Page 68 of Antiletum
Val
Nothing makes me want to collect my wife back in my arms more than the horror rippling over her face anew, all because she caved to what fizzles between us.
“Delaney.” A straining itch pulls at my legs, both with the instinct to go to her and to shift back into my owl form where she was so open with her affections. Sadly, it isn’t likely that she’ll offer such again. At least, not any time soon. Not with the way she’s looking at me right now.
“I can’t do this,” she whispers weakly.
The hardness of my cock falls flat instantaneously. Probably for the best right now.
Though I knew it was coming, the cold, dreadful weightlessness of panic invades my sternum. “You can.” My jaw tenses and arms wind their way across my bare chest to keep from grabbing hold of my wife, beautiful in black beneath the sliver of moonlight. Carry her upstairs. Make her stay with me. “You should.”
“You murdered my sister!” Delaney warbles, tears billowing in her ducts to form a glassy veil, keeping her out of my reach. She’s toocomfortable there, I know that now. She likes it. It’s easier than the alternatives.
“It was a dire mistake. One that I intend to spend every day for the rest of our lives earning your forgiveness for, making it right.” I bite my lip, holding back a misplaced and irrational outburst gathering on my tongue. The gesture only works for the briefest moment of self control before it falls from my mouth anyways. “And besides, we’re going to bring her back!”
At least Delaney didn’t mention how I also ended her awful parents. Maybe she’s starting to see that all of my actions were only ever to keep her safe. ThatIam the one who has always truly cared for her well being.
At that moment, a croaky, rattling voice within the mausoleum says, “Hello? Is anyone there? Would you be so kind as to let me out? I’m not quite sure where I am or how I’ve gotten here.”
A gentle, clacking knock sounds on the door, bare bones against metal. Ever the gentleman, unlike myself. Had I been the one to wake after centuries, judging by the date and name on the tomb, I dare say I’d be splintering the bones of my own feet trying to kick the door open, rather than politely inquiring for a bystander to assist.
My eyes widen, absorbing the fact that my wife and I just expended a massive burst of necromancy together. I’m weightless, my skin crackling with energy and contentment, ready to do more with thisperfectwoman. If only I can get her to stop looking at me with such horror.
I can still fix this.
Delaney registers the same shock at the voice in the tomb, our discussion momentarily forgotten. A body with such advanced desiccation shouldn’t have the necessary hardware to speak.
Our magic is still connected, clinging onto each other with desperate fingertips, like doomed lovers reaching across stars, trying to steal just one more precious moment together. The voice, mixed with my insinuation, snaps another thread in my wife, stealing her away from me completely. I open my mouth to stop her, but before I can speak, Delaney gives a final, conscious yank on the tether of life we give to the dead, actively deciding to cut it off. To let it all die again. Our magic falls away like rain.
The rattle of bones and quiet creaks of plants inching back towards life dies in a single crescendo of clattering skeletons. Roses wilt, shriveling away to their deadened state. The graveyard transforms from its promise of new beginnings back to a garden of waste.
“You know it’s not possible to bring her back, Val,” Delaney says with obvious anguish.
“It’s possible. Look at what we’ve already done.” I don’t say it aloud, but she knows I mean the Heartstone. I gesture at the cemetery. Yet another glaring indicator of the greatness we’re meant for. “Look at what we just did, without even trying! When have you ever been able to raise something without your hand upon it before me? Everything only died again because you told it to.”
Delaney chews her lip, that willfulness of hers refusing to admit to the truth.
“Our connection wasn’t lost when our bodies broke apart. Delaney, we can do much more than I have ever anticipated. We can doanything.”
“Even if what you say is true, what mercy is there in raising a rotted corpse?” My wife furiously wipes at her eyes, angry for letting herself weep in front of me (among a few other things). But I want her to. I want her to offer me every last one of her tears so I may be the one to dry them.
“She’s not rotted.” I shake my head, barely whispering.
A wince distorts my features at the terrible realization that I probably should have already made Delaney aware that Rainah isnotin this cemetery. That perhaps I should have long since brought my wife to the true resting place, so she may find peace within her sister’s presence.
Unfortunately, my thoughts have been slightly scattered of late.
Delaney studies me with confusion right before knowing dawns in those blue-speckled eyes, stare trailing to her sister’s grave marker.
The knot of unease in my stomach loosens when Delaney marches towards me. Purposeful. Heated. I huff a sigh of relief, expecting her to jump back into my embrace and bring her mouth to mine again. Those stubborn splinters of hope quiver in my chest—such a nuisance, really—and I take their urgings to open my arms wide to pull my wife in for a hug. Unburdened in the fact that I was right, she can forgive me. That she’s racing towards me in the knowledge that I took steps to ensure we can do precisely what I keep promising.
Icanfix this.
But Delaney doesn’t fall into my arms. Doesn’t offer her words of understanding and forgiveness.
No. Not at all. Instead of the brief flash of delusion I lived in my own fucking head, my wife pushes at my bare chest that she was only just clinging to like it was all she longed to do in the world.
“Where is she?” Delaney snarls.
