Page 65 of Shrine of Fire

“But evenyourefuse to stay with me, you keep telling me you’re leaving.” I sobbed, squeezing my hands together.

Aki looked surprised, like I’d punched him, but anything he was about to say was swallowed by Kalahar’s shriek. The great firebird wheeled down from the sky, the air around us lighting up with fire.

“Be gone, lesser spirit,” Hella Mora snarled.

A bolt of cold energy shot out of her and hit Kalahar dead in the chest. He lurched in mid-air, and I cried out, the cold seeping through me, numbing me.

“You don’t belong here.” Cuan leapt off the wagon, closing the distance between him and Hella Mora.

Kalahar righted himself in the air, but he was flying drunkenly now.

I wanted to go to them so badly, but my limbs were heavy, so heavy, that I couldn’t move, could barely think.

“You will be dead soon, you with your lives so short,” Hella Mora said, her tone mournful. “Why do you fight against what your mortal soul already knows? You are for the dirt and grave.”

Cuan was on one knee, trying to resist the weight of the agonizing misery she was pushing at him. His hands were stretched out. “You’re not supposed to be here, this isn’t your realm, spirit.” He sounded so mournful.

With a harsh shriek, Kalahar dived at the death spirit again. She disappeared before he could make contact, and then she reappeared over the meadow, her ghostly white shroud fluttering.

I was so tired. So heavy. So sick of being sad all the time, so that the smallest joys came at such a cost. It would be so much easier to lay down. My eyelids grew heavier, the weight of my loves pressing on me no longer soothing.

It was the heavy weight of love, dragging me down.

“No, Nova, no.” Aki shook my shoulder. “Hashir, go help Cuan. Nova, please.”

I heard his voice, but it felt like I was outside of my body, the sound coming from a long way away, and everything was dark and cold. I could feel him shaking me, but at a distance, like it was down a long, dark tunnel, and I thoughtgood. My body had done nothing but hurt me.

The love I felt for them would hurt me in the end, would twist like a knife and cut me the deepest. Stefan pushed me away, Kalahar held his heart on a high shelf, and Aki told me many times he would never be mine.

Hashir wanted me. So did Cuan. But how long would they wait before they decided I should be happy again? Until I was healed?

“Nova, fight her.” Stefan’s voice echoed over my body.

“You don’t want me,” I whispered, my lips numb. “None of you…you hold yourself back, tell me this is temporary. I am too broken to love.”

“Nova, you have me—” Stefan said, but his voice was faint. “Fight this.”

They all said to fight, but there was no fighting this. This was the sinking cold of being buried in snow. There was nothing to fight, just a slow sense of being engulfed in the blackness.

Kalahar shrieked again, and Cuan made a noise of distress. I tried to reach for them—they were in trouble—but I was too far away.

The cold blackness overtook me.

Aspirit of legend hovered over the road.

I stared, cold melancholy seizing me.

Formless nightmares had plagued my sleep for weeks, even before I was told I’d be married off to go to a faraway land, like some stud horse.

Even though I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving the highlands, the last few weeks I’d seen strange things in the mists. Spirits that no one else could see. Terrible dreams of my dead mother, crying about her only child leaving her behind in her grave, for warmer climates.

It was enough to make me think I was going mad, like some of the men who roved over the lakes and dales. Spirit addled, they called them. But I couldn’t stay away. My heart was never more open than when I was wandering these wild places.

Until I saw Nova. My plans of pushing her away were doomed from the moment I saw her. When she laughed, when she touched Stefan’s shoulder so reverently. She had the men around her enthralled and I understood why.

The spirit wailed again, and every ounce of sorrow over leaving my homeland, missing my mother, losing my boyhood friend, came to the surface. I’d grieved those losses and moved on.

This spirit was trying to take that healing away from me. I looked around the wagon. Nova was sobbing, her dark hair spilling around her. Hashir, Aki, and Stefan were holding her, rubbing her shoulders, talking to her but they weren’t getting through.

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