Page 106 of Obsession

I go through it, again and again. His cruel words. His tricks and lies. If he’s gone, I can be myself again. Free again.

But then: the stroke of his thumb on my hands. How he cleaned the blood from my knuckles and kept me tucked to his side, his hold caring and secure.

Our soft moments shouldn’t absolve his brutality, and they don’t. I do not forgive it, I will not yield to it, and yet…

And yet.

He can’t just leave. He is immortal and all-powerful and he cannot leave me the way that my parents left, how Henry left. Out of all of them, out of everything, he is the constant; he’s what’s supposed to always be here.

My stomach is about to empty, my heart slamming against my ribs so hard and fast that I’m half-convinced that it will stop. I feel like I’m floating and grip the sand desperately, digging my good hand down until it itches. I need to ground myself. I need—I need—

My vision is blurry from panic and tears. All I can make out of the scene is Aris’ mist, highlighted by the violent lightning in the sky.

Jaegen is gobbling him up. Taking him from me.

I can’t let him die. I can’t let him go.

Again, my life flashes before my eyes—not the past this time, but the future: a life without Aris. I picture the cities I could live in, the people I might meet—yet, all of this is stained in gray, like a noir film. That world is wrong; it would be empty. Uninhabitable.

Without him, there is no future. None that I want, anyway.

But what can I do? He has relinquished himself, smoke to be eaten, because he would do that for me. He loves me. Like this, he completely loves me.

And I didn’t tell him… I didn’t say it back, but of course I love him. Of course he is my future.

This form of him.

Without his memory, he loved me. My fragile, human body made me precious, not worthless. I wasn’t something he pinned to the ground and laughed at. He let me eat what I wanted, go where I wanted, be who I wanted. He would have let me go into the world without him.

Before, he never would’ve relinquished himself. He would’ve fought Jaegen until the island was decimated and not a scrap of life remained. He would never surrender—not for anything, certainly not for me.

I realize: if I want him to live, that is who he must be again.

I come to a sudden, heartbreaking decision.

There is not much vapor left; Aris is almost completely consumed. There is no time to consider what I’m doing, to even mourn what I’m throwing away. All I know is his name raging through me, how I cannot let him go, how I understand, finally, why he kept me caged to his side.

If I had his power and there was ever a risk of losing him, of ever feeling this way again, I’d never release him. I would never let him be hurt. Nothing would come close. If that meant I had to put a collar and leash on him and keep him chained to my side, then it would be so.

The fire has weakened but the flames remain competent and sure, and I don’t give myself the time to second-guess as I scramble to my feet and launch myself into their scorching embrace.

The runes must burn, they must burn—

Indescribable, impossible pain strikes as the fire eats me alive, and I scream. It’s no louder, no less agonized than how I yelled when Aris surrendered; the pain is not more, just different.

Through the smoke, Jaegen turns in my direction, startled and fuming. He knows my plan. He is about to set out toward me, until he bends over, vomiting smoke blacker than that from the fire.

I could be delirious or dead already, but it looks like the vapor is forming… reforming, into a person I would know on the edge of oblivion.

And, despite how much it hurts, despite everything I’ve risked and sacrificed, despite knowing that what is reforming will not be the Aris I love, and who loves me back, I smile. Smugly and stupidly, I smile.

Fire burns runes. Mess with the rune, you lose the magic.

You get back the memory.

There is a furious roar, powerful enough to flatten mountains, and then a flash of light bright enough to cut through my exhausted haze. My vision goes dark as my pupils fail to dilate in time, and for a stupid second I think that I might have died and that was the tunnel of light everyone talks about.

When the heat dampens, pain ebbing along with the dying fire, it only furthers my belief that I’m dead, until I recognize what smothered it: the will of destruction incarnate.

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