Fire Heart (The Titans: Book One) (70 page)

And what had he
done?

“I trusted you with my soul,” she continued, “but you betrayed that trust. And now...I am dead inside. I feel only sorrow. Sorrow for the lives you have taken, sorrow for those who died to defend you—and sorrow that I could not save you from yourself.”

She pressed her lips against his palm then, the soft touch sending a tingling sensation up his arm that spread throughout his body. Then she leaned in and gently kissed his mouth, and he found his own eyes sliding closed as he lost himself in the sensation.

She pulled slowly away a moment later, and he could feel her linger a hair's breadth from him. Her warm breath tickled his lips, and he realized he was not breathing—any movement on his part, he was sure, would make her draw away completely, and that was one thing he did not want. “Open your eyes,” she whispered and, reluctantly, he did.

She was crying—twin shining trails traced delicate paths down her cheeks, and he felt his heart twist with emotion. But all thoughts fled from his mind a moment later when his eyes found hers. They were no longer gold-flecked green, but pure gold—they seemed to shine despite the shadows that hid her face, giving off a faint glow that was at once both beautiful and painful to look at. And they churned slowly as though molten, twisting and flowing like magma.

“Can you see?” she asked, and because it was a dream he knew in that instant, though he could not see them himself, that his own eyes shone crimson.

His mind, addled from the dream, worked sluggishly to comprehend her meaning. She stared at him, her hand still resting lightly on his own as it lay against her cheek. Her golden eyes entranced him with their swirling depths, and the longer he gazed into them the more he felt he was falling into a well, a font of energy so great that the only comparable thing was...

Himself.

They stood thus, unmoving for what could have been belltolls or mere moments—held as he was in the power of her gaze, time had no meaning for him.

“Can you see?” she asked again, breaking her own spell, and he blinked, suddenly grasping her meaning.

“It's you,” he said, his voice hushed, and he was only mildly surprised that he was finally able to speak. “I was right—it's always been you.”

She nodded sadly in response. “It is,” she confirmed. “But even a bond forged in the Void can be broken. Are you still the man I love?”

“Of course—” he began, but something made him stop. His mouth moved, then closed, and he was suddenly unable to meet her gaze any longer. His hand fell away from her cheek. Was he? Or was he simply a monster—a monster with the power to destroy the world at his fingertips? “I don't know,” he said softly.

“That,” she sighed, “is not the answer I wanted.”

“I can't control it,” he said quietly. “It's like nothing I've ever felt before. The power grows and grows until suddenly, it takes over and I go willingly along with it. They said the Phoenix—they said you would be able to help me. But...” He trailed off, his mind reaching for answers that would not come. He could remember now—how she had screamed at him, hit him to make him stop. Why had he not noticed her at the time? She had brought him back in Prado, hadn't she? So why had she been unable to in Spaertos? It made no sense.

“I...” he murmured, “I don't...I don't know what happened...” He shook his head slowly, disbelief burning through him like a river of molten lead. His next words came in a hushed whisper. “I can't...I can't control it. I can't control it at all.”

They were quiet for a moment, until Clare said, “Then you are not Willyem Blackmane. And I cannot love you anymore.”

The words hit Will harder than anything Strife could ever have done to him. He fell to his knees, winded, and shook his head in denial. The bottom of his stomach fell away and he felt sick. The dream, it seemed, had decided to make itself as real as possible. “No,” he whispered, and then more loudly, “no, Clare, please, I need you—”

“Come back to me, Will,” she said softly, sadly, and he craned his head up to look at her. “That is all I ask. Come back to me. Throw away your anger. It poisons you—makes you into something you are not.”

“How?” he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.

She knelt down next to him and placed her hands on either side of his face. “Love,” she breathed.

When it became apparent that she would say no more, he nodded. Tears welled in his eyes, obscuring his vision behind a blurry veil. “Alright,” he said, and his voice shook. He steadied himself and tried one more time. “Alright.”

