When Blood Runs Cold - Chapter 242

“I know what he wants, Hybrid Queen. I dreamt it before it was even real. But one does not go looking for death, he will not find me. I will find him. Just as I found you.”

A little tremor runs down my spine as she says this and all at once I get the strangest  feeling that this isn’t the first time she has found me. In fact, it feels like she has been watching me for a very, very long time.

And then I realise why. This cold- this bone chilling and immovable frost that encapsulates my body, is something that I have painstakingly endured before- but only once before. Back when I was dying I had been lost to a void of darkness, entrapped in a frigid and seemingly never ending winter. I had felt completely empty inside, as though it would be easier for my limbs to slow and cease to function that continue to bear that heart wrenching emptiness. I had felt myself slipping into death, that is until a vision had come to me of Soren, and it had become my anchor to the living.

That was…

“It was you,” I whisper under my breath, hardly daring to speak at all. “You were the one who kept me alive.”

The soul does not say anything to my statement, merely giving me a lopsided smile as she reclines back against the bark of a tree, watching. Chewing on her lip, she at last muses:

“Your time had not yet come. To let you die then would have been a very grave mistake on my part. Even though my mind is carved to be impartial, I do not need emotions to figure that out.”

Silently, I chew over this statement.  Do not need emotions…

I have heard that the soul of death uses the spirits as her guides and gathers to help conduct her duties, that they shroud her body in the veil of the Otherworld so that she becomes neither living nor dead. But the cost of which is both innumerable and extensive. For as long as she lives, her heart will forever remain rusted with the cold twinge of death, depriving her of love and mortal connections for as long as her body continues to sustain. Her lengthened span of mortality only equates to a lulling loneliness and fear. For while she toils away her time on this world, with every passing step her body becomes more and more empty. No emotion, not fear, no love, no hate, nothing at all, will pass through the veil of her heart. For death does not feel, it only takes and spares.

That is the curse of the death soul.

“Alright,” I sigh at last, raking my fingers through my hair. Even though the sun never rises in this land, through the dense canopy of trees I can tell a substantial amount of time has passed. I need to get going. “So what about Azrael, then? You intend to simply… find him? What if he asks me about you? I don’t intend to tell him anything, but if you have a plan and would like-”

“What you tell him of me is yours to decide,” says the girl, folding her arms over herself with a blank and unseeing expression. “Long has the time passed where I truly care what becomes of me.”

Never in my life have I seen someone so utterly unfazed by the prospect of their own death, so willing to put their fate to the hands of chance and the good whim of another. Perhaps after her time in Faey, her constant battle with death, and equally her manipulation of it, has hardened her to what it inflicts into mortal hearts: terror, dread. To her, death is not a force to be feared, but a normality.

She looks so youthful and yet… Backing away slightly, it occurs to me that perhaps this young girl has been living for a very, very long time.

“Why do you want me to decide your fate?” I ask suspiciously, prodding for the answers that I doubt she will hand over to me so willingly. But surprisingly, she mulls over this answers as she drifts in fortuitous circles around the glen, her skeletal form making itself apparent underneath her silken dress. Reaching out bony fingers, she scratches the underside of one of the wolves chins.

A slight whine resounds around the clearing.

“You are a girl with everything to lose,” she explains with a tired sigh. “But I have nothing. I have no love, no enemies, no children or friends, nor will I ever,” she pauses for a moment, voicing an airy sigh. “I am a neutral wanderer to this world who is called upon for aid when the grievances of death strike mortal hearts. But it is that very same death which I also bring to the world. It is not in my instincts to differentiate between friend or foe. The King of Scarlet was once like me, found himself above the hot struggles of mortality, found his heart bled dry and his chest was hollow. I thought he was like me, and I found solace in that. But even the immoral tyrant cannot stay unforgiving forever, for he too has discovered the tenderness of mortality in another, and has been swept up in the fateful ache of an unbreaking bond of devotion,” to this she gives me a long look, and all at once I realise she is talking about me. Breaking away from the wolves now, she traipses back across the glen, crystals of frost trailing under each footfall. She barely even touches the ground.

“I have nothing to live for anymore, Hybrid Queen, nor will I ever. But you I sense will make something of my life, after all, my dreams do not lie. My fate shall rest in your hands, so make something of it.”

“But-” I start, the weight of such a responsibility already making my head spin with nausea.

“Do not come looking for me again,” the girl instructs as she begins to drift towards the evergreens, the darkness enveloping her. The wolves do not follow.

“But i-”

“If you come looking once more the way you have done today, he will know,” she warns without looking back, her voice fading like a mist through the trees. “After all, these woods are no place for an angel hybrid. Only death lurks here. If you wish to help me, find a way to lower the enchanted wall around the palace, so that my people and I might escape and taste freedom once more. There is a key in the kings bed chamber that will remove the walls once fitted in its lock. But if you cannot do that, then you and I shall remain trapped for a very long time. Do not forget that he will always be watching you. And so will death.”

To this, I cannot tell whether she is referring to herself, or something else. But just as she is about to submerge completely into the shadows, she stops, turning to face me over her shoulder.

“You know,” she murmurs with the most human smile I have seen on her all day. “I don’t believe in friends, nor do I have any. But perhaps for now, you will be the closest thing I have to one. Won’t that be a change?” she chuckles to herself.

I go to reply, but it matters little as her form disperses against the inky darkness, a voice trembling on the wind where there is a girl no more. Or perhaps that is simply just the trees.

***

The wolves guide me back through the trees with heavy, lumbering steps, giving me enough time to ponder over my encounter with the soul and how drastically perplexing it was. Initially, I was uncertain exactly what business I had out here, and more importantly why the wolves seemed so adamant on leading me, but it would seem a fair few of those questions were consolidated today. Although I had a hunch about the soul, it would have been unwise not to be the least bit cautious due to the nature of the situation I am in. Anything and everything could be an illusion around here. But now, I am certain. These wolves are no pitiful illusion, they are Soren’s hell hounds, a product of Soren’s magic that I have seen a small handful of times before. Admittedly to begin with, I was unsure of their purpose here, or how exactly they had evaded Azrael’s vice like grip of control around the faery palace, that is, until I understood that they were never really in the palace to begin with.

It seems my suspicions have been confirmed.

A little dizzily my mind flickers back to the labyrinth, the picture that had flashed between Soren’s fingers as he held it down to his familiars. The way they have glowered at it, barked, their red eyes glowing with a wary distrust as they had leapt off into the darkness to trail off into the night.

The picture Soren had showed them was this girl. The soul of death. Soren had sent them to find her. How unlucky it is that the soul Soren knows the location of is also the one that I am after.