Of Wolves and Wardens by Sylvia Mercedes

I watch it happen. I’m helpless to stop it.

I watch the spear fly from Granny’s hand.

I watch it enter Dire’s chest. Emerge through his back. Pierce the ground, shaft quivering. While he’s still half upright, his back bent, his eyes wide, staring down in horror at what has just happened to him.

His hand comes up, tries to grasp the shaft, to pull it free. Then his eyes roll back, and his body sags. Still upright, held suspended on that spear.

This can’t be real. I must have hit my head when I fell, must have fallen into a dream, a nightmare. Otherwise, wouldn’t I be screaming? Wouldn’t I be sobbing, cursing, pleading with the gods to undo what has just happened? Wouldn’t I feel something more than this cold numbness overtaking my body and soul?

Then suddenly, it’s all there—all the horror, all the sorrow. It hits me at once. And I realize that I already am screaming, howling like a beast. Crawling across the space between me and Dire as tears pour down my face. I reach him and pull myself upright, struggling to breathe through my sobs. With a single kick, I break the spear shaft underneath him, catch his body and lower him to the ground. The rest of the shaft still protrudes from his chest.

His eyelids flutter. He’s still alive.

“Dire!” I cry. “Dire, Dire!” I hate in that moment that I don’t know any other name for him. I hate that even if he hears me, all he’ll hear is the monster name given him by my grandmother.

A shadow passes over me. The heat of raw, red magic burns the back of my head. I twist, gazing up at the terrible image of Granny hovering overhead.

“Weep and sob, little girl.” She spits the words cruelly. “It’ll do him no good. Ultimately, this is the best end for him. He would never break his own curse, even when he knew how it could be broken.” She draws her chin up, her lovely face rippling with red magic beneath the skin. “He chose this fate. He deserves it.”

I stare at her, stare at that apparition. The glamours are strong, but she’s losing her hold on them. I can see through the cracks to the old, haggard creature underneath. A shriveled husk, its outer shell of glory swiftly rotting away.

Granny meets my gaze. Hatred flares in her eye, and she begins to form another rune in the air. A third and final spear. This one intended for me.

Shuddering, I turn away from her. I’m too tired to run, too tired to play this game of cat and mouse. I gaze into Dire’s face, drained of all color, framed by his long gray hair.

We’re going to die. Together. In just another moment now. It will all be over.

“He can only be liberated when his heartsblood mingles with hers.”

I frown. Why is that voice suddenly there in my head? That old voice, grumpy and uncaring and yet . . .

“Mingles with hers,” I whisper.

An idea takes hold. But it’s mad. Totally mad, ridiculous, insane. If I were in my right mind, I’d never think such a thing. But what does that matter now? There’s no time left for anything other than madness.

Gritting my teeth, I grip the spear shaft and wrench it out of Dire’s chest. Blood spurts from the wound, but I lay down across him, pressing my heart against that broken place where his once beat, wrapping my arms around him.

“I love you,” I whisper in his ear. “I love—”

I don’t get to finish.

Granny’s spear pierces between my shoulder blades. Perfectly aimed, sharp and true, it slides through me, through Dire, and embeds in the ground beneath us.

The pain is more than I could ever have imagined. My body spasms. But somehow, even as a ragged scream tears from my throat, I manage to tighten my hold on Dire, to keep my face pressed into his neck and shoulder.

Darkness overwhelms me, full of endless agony. No, not endless . . . surely death will come soon! And in death, there must be some relief. The gods are too merciful to let this moment go on and on and on.

My heartsblood flows free. Flows from my chest into Dire’s gaping wound. And even through the pain, I feel it, that moment of pure connection.

Then . . .

Light.

The world around me tears into tiny shreds, letting in another world full of pure, perfect light, brilliant with myriad colors for which I have no name. Magic rushes over me, floods into my body, my blood, my soul. Layer after layer of reality rips, and I fall, holding onto Dire, deeper and deeper.

No, wait. I’m not falling.

I’m rising.

Rising and whirling in a vortex full of inexplicable explosions of energy, color, and song. My senses are not enough to take it in, to comprehend any of this experience. Is this what dying is? Like a new birth, like coming out of closed darkness into sudden light and air? I’m terrified and exhilarated.

Somewhere, far away in another world, I hear a scream. Granny’s scream.

A ripple of darkness rolls through the light and strikes me in an icy blast. I throw back my head, crying out at the pain. But I don’t fall. I’m still held in that vortex. And now the light is sinking under my skin, burning. It’s painful, but a glorious sort of pain that I could never begin to describe. It pours into me and then out again, through my mouth and eyes and nostrils.

Some small part of me is aware that I still cling to Dire’s shoulders. That he is full of heat and burning as well. We are fusing together, becoming one. I’m breaking to pieces so that I can be remade whole. With him.

A final burst of light radiates through and around me. I’m sure I’ve broken into a million particles of stardust. But if that’s true, how can I feel this sense of falling? Because I am falling now. Faster and faster, shooting back through all the layers of reality through which I’ve traveled. Then . . .

All is still. Calm. Quiet.

I open my eyes.

I lie in a world of whirling dust, broken stone, dead trees. Something warm and solid moves rhythmically under my ear. There’s a dull thud, thud, thud that strikes me as the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard, though in that moment, I couldn’t say why.

Then I realize: it’s a heartbeat.

“Dire?” I try to speak through cracked and blistered lips. “Dire, is that . . . are you . . .?” I can’t get the words out. I don’t have the strength just yet. But it doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters except the sudden feel of strong arms wrapping around me, holding me close.