Page 56 of A Soul to Steal

Weldir stood unmoving. He’d never been truly animated, as though he lacked the urge to behave like a normal person. He even floated just a fraction off the ground, as if his presence here was just as fabricated as everything else.

“I have a task for you, Aleron.”

He perked his head up in curiosity. “For me?”

Weldir turned his face to the side, but his expression remained dull.

“I would have preferred to ask Nathair, since he has more humanity than you, but he has been here so long he has lost his ability to speak,” he explained, unknowing of how much his words hurt Aleron.

He had not been Weldir’s first choice.

“Is this the serpent Mavka? Then why ask me at all?” Aleron snapped with a little more hostility than intended.

He didn’t know he had a name, or perhaps he’d been told and forgotten. Either way, he would have preferred to know it before this.

“Because it must be a Mavka who I entrust this task to.” Weldir brought his gaze back to them. “The Gilded Maiden has finally awoken, and in her growing strength, has unwittingly allowed me to feel her. I am unable to go to her – I cannot leave my realm or the mists on Earth – but someone must travel to the Elven world in my stead. I have a request of her.”

Even though Aleron’s body had once more swallowed his shaft, he likely would have stepped forward regardless, even if it hadn’t. He unfurled his wing and brought it behind him as he let go of Gideon.

“Are... you saying I canleaveTenebris?” he asked in disbelief.

“Yes. You have always been able to leave, so long as I allow it.”

At the weight of this knowledge, unbridled rage slashed across his torso like a nasty claw strike. His sight flared crimson, whilea growl tore from his throat. Even his wing feathers puffed, making him appear larger and more frightening than before.

“If I have always been able to leave, then why did you keep me here?!” Aleron shouted, digging his claws into his palms. He threw them forward when the desire to slash across Weldir’s intangible form struck him – yet he knew trying would prove futile. “I could have been with Ingram all this time!”

Weldir, unphased by his anger or his swift approach, did nothing but meet his orbs. He looked down at him.

“Yes, you could have haunted your kindred,” Weldir stated coolly. “And, in doing so, would have tortured each other.”

His skull jerked at that. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure if you noticed it or experienced it as well, but Ingram was distressed when he was unable to touch you or Emerie. That is what would have awaited you both had I allowed you to go back to the living world. I can’t give you a physical form, therefore you would have been a Ghost who wandered by your kindred’s side.”

An acute whine whistled out of him. “But I would have beenwithhim.”

Not a moment had passed in Tenebris that he did not miss his kindred. Every second his chest ached to be by his side, even if he felt other wonderous things with Gideon.

He’d long ago accepted that they could not be together right now, but that didn’t stop the cold in his chest. He thought of it like a shard of ice that constantly gave him frostbite in his heart.

“Ingram can touch the earth, but all you would have been given was your sense of sight and hearing. You would not have experienced anything else. You would have watched him grow without you, experience the fullest of life without you, and you would have been the one who was truly tormented.”

“I would not have minded,” he argued.

He would have accepted any sort of punishment for leaving his kindred behind. His failure to protect him and himself that day often stung him. Had he been quicker... had he been smarter, stronger. Had he been able tofly... none of this would have happened.

Had his love for his twin not kept him on the ground, he could have saved themboth.

Aleron often held regret for that.

All along, he had wings. He could have taken them anywhere, escaped any fight.

Instead, his negligence meant they were apart. He’d hurt his kindred, and himself. They’d lost each other.

Just as another pain-filled whimper threatened to break from his chest, a small and barely warm hand touched at the crease of his palm. He darted his skull down to Gideon, who attempted to poke the pads of his fingers between the large spaces of his own.

Suddenly, the growing ache in his chest softened.

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