Page 84 of Shade of Ruin

When he lays down, his back up, I shiver, and the peace that had filled me a moment ago is swallowed up by a nervousness that I’m not used to. I know what I’m supposed to be trying to do. Wash away Cole’s weariness and self-loathing with a peace that comes so naturally to me. It’s going to require that I touch him. I’ll need to run my hands over his body just like the night that his father tortured him.

I take the two steps toward the shadow bed and sit down on the side. My right hand presses against his shoulder, fingers wide across his shoulder blade, and Ifeelhim. The unnaturally smooth skin. It’s a spiderweb of scar tissues I’m sure almost no one other than Nevan has ever touched before. Shadows curlaround his body. The day that I saw these scars was the first day that I realized he was not as simple and cold as he seemed.

Cole lets out a soft groan as my other hand moves to the other shoulder blade, and both of them massage the sore muscles. “You don’t know how good that feels,” he groans.

I don’t. In my entire life, I’ve never felt another person’s hands on my body like this. My thumbs move over the thick bands of muscles, slowly kneading them in a way that I would expect to feel good. Similar to how I’ve rubbed my legs after having to haul large game long distances.

The knots in his back are secondary problems, though. The real problem isn’t in his body at all. It’s in his head and heart. In his very soul if I’m to believe the explanation of the betrothal bond.

When I reach out to feel him through the bond, I let myself explore a little. My eyes close almost instinctively as my fingers move across his scarred skin. In my mind, I see myself standing right outside that desert filled with fiery winds and glass shaped so that even Nightforged steel doesn’t compare to the razor-sharp edges. In the center of it all stands that obsidian tower rising high into the sky. Every emotion is a hot wind, creating a new sharp surface that threatens to slice my mind apart. It all makes me recoil. So much pain. So much fear.

It's all in my mind. Or soul? But I feel transported there, and even as my hands move over Cole’s back, I feel like this desert landscape of his mind is just as real. When I put my hand out into that blazing wind, the pain of it searing across my skin is just as real as it had been when I’d felt his father burn him through the bond.

Everything about this place in Cole’s mind is pain. How could he walk through life like this? How could he survive for as long as he has? At the center of the terrible landscape, the obsidian tower looms, and it is beautiful. Ringed in shadows, it stands allalone amidst the pain and misery. The flames and sharp glass may swirl around it, but the tower remains nearly unscathed other than the cracks that run around the base. It calls to me. It begs me to step through the tormented landscape so that I can touch it. The shadows that curl from my fingers are desperate to connect with the shadows that seep from the black stone.

At my back, a different wind blows. One of calmness. One of peace. Like a cool ocean breeze on a summer day. One filled with possibilities and life. The same feelings that I’ve had every time I walked into a forest all alone.

I take a step toward the tower, and I want to pull back. My boots aren’t strong enough to weather the cuts each step will make in me. My tunic isn’t thick enough to protect me from the smoldering winds of this place.

But there’s a scent on that terrible wind. Dark and powerful. Cole’s scent. Spiced amber, and it reminds me of all the things that Cole’s done for me and every other person in his life. He’s weathered the storm, so they didn’t have to. Cole stood up to his father to keep me from feeling that pain. He took the punishments so that Darian and Lee didn’t have to.

It’s time that someone took the pain for him.

I step forward. Agony rockets through me as the razor sharp ground slices through my boots and leaves my feet bleeding. The wind lashes out at me, burning through my tunic and leaving blisters along my arm.

It’s nothing compared to the night that Cole was punished.

I take another step. Again, the searing pain shoots through my body, and I want to collapse. There will be too many steps toward that black tower in the sky. I’ll die before I make it. But when I look behind me, the land is smooth. That sweet summer breeze pushes me on. Where I tread, there is no more sharpness. No more terrible heat. It’s almost as though my very existencein this land is forcing the world to reshape into something less hostile. Something less miserable.

Where I walk, the world is still dark and terrifying, but it’s peaceful. It’s calm. It’s a place that someone could heal in.

I set my jaw and my sights on the tower in the distance. There’s no way I could walk all the way to that tower today. I won’t even get close. But this is not the last time I’ll walk through these terrifying landscapes of Cole’s soul, and one day, I’ll see that tower up close. I’ll feel that black stone under my hands.

Then I’ll know what’s kept Cole pushing forward all these years when the world he lived in has tried to crush him since his very birth.

I can’t change the wounds that Cole has suffered, but I can do this. I can help him to find peace. I can help him to heal.

Chapter 36

I remember when I was young. Eons ago before the hunters found our world. When I did not know fear. I remember learning to fly. I felt strong then. Stronger than I have in a very long time. I hope that those are the memories that I re-live when I have left this place. Not these ones of fear and dread. I want to dream of flying.

~Sidon the Strong, A History of Magic and Dragons

Today, I didn’t touchCole even once with my spear. My body’s black and blue again, proof of that training. That’s what happens when you ask Cole to help you become faster. Every inch of my body regrets that request.

You’d think that wearing a twenty-pound coat would protect me as well as weigh me down, but it doesn’t. At least, it didn’thelp enough to keep Cole’s strikes from cracking bone. I’m still smiling at him as he helps me out of the training gear.

“Your body will get faster,” he says. “Then the entire world will be in trouble.”

I huff, but I’m proud of myself. All the times that Cole’s sword hit me so hard that I wanted to quit, I didn’t. I pushed harder. I swung harder. I’d thought I was strong when I was hunting outside of Blackgrove, but I didn’t know what strength was back then.

Strength isn’t how hard you hit. It’s how many times you can get hit and still get up. It’s how many times your body begs you to give up, and you refuse. I didn’t quit even once; not even when my legs threatened to give out on me or my arms struggled to hold my spear.

“You mean that you’ll be in trouble?” I ask. Cole’s eyes sparkle even if he’s not actually grinning. I can see the pride there. When we’d started training, I’d complained about him hitting me. When I’d watched him crush Lee’s breastplate in Aerwyn, I’d thought he was cruel.

Now, I’d hope he would refuse to undo the strap on my breastplate.

I understand the cruelty of this place now, and I’m becoming strong enough to survive. “You’ll have to train for a lot longer than this if you think I’m going to be worried about you,” he says. “But the rest of the world won’t see you coming.”

---