood the importance of them.
She was grateful for them, because she had lost so many loved ones in her life without ever getting a chance to say goodbye, and knew from experience that this hurt even worse.
Still, she wouldn’t be able to hold back her tears much longer, and she didn’t want Sam to see her cry. She knew he had to go, and didn’t want to make it any harder for him.
“Will I get to see you?” she asked. “Will you visit?”
“Whenever I can,” he promised.
The two of them sat in a private courtyard atop the roof of one of the castle’s turrets. Night had fallen, and to the east, she could see the glow of dozens of amber eyes in the darkness, knew they were waiting for their king to return with them to the jungle.
“What’s it like, being King of the Beasts?” she asked. “I didn’t know there was such a thing.”
Sam was silent for a moment, regarding the stars. “I suppose it’s similar to being a Sorceress Queen. Lots of cats depending on me. Dealing with threats to my authority, making decisions. I’ve watched you rule for so long, I can only hope some of your ways have rubbed off on me.”
Surah had to breathe deeply to keep the tears at bay. She didn’t want him to go. She wished so badly he could stay.
“They followed you into battle… How did you get them to do that?”
Sam licked her hand, his tongue warm and rough, and nuzzled his head against her neck.
“They would’ve followed me, anyway. I’m their king, but since our jungle is in Sorcerer Territory, I explained to them what it could mean if the Fae invaded. Your family has always been respectful of the jungles and the Great Beasts. Other two-legs would have long since destroyed our habitat, and our kind would likely be extinct. I told them it was also our Territory we were fighting for. And that wasn’t a lie.”
“Thank you, Sam,” she whispered, running her fingers through his fur for what felt like the last time.
He said he would visit, but the truth was, he was leaving her. When she awoke in the morning, he would not be by her side. When she shut her eyes tonight, Sam would shut his elsewhere.
They were parting ways, and though she’d always known this day would eventually come, she never could have prepared for it.
When he left, Samson would take a part of Surah with him, and she would hold a part of him.
“Thank you for loving me despite it making no sense at all,” she told him.
If a tiger could smile, Sam would have been doing so just then. “As if I had a choice in the matter,” he replied.
Surah took another deep breath, the air shuddering in her chest. “You need to go now, don’t you?”
Sam didn’t answer. They both knew he did. She grabbed his large head in her hands and kissed his furry face. His amber eyes closed as she did so and a low chuffing sounded in his chest.
When he pulled away from her, she could see the reluctance on his face, and she nodded so that he would know he could go. The sooner, the better. She really didn’t want him to see her cry.
Surah watched as the Great Tiger slipped gracefully off the turret top, onto a stone ledge below, and in through a window. Moments later, he emerged on the edge of the field, his tail swishing as he took his leave.
She waited until she saw his amber eyes glowing in the distance toward the east.
The other cats slipped away silently into the night, but Sam stood staring back at her for a long time, as if he could sense her tears all the way from there.
And then he, too, slipped away.
A sob shook her chest and she let the tears come, seeing no reason to fight them.
“You okay?” said a deep voice behind her, a slight country lilt riding the words.
Surah turned her head and looked at Charlie, whose handsome face was more than lovely in the moonlight. It had been a terribly long day for both of them. There had been funerals, council meetings, and addresses to the public; all the stuff that went into ruling a kingdom.
And the two of them had lost so much.
“Of course I am,” Surah said, though they both knew it to be a lie. She looked
back out over her Territory, so quiet and peaceful, the clear night allowing every star in the sky to be seen.
His arms slipped around her from behind, and the warmth of him sparked a fire in her stomach, a heat in her chest that only he could ignite. He held her close to him, his strong body a perfect match to her own.
“Will you be okay, Charlie?” she asked him.
Charlie took her hands and spun her around to face him. His fingers rested against her cheek, as if he almost didn’t believe she was real.
Without saying a word, his eyes told her so much, his feelings for her radiating out of them. They had risked everything to be together, had defeated all the odds, for this moment right here.
Surah’s heart, though battered, felt fuller than it had ever felt, as if it may just burst right out of her chest. There was sadness over all that had transpired, yes, but there was also love.
And when Charlie leaned down and kissed her, the whole world melted away, leaving only the two lovers who had managed to rearrange the stars.
When they were able to separate, Surah asked, “Do we get to live happily ever after now, Charlie?”
He pulled her close, and she rested her head against his strong chest, listening to the steady beating of his heart.
He said, “Yes, Surah Stormsong. I think we get to try.”
And this, as it turned out, was good enough for her.
The End
Dearest Reader,
Thank you for taking a chance on this series, and for making it through to the end.
If you’re craving more of this world, I invite you to continue reading for a sneak peek at the first book of Aria Fae’s story (Aria is the Halfling girl from the book you just finished reading).
Aria will face repercussions for the actions she took to help Surah. Left alone in the human world, Aria will have to create a life for herself, but Grant City is a dangerous place, with dark secrets of its own.
