Page 107 of Entwined

Liz

I think we all like to imagine that if we were placed in a situation where we were tortured, or forced to endure in miserable circumstances, we’d bear up under the strain. I recall a time when Sammy was quite small and he told me what he’d do if bad guys ever came for us.

He jutted out his bottom lip, and in his delayed, slurred speech, he told me how he’d punch and kick the bad guys to keep the rest of us safe. As an MMA fighter, I’ve always been the strong one. The fearless one—quite literally, in fact. I’ve fought past broken limbs. I’ve ignored a shattered nose. Twice.

I’m frankly lucky that I had good enough insurance for them to put me back together after the misery I’ve endured.

I thought that the dragon venom I survived months ago was the most exquisite pain I would ever experience, but this is different. This is pure flame and heat and it pulses through what feels like every atom of my body, dragging me down to an elemental level.

My nerves cry out in agony.

My lymphatic system shuts down.

My respiratory system screams in protest.

That’s when it gets worse, because somehow, the beasts have reached me. Great, horned creatures of muscle and sinew and fangs. I kick out at them, but they don’t slow, even when my heel knocks one in the jaw hard enough that I feel the crunch.

They snarl and snap, and when the first one’s mouth connects with my shoulder, clamping down, I realize that they mean to eat me. Panic breaks through the pain that’s been rendering me mostly inert, and I kick like a donkey, swinging with my arms, flailing with my legs.

But it’s useless.

There are dozens and dozens of them, converging on me in the boiling lava, and consuming the flesh that hasn’t yet burned. Finally, blessedly, my world, nothing but misery, and fire, and anguish, blinks into peaceful surrender.

And I wake up in a room of nothing but light. There aren’t beds or chairs or windows or doors. Everything’s white. Everything’s peace. Everything’s calm. I’m lying down, but not on anything I can see or feel. I sit up easily—nothing hurts, nothing even twinges, and I swing my legs over the edge of. . .well, of nothing at all.

I’m wearing a white caftan, and my arms and legs are mostly bare, but no part of me is so much as scraped, much less burned. I blink, and when I do, there’s a figure standing in the center of my view, starkly alone against the endless sea of white light, but walking slowly toward me.

I flinch at first, but as she draws nearer, I can see that she’s not at all what I expect. She’s absolutely lovely—tall, strong, bright, and stunning in her beauty. It’s as if someone set out to paint the strongest features humanity had ever known, but blended them effortlessly and in perfect balance.

She’s perfection in light.

Her bright golden hair streams around her shoulders, but as she shifts, I see darker colors, and even hints of the brightest red. Her hair is everything and nothing at all. It’s light in all of its shifting shades and glory. Her deep eyes are such a dark brown that they’re nearly black, but not in an absence-of-light-way. No, her eyes are the blue of the ocean depths, the verdant green of spring crops, the in-between hazel of a cat’s eyes, the rich grey of tempered steel, the deep loamy brown of the southern clay, the sparkling golden of champagne, and the startling richness of a raven’s wing, shifting as she moves.

When she speaks, it’s in the dragon’s tongue, which shouldn’t surprise me. I’m Freya, wife to Odin, heart of the barrier.

The heart’s a person? It feels right somehow, like I should have known that all along.

“I need you to come with me,” I say. “The dragons are all dying—or rather, they can’t have children. They’re slowly dying with no way to reproduce.”

This time, instead of speaking to my heart, she matches my vocal speech. “You’re the chosen sacrifice of your people, Elizabeth Chadwick, marked from birth to be granted entry to this place.”

I shake my head. “No. That can’t be right. I never have any idea what I’m doing, and most every choice I make turns out to be wrong.”

Her smile’s profoundly sorrowful. “No choice is right or wrong. Each decision we make carries a price and a consequence. But your choices will determine?—”

“That can’t be!” I shake my head. “You don’t understand. I’m not representative of my people.” Tears begin to well up and then leak from my eyes. “I’m not the right person. I’m monstrous—even my own mother thinks so.”

“Your mother sees her darkest, strongest, most fearful traits in you. She’s afraid of her own reflection, not of you, child,” she says.

“Is Azar’s father, the dragon, really your husband?”

“I don’t know who Azar is.” Freya’s smile this time isn’t sad, it’s wistful. “But you’re focusing on things that don’t matter. It’s time for you to choose. Only our choices matter.” She waves her hand through the air, and the white room disappears. She disappears. Even I disappear in my white and light, and my soul’s slammed torturously into my body in another time, another possibility.

I’ve returned to the locker room to retrieve my water—my coach is in a rush for me to join him, where he’s waiting in the hallway. He’s angry I even came back in here, because we’re set to walk into the ring in the next few minutes. But I’m not the only one who’s not ready for this match. My opponent’s in here too.

Gisela Lopez is hunched over, her face in her hands. “I told you,” she whispers. “I’m going to win, Mom.”

The tinny sound of her phone’s speaker phone rings out loudly, easy to hear, even from where I’m standing across the room. “I begged you not to fight again. I told you it’s my last wish. Your sister needs you.”

---