Page 28 of The Shadow Fae Rhapsody
I can scarcely breathe.
I find myself the object of blank and puzzled stares of the folks in the town’s square. They chatter around me but I tune them out.
“Give her some room!” I hear Lord Wesley’s voice among the people. “Get her a blanket!”
After relaying the incident briefly to him, my mind shuts down.
I barely hear Aelfric’s nagging as he escorts me to my tower. The room seems to be too wide, too empty without Svenn’s constant presence.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the gilded mirror across the room. My disarrayed hair looks like something had made a nest in it. I quickly take a hot shower to rid myself of the blood and dirt. I sit numbly in the bathtub, replaying what I said to Svenn right before he took off into the night.
“If you have the power to help, then why didn’t you use it to save those people?”
I’m terrified that I might have hit some kind of nerve.
It’s completely unfair for me to ask him of that. Did I scare him off with my desperation? I know he has no obligation to help.
I stay still in the quietness and dimness of the room, waiting for him to come back. Hours pass and he doesn’t return. Despair begins creeping down my spine, constricting every nerve. I wish I can crawl back into his arms the same way I did this morning.
Wings ruffle by the window.
Hope soars in my chest, spreading through my body at a dazzling speed, bringing me back to life. I scramble to my feet as quickly as I can.
“Svenn?”
My eyes lock with a pair of dazzling round eyes.
Yellow instead of Red.
A bird’s eyes instead instead of my husband’s.
I stroke the feathers of the confused barn owl and it flies away. Tears prick my eyes as disappointment sinks in my guts.
I try taking a deep breath, but it doesn’t ease the burn inside my chest. It’s like there’s a hole in there that can never be filled.
Svenn is gone
He is actually gone.
That final look on his face scalds me.
I’ve pushed him too far. What if he never comes back? My blood runs cold. I’m suddenly struck with the fear that Svenn might have left for good.
Calm down.
Svenn can’t just leave me right? He’ll come back… he has to.
I feel hollow. Like some beast had ripped my inside out, leaving me to bleed to my death. I settle on the empty bed, letting the darkness of the room swallow me whole.
Chapter 3 Svenn
Just when I thought I was beginning to understand Rhianelle, she does something beyond the realm of my expectations.
I use the solitude of the Asharay mountain to calm myself down. What is coursing through my blood right now is not anger, but fear.
God fucking dammit.
I run a hand over my face. My hands are still trembling at the thought of losing her. I finally understand how Bas must have felt when Gwyn was taken from him.
