Page 66 of Soul Forge

“Thousands will die if the Spirits choose wrong again.”

“Yes, they will.”

Another roll of her stomach made the gardens start to ripple around her. “I think I might be sick.”

“Deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth.” She did as he instructed, sucking in greedy lungfuls of cool night air.

Aeon is a monster. He’s no better than your father.Those two sentences were a mantra, whispered in the back of her mind by the same voice that told her she would fail, that she would never be a real wielder.

“Would you like to hear about my first wielder?” Sypher asked, and she realised he was trying to distract her. She nodded gratefully. “I trusted Thorax. His Spirit was Maxon. They taught me how to speak the common tongue, how to read, and how to write when I first found them. Thorax was the only other wielder to see my demon soul and accept it.” He smiled faintly. “I must’ve scared him half to death when I stumbled into his camp.”

“What about Gira? How did you meet him?” Elda probed, working against the urge to empty her stomach on the grass.

Aeon is a fraud,the voice whispered.Your whole life, devoted to a false god.

“Gira was a part of the Falkrynian army when I met him. Aetheria chose him in the middle of an awful winter, almost as soon as she felt the Leviathan swarm stirring under the ocean floor for the first time. Flying to him was hard. Every time I tried, the ice building up on my feathers almost grounded me. Even the heat of my elemental fire wasn’t enough. By the time I found him, I was exhausted.”

His voice was calming, the honeyed tones helping to slow down Elda’s racing heart until the garden stopped its swaying.

“What was it like fighting a swarm?” she asked.

“Have you ever seen a Leviathan?”

“In paintings.” Her father had several hung in his study, each depicting horrible, huge monsters tearing sailors and ships apart in a thrashing sea.

Sypher plucked another blade of grass and crushed it between his forefinger and thumb. “Then you know one of them is large enough to sink a dozen ships?” She nodded. “We faced twenty. All headed right for Saeryn.”

“That seems impossible.”

“It was what Gira was chosen for.” He shrugged like they were talking about the weather. “Half the city was damaged, and the harbour was completely destroyed, but the swarm was stopped, and the casualties were minimal.”

She tried to imagine the pair of them facing off against twenty enormous monsters, but the sheer size of a Leviathan was hard to visualise. And there was a question tapping at her skull.

“Did Gira use the Compulsion on you?”

His brows pulled together. “Yes. He did.”

“How?”

“He sent me to sleep. If my wielder Compels me to do something, I can’t say no. He put me to sleep every time my demon made an appearance. The moment the fight was over, he incapacitated me every single time.”

Elda shuddered. “I can’t imagine how frightening it must’ve been to have that threat hanging over your head for so long.”

“I feel like I can breathe for the first time in my life,” he admitted quietly.

“I’m glad.” Elda hugged her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them. The movement caused her elbow to brush against his arm, and he flinched away. “Sorry.”

A heavy sigh blew from his lips. “I want to be different,” he mumbled, scowling at the grass like he expected it to burst into flames. “I don’t want to flinch whenever someone comes close to me. I don’t want to spend every second that I’m touching someone resisting the urge to rip my own skin off. It just makes me feel sosick.”

“When I was in the palace, corseted up to my eyeballs and paraded around like a bauble for the visiting nobles to gawk at, I used to feel like the walls were falling in on me. It got so hard to breathe that sometimes I’d claw at my throat,” she admitted softly. “I know you had no choice… but thank you for taking me away from that.”

“Believe it or not, I didn’t want to leave you there.” He gave her a sideways glance, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards. “I didn’t plan tomarryyou, obviously, but I wouldn’t have left you there even if you weren’t a wielder.”

She sat up straighter, shifting to face him and crossing her legs on the grass, their knees almost touching. “I want to help you too.”

“I’m not sure you can. I don’t think I’ll ever react normally when people touch me.”

“Maybe you don’t have to act normal for everyone right now,” Elda suggested. “Start trying with people you trust, like Julian.” She hesitated. “Or me.”

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