Page 63 of Ascendent
No.Everything inside Sasha collapsed, a star dying, turning into a black hole. He felt the vacuum open, felt himself slip, fall into the darkness. The cave, Bear, and Kilaqqi disappeared.
Kilaqqi shouted, screamed his name, but everything fell away in a swirl of color that bled into nothing, until who he was changed into a single, wailing note.
The sound of his soul screamingwhy.
* * *
He opened his eyes.
Barren lands spread around him. There was nothing, not a tree, not a hill, not a river. Windswept desolation reached from horizon to horizon, and further. Winds in the distance kicked up snow. Or ash. He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t feel a thing.
“Sasha!”
Kilaqqi appeared, as if materializing out of fog. He knelt beside him and grabbed Sasha’s shoulder. “I looked everywhere for you! In all the worlds, in all the heavens! How are you here? Why?”
Sasha had never seen Kilaqqi afraid.
“What happened? Why did Bear throw you into the land of the dead? What did she see inside you?”
Pitching forward, Sasha crumpled to the ground. Ash coated everything, and he tasted the burn on his tongue, the ruination. It tasted like ice, like snow, like tears. Like jet fuel and parachuting over Siberia, like the taste of vomit in his throat as he saw anguish in Sergey’s eyes. “I’m broken,” he whispered.
“How? How are you broken?” Kilaqqi grabbed his chin, forced him to look up into his gaze. “How are you broken? What have you kept from me?”
“I love a man!” he roared. “I am in love with a man! And all I want in the world is to love him!” Tears built in his eyes, blurred out the dead lands. For a moment, he saw the stars again. No, it was just the fractal of his agony, light bouncing in his tears before they tumbled from his eyelashes. “I want to love him,” he moaned. “But Ican’t. I’m broken.”
Kilaqqi exhaled. He slumped, and his forehead rested against Sasha’s, as he stared into his watery gaze. “Are you broken because of your love for him? Or did you break, and now you cannot love him?”
He shook his head. “Both.”
“It is not both.”
Sasha blinked. He sniffed. Snot and tears puddled the ash beneath his knees. Ash clung to him, to his legs and his feet and his ass and his cock, his balls pillowed on the ground. He was wreathed in death, in ruin. Nothing seemed to cling to Kilaqqi’s naked body. His skin was clean.
“We were supposed to travel to the highest star and stand on its peak,” Kilaqqi said. “We were going to search each heaven for your soul, find where Agdy had hidden it.”
“You told me I did this to myself,” Sasha whispered.
Kilaqqi nodded. “You have.”
“Then I know where my soul is. It’s here.” He clenched ash in his palms. Felt the freeze, the burn. “It’s in the land of the dead. I wanted that part of me to die.”
“But now you need it back.” Kilaqqi gave him a small, sad smile.
Sasha shifted. Did he? Did he even want this part of himself back? Heknewwhat he’d cut out. He knew what he’d thrown away. He’d never wanted to love a man, never wanted to make love to one. Never wanted to care, never wanted to give in to the cravings that had brought him nothing but misery and agony his entire life. Why was he here, searching for this piece of himself? Why not just stay dead?
“If you want to love this man, you need all of your souls. You’ve been soul sick for a long time, Sasha. And now you’re trying to stretch your souls, trying to mingle your creation with another. But you can’t, not like this. The more you try to love him, the sicker you will get. Until you break.”
He tumbled forward, prostrating on the ashy ground. What to do? What would be best for Sergey? What was the right choice?
Sergey would go on without him if he didn’t return. He would focus on Russia, on the future. On making the world right. He wouldn’t have this terrible, mindless distraction pulling him away from what he needed to do.
But, dammit, he wanted to go back. Wanted to go home. Wanted to see Sergey smile at him, wanted to feel his lips kissing him. Wanted to hold him, feel their bodies harden together. Tears built, slid down his nose. Froze to the ground.
“Sergey loves you. He loves you more than Bear loves the stars.”
“How do you know his name?” Had Kilaqqi seen then together in some newspaper? Had their secret made it all the way to Tura, to Evenkiysky? Were there already rumors? Had someone put everything together?
“I can see his soul etched onto your heart. You want to put him there. And he wants to be there, too. To live inside your heart.”
