Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,145
Te make it all the worse, Gaia told me that her soul would wander ‘til it were found, because she’d died lost and alone. I… got it wrong. I didn’t understand, ‘til now, what that meant. I didn’t know it could be done like this.”
I reached out to touch his arm, but my fingertips passed straight through. “You didn’t know her bones had been recovered?”
He shook his head. “I thought all of her were lost, which is why I pleaded with Gaia te punish the Wisps fer what they’d done. I offered me life in return. She refused, but she’d already fueled up me power.” He swallowed loudly. “I used a forbidden Sanguine spell te do it meself, and that cost me me life. I sucked those spirits into the world I’d created fer me and Lorelei, and I bound ‘em te me, te do me biddin’. If I had te live in eternal suffering without me love, I wanted ‘em to suffer, too.” He paused. “More than that, I wanted ‘em te find her lost soul. I hoped her soul might follow ‘em one day, like she’d followed ‘em off the path. I didn’t realize she were already at peace… already found, just not by me.” He fell apart, sobbing uncontrollably, whispering Lorelei’s name under his breath and repeating the same two words as if he were stuck on one of those trance loops. The most heartbreaking words in the world, in this case: “I’m sorry.”
“Then… she’s been waiting for you, as long as you’ve been waiting for her.” My throat tightened. I turned my head to the side, to brush away the tears that fell. Genie sniffled into her sleeve, and even Nathan turned away, overcome.
He lifted his head, his face a mass of misery. “Aye, and she’s callin’. All this time, she’s been callin’ and I were too stubborn and lonely te hear.” He closed his teary eyes. “Can’t ye hear her? She used te sing when I fell asleep, strokin’ me hair like I were a babe in her arms. If I existed another thousand years, I’d not forget that sound. That’s me true heaven, lass. Her. Only her.”
I couldn’t even begin to imagine grief like that. The longing, the waiting, the loneliness of two star-crossed lovers who’d spent life and death missing each other, in both senses of the word. I let go of my anger, despite the awful things he’d done. Losing the love of your life was bound to make a person crazy, and he’d done it all in the hopes of Lorelei finding her way back to him. Besides, how could I stay angry at someone who looked so broken?
I turned to Genie. “Can you lift the casket out of the grave?”
“You bet I can,” she murmured, her voice thick with emotion. Moving to the graveside, she stood and bowed her head, as though standing vigil at a funeral. Blue threads of Chaos spiraled from her body and plunged into the dirty water, her Water ability pulling the ancient casket from the bottom of the grave. It lifted higher still, until Genie brought it to rest on solid ground.
I went to help her, pushing off the lid to reveal the gray bones of two skeletons, now jumbled together, and the sack that I’d carried Fergus in. I glanced back at the abductees and noticed Charlotte a few yards away, her hands behind her back. Bronze energy spilled from her palms, creating a shield of some kind that seemed to be hiding us from the abductees.
I hate to say it, but I think I’m starting to like you, Charlotte. She had just as much reason to hate Fergus as I did, but she’d still allowed us some privacy to talk in peace. Maybe her moral compass swung true north more than I’d thought.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to get a fire going, with everything so wet.” I gave Genie a discreet nudge. “Could you do the honors, and send these two back to each other?”
She covered her mouth as a sob escaped. “Who gets to have a love like that, man? Of course, I’m going to light these bones up.” Vivid scarlet sparks erupted from her, and miraculously caught on the waterlogged wood. She added a crackling torrent of liquid Fire, for good measure, the two of us staring into the flames until the bones turned black and there was nothing left but ash.