Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,87
when she shivered, it had nothing to do with the temperature.
“…course I don't want to!” It shouldn't have been possible for her to shout under her breath, but she'd been talking that way long enough to learn the tricks. “Gods, Olgun, you're a part of me! It's like asking me to give up my sense of humor, or my lungs, or…I don't know, any knowledge or memory of anything that starts with a vowel.
“But you…” She welcomed the rain, not so that it would hide any tears from Robin, or even Olgun, but because it provided an excuse for her to deny them herself. “We've been lucky these last few years, and we both know it. If something happens to me…. Oh, stop that! It's absolutely possible! Just last week, if Renard and Igraine hadn't shown up…” She squeezed herself tighter, until her ribs creaked.
“I don't want anything to happen to you. I'm supposed to die eventually. I mean, not for a while or anything, yes? Eventually, though. But you? You're supposed to go on. You're supposed to have forever. I don't…you can't lose that. I can't…” So much for pretending she retained any composure whatsoever; her sobs nearly doubled her over. “I can't be the reason you lose that.
“We've been talking about this since it all started. We knew it had to happen.” Each syllable was an effort, one she could barely stand. Her throat was so tight she'd almost have wondered if Olgun were doing something to her, trying to keep her from speaking, if she didn't know him so much better than that. “I need to do this. For you! I need to go to Sicard and—”
It all replayed before her, as clear and clean as when it happened. In a span of seconds, she relived every good moment of her life with Olgun. Every triumph, every joy. Every comfort.
All followed by an aching loneliness such as she'd never known, vaster than the gulfs between the stars of the night sky.
He was willing to risk death itself—an immortal willing to relinquish at least one hand from his grip on eternity—to stay with her.
It was too much, too overwhelming. Something inside her melted. “Of course you'd feel that way now,” she sobbed, “but in ten years? A hundred? A thousand?”
If anything, his grip grew tighter. She felt him entwined with her memories and dreams, wrapped around her soul. And despite her tears and her certainty, she couldn't help but shake her head and smile.
“All right, all right! No decisions for now. We'll take our time. I won't break up the team just yet.”
Her grin widened at the surge of joy that bubbled up inside her. “Or maybe I should say I won't kick you out of the nest yet. Big baby.” She laughed aloud—something she had wondered, mere moments ago, if she would ever do again—at the expression she felt him make.
Behind her, two feminine voices cleared their throats in unison, barely audible over the rain.
“How long have you two been there?” she demanded, blushing faintly.
Robin stepped forward and offered her friend a short hug from behind. “Long enough to know you're upset. What's wrong?”
“Nothing.” Widdershins turned, making this a proper embrace—and then, after only a moment's hesitation, held out one hand for Faustine to join them. “Nothing's wrong.” They stood, the three of them, by the grave of the old Flippant Witch and, they swore, the cradle of the new, each drawing support from the other.
“Okay, enough of that!” Shins finally declared, stepping back from the others with an obviously false scowl. “We don't need to spend all night here. I'm pretty sure if I get any wetter I'm going to sprout gills. Tomorrow, or whenever the rain stops, we'll come back and start trying to figure out—”
On a rooftop across the street, obscured by curtains of night and storm, something howled in a voice just barely human.
The second cry was heard by Widdershins alone, as Olgun screamed in terror at what he felt was coming.
“It means so very much to see all of you here tonight.”
No empty words, those; he absolutely meant it. His head pounded, his stomach still rose and fell in burning waves, but Bishop Sicard would have chosen to be nowhere else than standing at the pulpit of the basilica's main sanctuary. Every lamp, chandelier, and candelabra glowed warm and bright, glinting in deep colors off the stained glass and a clear, almost blinding white everywhere else.
It wasn't the light, however, lifting Sicard's