muscle, white glimmer of bone hidden away as it began to close. Though Aida was unsure if it moved too slow or too fast for her to perceive it, still, it began to heal from the inside out, the scent of rot only clinging to their clothing and skin.
“Good, kou’va. Slow, deep breaths now,” Er’it whispered, coming forward to brush a light kiss against Aida’s cheek before moving to her mouth to place another there. Guiding Aida’s breath with his own, they breathed each other in.
Fingers flexing in his hair, she saw it unravel in her mind as she stared deep into his eyes. Picking apart the threads of power, she understood how it happened. She saw how he manipulated the first rush to purge the poison, felt his humor at having underestimated how strong it would be. Now he guided her with a firmer hand, slowing her magic to a faint trickle that was still more than enough. His awe of it all pinkened her cheeks, and she understood he felt as much as she did when he tugged her somehow closer, letting her feel the hard length of him despite everything else going on.
From the cloud-soft haze he lulled her into came Marilsa’s voice. Stark and astringent, it snarled through the feathery serenity and reminded Aida what her purpose was to him. He would end her life for the power he craved, tear it from her still warm body after he carved her open upon some altar, using her body for his pleasure until his moment came. His awe was nothing more than the realization of what he would acquire at her death, his need as base and empty as it ever had been.
Aida’s lower lip trembled. Hating herself for forgetting the truth of her reality in this strange moment, she broke away from the lure of his gaze and turned to watch the wound become nothing more than a puckered white scar. It was one among many others, soon to be forgotten just like her. Firming her jaw, she tugged her hand free to flick her fingers at the shaft still in his thigh.
Er’it did not say a word, but she felt the chilled space between them all the same. Perhaps he read her as she did him. Refusing to acknowledge the pain that thought gave her, she went to pull the arrow out, only for Er’it to grip the head protruding from the other side and yank it free. He didn’t hiss or groan this time, somehow bolstering Aida’s spirits with the fact that it didn’t pain him as much as his shoulder. Setting her hands over the far smaller wound, she pursed her lips. She could do this, learn this one small thing before it was all over.
Concentrating as hard as she dared, she traversed the paths etched deep into her mind now. Following the threads of power Er’it laid out to guide her, Aida stormed ahead of his sputtering denial. Holding the energy that now shone an electrifying violet in a strangling grip, she performed the acts as he had, tempering them as she sensed the sludgy poison in his flesh and blood lessen.
Aida bared her teeth, not hearing the feminine growl emanating from her chest as Er’it attempted to wrest control from her. She kept her power in a stranglehold no matter that she wanted to send it lunging through him to stun and keep him quiet. Some part of her needed this, needed to see and feel what it might have been like.
What it could still be like. Marilsa had showed her another path, several in fact. Choices never a thing she’d been forced to make, Aida floundered as she realized she could do anything she wanted. She could kill Er’it right now and end the entire thing or turn it all back on herself and perhaps end it that way. Terrible and beautiful, benevolent and kind. Heal the land, destroy it further. Everything was a confusing dichotomy, right down to the vivid fire licking up her back from Er’it’s hand and the ice settling deep in her bones.
“Kou’va, stop this.” Careful fingers edged their way higher up Aida’s back, palm splayed behind her shoulders as he tried to urge her closer despite the way she held herself stiff. “Whatever you are thinking, you do not wish it.”
“You can’t see it?” Aida asked in a shattered whisper, faltering as she turned her eyes back to his. Marilsa had told her the truth