Page 136 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
Aislinn. All her.
He couldn’t stay here. He had to get back.
“Owen,” Caer cried. “Please. Let me go. I can’t stay here.”
“Go, boy? Go where?”
Outside, a voiceless wind howled. There were no streets, no houses, no fields or mountains—nothing. A dark fog hovered over everything, a living cloud.
Something rumbled inside it, and yet Caer couldn’t shake the feeling that it was utterly empty. The sound of nothing.
It echoed inside his chest.
“There is nowhere to go,” Owen whispered. “And you are king now. You must lead these people.”
Caer turned to look down into the hall. Guests were arranged on the tables, dressed in finery. They all turned their heads towards him…
They were shrunken, fleshless skeletons, held together with scraps of skin. Wordless, chattering maws gaped at him, empty eyes stared.
A hand clutched his arm, paper-thin, a parody of skin.
“You are our king, Caerwyn,” Owen’s voice came from inside his bony mouth. “You have to rule us now.”
Caer’s heart screamed in his chest. “No,” he breathed, “no, I don’t want this.”
Owen’s hand grew tighter. “Don’t worry, boy. You’re not alone. A king must have a queen, after all…”
He pointed a long, skeletal finger at a figure at the end of the hall, a bride in a gown of moths, red hair tumbling down over grey, rotting skin. Her ribcage lay exposed, her heart still pumping in her chest.
“What’s the matter, Caer?” said Aislinn’s voice from the corpse’s hollow mouth. “Haven’t you always held my heart?” Her claw-like hand lifted to the bloody organ and plucked it from her body, holding it out to him. “It’s yours, Caer. It’s always been yours.”
Caer bolted upright in bed, half screaming, covered in sweat. His heart raced.
A dream a dream a dream, only a dream.
But like all the others, its claws had sunk in deep. He could still feel his stepfather’s fingers digging into his skin…
And suddenly Aislinn was there, steadying his arms, telling him to breathe and holding his face with her bare hands, her touch slicing through shadow, through thought, through reason—
Her heartbeat pulsed around her, her lifeforce overwhelming.
He bolted away from her, scurrying to the other side of the room. “No, no, you can’t touch me, you can’t—”
“All right,” Aislinn said, stopping shortly in front of him, palms bared. “I won’t. I won’t, I promise, I just… I want to.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Aislinn swallowed. “And I don’t want you to hurt.”
He looked down, and saw the wound on his arm had been healed. She’d come back like she said she would, even after…
He swallowed, grabbing fistfuls of his hair, curling inward like an injured animal.
“I hate you having to see me like this.”
For a moment, Aislinn was silent. Of course she was. She couldn’t lie. She couldn’t say she didn’t mind—of course she did.
She turned towards the bed and picked up one of the blankets. “I hate it too,” she admitted, making Caer’s heart tremble. “I hate that you are hurting. I hate that I can’t fix it like I can fix your skin…” Her fingers tightened around the blanket. “But I hate more that you think I care. That you would prefer to suffer in silence.”