“Now look,” she said, apparently accepting his answer, “and
see.
”

He stood and turned, his gaze drawn to the rolling hills beyond the oak. Clare got to her feet and went to his side, and he felt her fingers slide along his arm and grasp his hand.

The fields were no longer empty—there were now thousands of people before him, nobles and soldiers and commonfolk from every corner of the world. They stood silently, motionlessly, waiting for something. He saw Castor and Katryna, Hook and Serah and Feothon—everyone he had ever met, even the little girl named Priscilla, was there. He tried to call out to them, to say something, but found that once again the dream had other plans.

“These are all the people you have met,” Clare said softly, “and all the people you
will
meet. Every life you will ever, or may ever change is here, now.”

There were so many of them—so many that he could never have counted them all. They were as grains of sand on a beach, or the stars in a clear night sky. Endless, numberless, an ocean of people more vast than even Borbos' sea.
What are you waiting for?
he wanted to ask.
Why are you staring at me?
And then he saw, far off in the horizon, the telltale darkness of an approaching storm. But it was no earthly storm—he sensed malice within its depths, a hatred so powerful that it threatened to send him to his knees, and he knew that it was the same storm he had seen before. But he felt Clare's hand in his own and it lent him strength, strength enough to stand against the dark tide.

He wanted to scream, to cry out to the people who stood before him, oblivious to the horrors approaching from behind, but he could not. With his free hand he reached for his sword—and found that it was not there. When he looked down he saw that he was clothed not in armor but in only a shirt and breeches.

His eyes crept slowly skyward then, his horror mounting with each passing moment. The darkness was closer now, and he could see within its depths jagged flashes of blood-red lightning that whipped and flickered with a life of its own. And still the people did not notice.

Will turned back to Clare as panic seized him, but she would not meet his gaze. Her golden eyes
were fixed unblinkingly on the approaching storm, and the grief in them now eclipsed anything he had ever seen before. And then she began to sing, her voice clear and beautiful as it rolled out across the field of people and toward the roiling mass of darkness. Will could not understand the words—if, in fact, there were any words at all—but something about her voice told a tale of sorrow and fear. It laced itself between the sounds of the storm, the thunder and lightning providing a booming tempo that both clashed horribly and blended beautifully with her voice.

The storm seemed to pause then, and Will felt its malicious attention center on Clare. Panic surged up from his gut, and he made to stop her from singing—anything to keep her from the dark mass' notice—but found he was unable to move except to look between Clare and the storm.
No,
he thought frantically,
no, no, no, no!

The cloud charged forward then, rushing toward Clare with breathtaking speed. An unearthly howl crashed through the air, deafening Will and leaving his head reeling and confused. He tried to cry out, to shake Clare back to her senses, to somehow make her stop, but he could not. And the darkness came ever-closer, swallowing everything before it and leaving nothing in its wake. Will saw everyone he knew, everyone he loved, devoured by its insatiable fury, and as it ate them it seemed to grow, its tendrils of red lightning venturing farther and farther from the thing's center.

He saw Castor and Katryna rent to pieces, and the scream that wished so desperately to tear itself from his throat instead tore at his heart. Hook was flung into the abyss, his eyes never leaving Will as he spun and flipped through the air before disappearing forever. Something inside Will snapped and he felt his anger peak, just as it had done in Spaertos. He clawed at the power inside of him, trying in vain to summon Koutoum's wrath, but no matter how he pushed and pulled and raged inside his mind, the power eluded him.

The cloud had finally reached the Titans, and it killed them one by one. Borbos, Leyra, Serah, Feothon—they were all carried away, silently staring at Will just as Hook had done. And when the Titans were finished, the storm turned its attention completely to Clare. Will felt waves of pure hatred beat down on him from above, and had he been able he would have collapsed to the ground. But Clare's grip on his hand suddenly tightened, and he turned to face her with tears of enraged frustration stinging in his eyes.
I'm so sorry,
he wanted to say. He wanted to touch her, to hold her, to wipe away the tears that stained her cheeks. But he could not, and the dark mass drew inexorably closer.

