Of Whispers and Daggers ✓ [TLRQ #2]

Chapter 35 - Idyne

I slip out of my bedroom and lightfoot down the hall. The voices repeat in dark chorus, "It's time, it's time, it's time." They overlap, twisting in and out of each other. For once, I find their music thrilling rather than angering.

It is finally time.

I hit the first floor and nearly dance all the way to the secret room. Anticipation burning, I stop at the door. I quit drugging him this morning, so he should be good and awake now—a little groggy at most. I hope all the doses of the shaudacerise won't hamper his execution of my order.

I laugh. His execution.

I pause, staring at the door. He could be standing right inside. I doubt it—I double-checked the bonds this morning—but he could be. Then again, the spell demands he can't hurt anyone inside the castle. I have no reason to doubt that it went off as I desired. That enchantment built itself in my soul for years. This is what it exists for. I'm not even sure I could provoke my magic into letting me cast it on someone else.

Smiling, I open the wall. The meager hall light falls on Alaar sitting against the back of the room. The twine still wraps his arms to his chest and his ankles together. Presumably his wrists and fingers are still bound, too, though I can't see them behind his back.

I smile. It's finally time.

The thought is lightheaded and giddy. I stride forward, triumphant. "Hello, Alaar."

"Idyne." His shockingly soft voice calls back a rush of flurried memories: freezing winter nights he pulled me closer to the hearth; relief as he freed me from another shaman's grasp, threatening to kill him if he touched me again; the gentle look in his eyes as he crouched in front of me, my village falling apart, and offered me his hand.

What a fool I was to take it.

The voices whisper like death in my mind, and I shake my head to clear it.

A compassionate lilt fills his tone. "They're bothering you again, aren't they?"

"Stop. Just." I put a hand to my head. "Just stop it."

"I can help quiet them. You know I can."

The voices' whispers turn to warning shrieks, and I squeeze my eyes tighter.

"Stop it," I grit out. I know his kind of help—a soft, cozy nothingness in my head like cotton where my brain should be. I don't need him. I don't need him for anything but death and dying.

"There's no point in you sufferi—"

"You're the one that put them there!"

The voices echo my words back to me. "You're the one that put them there, you're the one, you're the one..."

"You know that's not the case." He scoots closer, and I jerk back. His sharp face droops into a frown. "Please, child. Let me help you. You've more than proven your point." He tries to meet my gaze, and when I finally give it, encouragement shines there like when I had cast a good spell and he wanted me to do it again. "You won. When the war is over, you can have whatever you like. We can put all this behind us."