Page 151 of A Tower of Half-Truths
Alain swayed on the spot, and Mavery realized their hands were still joined. While his lay limply in hers, she’d been clutching his with a painful, white-knuckled grip. She released him, shook out her aching hand. He peered at her through half-closed eyes as he chuckled.
“And Elder Lythandus once described that spell as ‘wholly impractical.’ ”
He then pitched forward and collapsed on the floor.
Forty-Five
Alain ran through a dense forest, stumbling over roots hidden in the underbrush. He pushed aside a branch, revealing a grove with what appeared to be a stone mausoleum at its center. All around were ominous gray clouds, as if he were in the eye of a thunderhead.
He strode forward. But he made it not even three paces when his foot caught on something solid. His stomach lurched, and the wind was knocked from his lungs as he collided with the ground. He picked himself up, brushed the dirt from his trousers, then turned to see what had made him fall.
A body, long dead, lay facedown in the grass. He knew he ought to leave it alone. The mess of auburn hair was enough to tell him the corpse’s identity, but his muscles were already moving of their own accord. He crouched down, rolled the corpse over.
The skin was tinged with gray, the mismatched eyes lifeless. But the perfect, full mouth contorted as Conor’s corpse spoke to him, just as it had countless times before, in dreams like this one.
“You didn’t even have the gall to come to my funeral. Shameful.”
Alain released the corpse and bolted upward.
Conor propped himself up on his elbows, shook his head. “I always knew you were spineless.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?”
Conor rose to his feet.Alain peered up at the statuesque figure, forced himself to once again confront the achingly beautiful face that had haunted his dreams over the past year. Because Conor was beautiful, even in death. Even with cruelty behind his eyes and hollowness in his expression.
“But I knew so much about you,” Conor said. “I knew about your mother’s wealth, and how you were so eager to share it. After all, you were one of the few at the University who actually paid their assistants.”
“Not this again,” Alain groaned as his hands formed fists.
“I knew all the gossip, too. How you’d always been so dedicated to your work, it had cost you colleagues, friends, even a betrothal.”
“Stop it!”
“You would be the last person on Perrun to admit it, but beneath that stoic façade, you were desperate for a friendly word, a lover’s—”
“SHUT UP!”
Alain lunged forward, reached up, seized Conor by the throat. His skin was as cold and unrelenting as stone.
“I never wanted you to die,” he said through clenched teeth. “Your death was an accident. It was not my fault.”
“Is that what Mavery told—”
“Keep her name out of your mouth!” Alain’s knuckles paled as he tightened his grip, yet he left no indentation on Conor’s throat. “You have no right to speak her name.”
“That may be, but you know deep down she’ll never know you as I did. She’ll never love you as I did.”
“ ‘Love’?” Alain spat. “You never loved me. You only saw me as someone you could exploit.”
Conor opened his mouth. But this time, when Alain clenched his fist, the apparition choked on its words.
“You’ve said enough, and I’m no longer listening.”
A hairline fracture formed beneath Alain’s hand. It snaked up Conor’s throat, erupted into a web of fissures across his face. Conor’s entire body crumbled, leaving Alain with only a fistful of dust. He unfurled his fingers and let the breeze carry away the remains. With Conor gone at long last, he turned toward the temple again.
But there was no temple, no forest. Only a dark, endless void.