I love you, Clare,
he thought, and the realization that they were going to die suddenly became a tangible idea in his mind. He felt his anger ebb away to be replaced with a strange sense of peace—nothing seemed to matter anymore, nothing except that he would spend his final moments with Clare.
I love you.

And then, to his surprise, she smiled. She finally turned to face him, and when her eyes of liquid gold met his own of flowing crimson, the world literally exploded around them as a towering inferno that dwarfed the dark storm rose up from their bodies in a column of light and heat. It began to beat the darkness back, tearing into the shadow-stuff with unimaginable fury. Tongues of flame lashed out at the forked bolts of lightning, beating them back into the center of the clouds, and the storm shrank before the fire's relentless assault, sounding as though it were howling in pain as it went.

And yet, despite the fire's wrath, Will continued to feel only peace. He did not notice the titanic battle raging about him, nor did he hear the deafening wails of pain and rage. He saw only Clare, heard only the faint sounds of her breathing, smelled only the scent of lavender. “I love you,” he said and, suddenly able to move once more, leaned in to kiss her.

~

“Welcome to Horoth,” Leyra said, though her tone lacked any trace of welcoming inflection. She slid off of her gryphon and landed on the ground with a heavy thud. The impact was dulled somewhat by the thick carpet of snow that covered the ground, and the crunch that followed sounded hollow and
suppressed.

Clare had been to the southernmost reaches of the Northlands with the Dahotan army many times over the course of her life, but those ventures had always been at the height of summer when the earth had yet to grow dark and cold. The snow she had seen before had always been pitiful, little more than piles of melting slush that disappeared soon after she found it. So it was with some trepidation that she slid down her gryphon's side and stepped lightly up to her ankles in the snow of the far north. It crunched and squealed beneath her boots, and she felt her toes rapidly growing cold despite the leather protecting her feet. She shivered and wrapped her arms about herself; her breath made misty little clouds in the air that dissipated moments later. The cold seemed to wrap its fingers around her like it had not up high in the sky, and she wondered if Serah had done something to keep them warm during their journey.

Horoth was, Clare found to her surprise, unremarkable. She had seen Northmen forts along the southern arm of the Salt March before, and there seemed to be few differences between Horoth and those unadorned constructs of wood and metal. Like nearly every structure built by the Northmen this one seemed to have been designed for the sole purpose of war; a great wooden wall surrounded the inner fort, which had been built in the same bleak, featureless design. All told, there was very little about Horoth that Clare considered even remotely eye-catching.

“Come,” said a soft voice behind her, and she felt Serah's slender fingers rest lightly on her shoulder. She turned and met the desert woman's dark gaze. “You must be tired, yes?” she continued. “Horoth is much warmer inside.”

Clare nodded but did not say anything. For a moment Serah did not move, but continued to stare at her.
She expects me to ask about Will,
Clare realized as she looked into Serah's unreadable eyes. She almost did—her mouth opened the slightest bit, and she took a preliminary breath before giving voice to the question.

And then she stopped. The truth was, she did not care. Will was alive—she knew that much. Whether he had awakened, or indeed if he ever would, was inconsequential.

She closed her mouth, nodded, and looked away. After a moment Serah slumped wearily, looking suddenly very frail. “Right,” she said in a small voice. “Then...follow me. Servants will take care of the gryphon.”

It was only a short trek through the front gates of Horoth, but to Clare it felt much longer. The cold made her tired muscles ache, and the grey skies overhead served only to compound her ill feelings. Stoic Northmen in full battle dress greeted them at the gates with a curt nod, but otherwise made no move to communicate. Their eyes continually scanned the seething mass of people for any threat foolish enough to make itself known, and the cold in the air was nothing compared to the frigid glares they gave the world.