The air up here tasted different than the air on the sea, or the air back home. Those had always been filled with smell. This place was almost devoid of it. The wind brought nothing but a chill as it stung my face. I didn't know if I liked it. It was different.
It felt thin enough to get enough of it into my lungs, a least. Lately it's seemed as if the air was too thick, as if each breath got caught somewhere, as if I hadn't been breathing at all. But this breath in felt like breathing. And this one too.
I'd stumbled out of the cabin while he was in the middle of talking. I think I was gaining the unadmirable habit of upsetting gods. It wasn't the kind of thing my parents had warned me to stay careful of, but it seemed pretty common sense. Maybe I was stupid. I didn't feel smart.
I let that thought go as easily as this breath came out. With my exhale, thinking I was stupid and then that was okay.
Elke was harder to rid myself of.
I was fiddling with my glass shard. What had it started as? I couldn't remember. I thought back to when I'd enchanted it. How in that moment, the path before me seemed so clear. And now...
My thoughts were brought back to the Shard. It was Elke's spell that I'd used. It was my blood that kept it going. Was it a piece of my soul? Would Ifera forever be a piece of mine?
Ifera.
She was coming, wasn't she?
I didn't turn to look at her. I shoved my hands into my pockets and continued to look out over the fjord. It was pretty. I could have never imagined anything like it before, and that was a shame. I had had my corner of the world, hadn't I? Maybe I would like to see more of it.
"Hey."
She stood beside me.
"Hey." I said back. It was the first word that I had said to her all day. I had been scared earlier, I think. That if I started talking I would never stop. And she would know all these things that she couldn't, and I would learn all the things I didn't want to know.
There was no fear of that now. She wouldn't die, I wouldn't kill her. This, whatever magic pulled the air between us to nothingness, wouldn't be ripped away. It was ours. Our souls could not be unBound.
It was the first thing I had that truly felt like mine, a thing that I wanted as opposed to something that others needed me to have. And I was so willing to just throw that all away. Like that, I would have chosen the world over myself. But now that there was space in my head to think, I was glad that we hadn't been unBound.
I smiled a bit at the thought. How funny. We'd come all this way, and it was all thwarted by the utterence of such a stupid word. Two. No unBinding. Was it a double negative?
"How are you feeling?" Ifera's words were experimental. She was walking on thin ice, she knew. I was the ice. Smooth and cold. On the precipice of shattering into some unforgiving icey blackness.
"You would probably know better than I would." I don't know why I said that. I couldn't make sense of it. It felt true, nonetheless.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize." I said. "What did you do?"
"Not enough. You were right, Jarelis. I never did enough." She said. "I thought that this could be it. I could save one of the many girls my father had hurt." I looked down at her as she squinted into the sunlight. "But it didn't really work out."
"It's not your fault, Ifera." I said.
"But—"
"I was wrong for blaming what happened to my sister on you. I didn't really believe it. I just thought that killing you was going to be easier if I hated you, but that didn't really work out."
"Why? Because I'm so unbelievably charming?"
"Something like that." I shook my head. "But I'm serious. The whole thing... it was out of your hands. Heillar's a god after all. You're just a kid."
"So are you. But you went on a whole quest to save your sister's life."
"Well...look where that ended us up." I said. I felt like laughing. I settled for a sad smile.
"Still..." She turned to face me. "I could have done more."
"What could you have done, Ifera, but been born human?" I met her eyes. They glowed green. I knew that this was common among enchantresses, but it still felt like a wonderfully singular aspect of her face. "That's what the gods do. They corrupt and they destroy. Sometimes on accident and sometimes for fun, but that is always the end result. This is always how the story ends."
She hesitated before speaking, before taking a small, unconscious step toward me. "Not necessarily."
I frowned. "How do you mean?"
She bit her lip. "The gods are immortal, and they're strong. But they aren't all powerful. They aren't all knowing."
"Ifera..."
"No, listen. They can be tricked. They can be evaded and persuaded. They can be hurt and they can be blinded. They can be stolen from, Jarelis. We could take her back." Her fingers went to the star around her neck. "I can use it now. I can make things happen, I think. If I'm close enough. If I want it."
Something stirred in my stomach. "You can use it now?"
The question that came with it.
Why hadn't you used it to escape?
She looked at her toes. "Like I said. I thought that this was the way that I could make it happen."
She was willing to die for my sister.
I wanted to hug her.
I've wanted to hug her. Why wasn't I doing it now?
I closed my eyes. "Ifera... I don't know if I can... Elke, she's..." My voice cracked. "She's in real trouble here, and Heillar is a god. How can we know?"
"We can't." She said. "But we're going to do it anyways. Because what else is there to do?"
"So much." I said.
"Exactly." She was smiling. It brought a lightness to my chest, sent a pang of something to my stomach, made it impossible to do anything but smile along. She took my hand. "Like Orlog said, Jarelis. It's in your hands. This is what we're going to do." She said.
Then added, "If that's what you want."
"I do." I said. "Thank you." I looked down at our hands, still together, but hanging between us now. Like a bridge. Did we need it?
She rubbed her finger over my knuckles and I received my answer. Yes, oh how we did.
"And I'm sorry about everything that I've put you through. Really and truly I am." I said.
She shook her head. "It's okay. It never did feel like I was going to die, you know. I mean, I was scared. And I was pissed that you were so intent on killing me, but it just didn't feel like the way things were meant to happen."
"So how were they meant to happen?"
"I don't know. I think that's up to us to decide." Her smile was a soft, delicate, gentle curve, like that of a bird's wing. She tilted her head. "Did you really think you were going to kill me? I could never tell."
"I don't know. Even if we did unbind our souls, I don't think I would have been able to do it. Or at least, I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I did." I laughed, a soft forgettable sound just for myself. "We would've always been bound to each other, one way or another."
I looked down at my hand in hers, unable to meet her gaze.
She laughed.
I frowned up at her. "What?"
She pulled me closer, raising our entwined hands to her chest, and I didn't question the action. It just felt right. "It's just... usually confessions of love come after a first kiss."
And I was smiling as well. "Is anything about us usual?"
"I guess not." Her eyes were magnificent I realized again. Why had it taken me so long to get a good look at them? How much time had I wasted being scared? "So are you?"
I reached out to touch her hair, something I'd been itching to do since I'd braided it all that time ago. How far had we come now? "Am I what?"
She laughed again. "Going to kiss me?"
I smiled at her and cupped her face with my free hand. I was close enough now to see the light speckling of freckles spread across her nose. I wanted to get a good look at her now before I closed my eyes and leaned in. But she had never been one for patience, and she cut my careful observation short with her lips on mine.
But I didn't mind. I didn't mind at all.