Page 145 of A Tale of Ice and Ash

Font Size:

Cole made a soft sound, half groan, half sigh. “I love you, too. Just in case I hadn’t made that abundantly clear by now.”

Eirwen grabbed his face and kissed him, pouring herself into that action, that moment, like there would never be another time.

“If this doesn’t work,” she said, drawing back from him, “I want you to know that. And that I’m so, so sorry.”

Cole frowned. “Eira, what are you–”

She leapt out of his arms, slid across the floor to where his mother’s basket had fallen, and grabbed an apple from the floor. He realised what she was going to do seconds before she did it.

There was no time to scream. She bit into it and collapsed in an instant.

His wail was lost under the roar of Janus. The creature stopped, bending over, his gaze leaping to Eirwen’s still form.

“No!” he howled. “No!This isn’t…” He threw out his arm, sending a few loose sparks spitting towards the ground. “I am a god! No mortal can… I am agod!”

You wanted a pure heart,thought Cole bitterly.Live with the consequences, and break like one.

Light erupted from the tips of Janus’ fingers, followed by his wrists, his elbows, his shoulders. Light poured out of him like water through a dam. It was cracking into a thousand pieces. The light was bright, burning, slamming against every corner of the room like a flat wall of fire. Cole inched forwards, crawling through the force towards Eirwen’s side.

Janus threw back his head. Light streamed through his eyes, shaking the ceiling. It brimmed through his mouth, choking him. Wider, harder, brighter.

In one last burst, it soared through the room, exploding him into shards of brittle dust.

Cole covered Eirwen’s body with his own, screwing his eyes up tightly until the room stopped shaking, and the world slid back to normal.

For an age, nothing seemed to happen. A thick, monstrous quiet suspended over the room. No one spoke. No one moved.

A tiny, quiet voice. “Mama,” whispered Ivy, “Why isn’t Eira moving?”

There was a shuffling, the noise of someone moving through the wreckage, stopping shortly in front of Cole. He recognised the wooden leg, but the voice attached to it was inhuman.

“No,” Onyx hissed. “No! Not like this, girl. Not before me. Get up! Get up,please…”

Cole unfolded himself from around her, and cradled her against his chest. Onyx sank to the floor beside him, thick tears trembling down his whiskers. He made no move to take her from him.

Cole had never seen anything lifeless look so perfect. It was hard to believe she was gone at all. Death had no hold on her. Even it knew she was too good for a world of darkness.

You cannot be gone,he thought. “Eira,” he whispered. “If you need a heart, you can have mine. Half of it, all of it, I don’t care. But don’t leave me here alone. You’ve always been kind to me, even when I didn’t deserve it. Be kind to me again. Save me from life without you. Come back to me, Snow. I’m not done with annoying you. I’m not done with loving you. I’m not done being a better person because I know you. I’ll be a shadow without you.”

She remained mute, her parted lips speechless and empty. A wild, desperate anger rose inside him, cold and hot and worse than anything he had ever felt before, an agony dragged from the depths of pain and grief.

“Don’t expect your death to morph me into a better person!” he said, shaking her. “I’m not that good. I’ve never been that good. Not without you. I need you here with me for that. If you don’t come back, I’ll be the monster you knew before. I’ll be awful and cruel and unkind, I swear it. I swear it. I will be… I can’t be… without… without you.” He choked, his throat burning. “Come back, come back, please.Please,Snow.” He wiped back her hair. She was still and pale, as unresponsive as a statue. But she was still warm and soft in his arms. She could not be gone. The world was not that cruel.

He brought her against his chest and rocked her, calling her name with a last few frantic pleas. He could barely feel the words on his lips, barely feeling anything but the thin weight of her against him.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you.”

He kissed her lips.

He would not let her go. He would stay here with her until he was a corpse himself. He didn’t care if it was selfish, it was the last thing she would have wanted. He was not letting her splinter from his side, not forever, not like this. She had gone and he would follow. Life without her would be worse than purgatory, worse than whatever could come after. A fragile and watery imitation of survival.

Perhaps he was already dying. Perhaps his heart had truly broken and he was vanishing from the world too. Her cheeks appeared flushed with life. He thought she was breathing, her eyelids fluttering as though in a dream.

They flickered open, bright, blue, glassy. As clear and hopeful as a spring morning. Her smile broke every shadow that had ever existed in the cold, stormy winter of his heart.

Fingers raised towards his trembling cheeks. “I knew you could save me,” she said.

Cole still didn’t believe any of it was happening until, across the room, Garnet burst into noisy sobs of delight. “My baby,” she cried, clinging to her other children with huge, shuddering sighs of relief. “She’s all right, we’re all right, we’re fine.”

A lump dislodged itself from Cole’s throat, like a stone rolling away. “You’re… you’re here.”

Eirwen nodded, pressing her forehead to his. “And I’m not going anywhere again.”