Page 39 of Bite Sized Bride
“I could not… save her,” I say, the phrase a confession of my greatest failure. “The beast… it took me. And I could not… save her.”
Tears, hot and thick, stream down my face, carving paths through the grime on my cheeks. I do not try to stop them. I am Kael of the infamous Stonefang Clan. And I am a warrior who has lost his world.
Mikana does not offer empty platitudes. She does not tell me it wasn’t my fault. She simply stands there, her hand a warm, steady pressure on my chest, and she shares the weight of my grief. She is a silent, unshakeable anchor in the storm of my sorrow.
“She was a part of you,” she says finally, her voice a soft, steady murmur. “And the things we love… they become a part of us. They are not a debt to be paid, or a ghost to be appeased. They are the soil from which we grow.”
She looks up at me, her dark eyes shining with an empathy so profound it takes my breath away. “You are not replacing her by being with me, Kael. You are honoring her by choosing to live. By choosing to feel again.”
She rises on her tiptoes and presses a soft, gentle kiss to my lips. It is not a kiss of passion. It is a tender kiss of acceptance. Of understanding.
She is not afraid of my ghosts. She is willing to stand in the darkness with me.
The grief is still there, a dull, heavy ache in my soul. But it is no longer a solitary burden. She is carrying it with me.
I look from her beautiful, determined face to the dark, twisted valley below. The path to the Wildspont is a path into a nightmare. But for the first time, I am not afraid.
I have a warrior at my side. And we will face the storm together.
21
MIKANA
The world below us is a wound.
We stand on the precipice, a rocky outcrop that serves as the lip of the valley, and stare down through the exact heart of the Wildspont. The air here is so thin it’s a struggle to breathe, and it hums with a low, constant vibration that I feel in my bones, in the roots of my teeth. It tastes of ozone and something else, something ancient and green and utterly alien, like the sap of a world that grew in a different sun.
The forest in the valley is a nightmare of beauty. The trees are not wood, but something like living, iridescent glass, their trunks twisted into agonizing spirals, their leaves shimmering with every color I have ever known and a dozen more I have no name for. The moss on the ground pulses with a soft, internal light, shifting from emerald to amethyst to a sickly, jaundiced yellow. The very air seems to shimmer, reality a heat-haze over a fire.
This is the place. The place of unmaking. The place that will either give me back the orc or swallow the monster whole. There is no in-between.
Kael stands beside me, a monolith of scarred flesh and tense muscle. He is a stark, brutal reality against the surreal landscape. The strange, magical light plays over his hardened hide, catching the jagged edge of his broken tusk, the permanent, shameful brand of the fused collar at his neck. He stares down into the valley with a kind of hungry reverence, his amber eyes wide with a mixture of terror and a desperate, fragile hope. He feels the pull of this place, the promise of it. He is ready to walk into the storm.
And that is what terrifies me.
He takes a step forward, his massive foot dislodging a cascade of small stones that skitter down the slope and disappear into the glowing moss below. He is going. He is going to give himself to this… this beautiful, terrible unknown.
“Wait.”
The word is a raw tear in the humming silence.
He stops, turning to look at me, his brow furrowed in confusion. The question is clear in his eyes.Why stop? We are here.
I take a step toward him, my heart a frantic, hammering drum against my ribs. My hands are shaking. The words I need to say are a tangled knot in my throat, a truth so large and so terrifying I don’t know how to give it voice. But I have to. I have to, before he walks into that light, before he risks everything for a future that might not include him.
“Before we go down there,” I begin, my voice trembling. “Before you… do this. You need to listen to me.”
He waits, his gaze patient, his massive head tilted.
I reach out, my hand shaking, and I touch his face. My fingers trace the rough, scarred landscape of his cheek, the harsh line of his jaw. “This,” I say, my voice gaining a sliver of strength. “This is a prison. I know that. It is a cage of flesh and magic that was forced upon you.”
My fingers move, tracing the cold, hard line of the fused iron collar at his neck. He flinches, a low growl of pure self-loathing rumbling in his chest, but he does not pull away.
“This is your pain,” I whisper, my heart breaking for him. “This is your torment.”
I look up, my gaze locking with his. I pour every ounce of my will, my love, my desperate need for him to understand into my next words. “But it is not you. Do you understand me, Kael? It is notyou.”
He stares at me, his golden eyes a swirling vortex of confusion and a dawning, fragile hope.
