The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Twenty Nine: Limitations

Floki landed with a grunt and fell forward onto his knees, laying Cerise and I down on the forest floor. Slowly, we started to stir, climbing shakily back to our feet and looking to each other with eyes bulging from their sockets. 

"Cat!" I continued to shriek her name as I had been through our entire fall as I yanked myself free of Floki's hands. My eyes were fixed skyward, waiting to see dark wings above us, any sign that they had made it out. Athane's nest was nothing but a heap of rubble. A cloud of dust rose up from it like smoke. There was nothing. Nothing but the sound of the world crumbling around me. I ran and jumped at the limb, dragging my blunt nails along The Hollow's bark in a futile attempt to find purchase. The bark bit in my skin painfully, turning my fingertips red and bloody. 

Floki grabbed me again, tearing me away from the limb. "Stop it! You're hurting yourself!"

"I can't! I have to save her!" I cried out, shoving at his chest with bloody hands "Cat!" I punched and kicked at my precious middle son, reaching for my treacherous brother's child who had never loved me at all. It didn't matter that she hated me. It didn't matter a bit. I loved her. That was enough. Enough to rend my soul to pieces and make me wish for death if it meant giving it to her. 

"You better not be dead!" Odd raced by me with Frit at his heels, low growls ripped up both of their throats. They lept at the limb, easily digging their sharp claws into the bark. They scurried up The Hollow with the ease of animals and with the intensity of fear rushing their movements. They were as terrified as I was that we'd lost her. 

It wasn't enough to have them searching for her. I needed to look for her myself. I had to do something. I kicked backward, driving my foot into Floki's knee. "Let me go! Damn you! Let me go!" I roared and sobbed, his grunts and hisses of pain in my ears. 

"No!" Floki snarled. He crossed his arms over my chest, keeping my clawing hands to my sides. He dragged me back from the limb, my feet flailing over the ground by a couple of feet due to his great height. "You cannot do what you used to! Let us do it!" 

My lungs seized as I desperately gasped to fill them. Floki wasn't squeezing me. He held me as gently as ever, yet my lungs felt like they were in a vice. I still couldn't look away from that rubble. Everything in me screamed at me to move, to reach her. Cerise stepped before me and reached up to lay her shaking hands on either side of my face, with an effort, she forced me to tilt my head downward, to look at her and cease my searching for Cat. Her face was somber, her eyes shining wet. "Look at me, Matilda." She coaxed softly, her thumbs rubbing my cheeks back and forth, wiping tears from them. "Breathe. Focus on your breath." She stepped closer so I could hear the rhythm of her own soft breathing. "I need you to do this or else you're going to faint. Please." 

"She's dead..." I choked out between ragged gasps. "She's...gone...she's gone too. I can't...I can't lose her...I can't lose someone again. I'm not...I'm not....I'd rather..." 

"Breathe." She urged again, stopping me from finishing stating that horrid thought. I thrashed my head around, trying desperately to break free from her. Her touch was not the one I longed for in those horrible moments. She palms pressed tighter to the sides of my face. Her Hollow-given strength now far surpassing my human ability. 

"It should've been me." I whimpered. "Why didn't you leave me there and save her instead?" I clamped my teeth down on my tongue, ashamed I'd let such an awful thing come out of my mouth, hating how accusatory it sounded.

Tears dripped from Cerise' golden-touched lashes and slid down her dirty cheeks, leaving clean streaks in their wake. Her eyes shifted from me briefly to glance up at Floki's face. Her own expression crumpled more at what she found and I felt Floki's chest shutter with a nearly silent sob. Cerise lifted one of her hands from my cheek and touched him on his arm or face I couldn't tell, but I felt him still and his heartbeat calm against my back as if by that touch alone she took away the pain of his loss and the wounds my own words no doubt inflicted. "She's alive." She said, her eyes peering up at Floki with the focus of a bird of prey. "I know it looks bad, but they will find her, Matilda. Cat's strong and The Hollow still has a use for her. It won't let her die here. Bran won't let her die here."