like wine, heady and intoxicating, demanded to be savored.
His. Hers. Theirs. Forever.
The world was going gray around the edges, soft. He wished he could have seen her one last time. Wished he'd had the strength to tell her what he was about to do. She wouldn't understand. Not yet. Maybe in a few years, she would, but for now, she was too rebellious. Too headstrong. She would only see death, where all he saw was life.
His mind drifted and he pulled it back, locked it down tight. Thought of all that shine, pouring all his desire into this one pivotal moment. Shine. Protected land. Lila. Legacy.
He wasn't afraid.
That was a lie. He was terrified.
Blood. So much blood. He had no idea a body could hold this much. It was everywhere, spattering all over the ground, pouring into that well. All that ruby falling like rain from heaven to be swallowed by that hungry oil below. That promise with teeth, feeding on whatever he had left. Demanding it all, and he was giving it. Freely.
He fell to his knees beside the well. He could almost feel the heartbeat of the world under his feet, sluggish but there, a dull throb at the edges of his senses. His own heart was matching that rhythm. Synchronicity. It was agony and ecstasy. It was the pain of becoming something more. His last, exquisite birth.
He repeated his purpose in his mind. Shine. Protected land. Lila. Legacy.
The world was going dark.
Something happened… a sound, or a motion. Something that cut through the ocean-roar of his ebbing life and focused his attention. A boy somewhere off to the side, wide, dark eyes, brown hair already going violet from all that exposure to shine. The boy was watching. Watching Matthew Esco die.
He couldn't be here. He couldn't see this. He was a weakness he and Lila could not afford. He had to be dealt with.
There was no time.
He felt Fate step up beside him, felt its weighty hand on his back, pushing.
Falling, it turned out, felt a lot like flying.
The boy had seen people die. Of course, he had. A person didn't travel across the known world with nothing but a wagon train and hope without seeing death a time or two. He'd helped bury bodies. He'd lit the Fate fires beside each grave, and watched during the long night, hoping he wouldn't have to scare off wolves.
Yes, he knew death.
But he had never seen a man kill himself before. Not like this. Not with a knife so sharp, it looked like it could cut the world in half, nor with such cold, calculating intent. He'd never watched someone bleed out. Never watched their color go from healthy and hale, to gray and pallid, and then… gone.
And if that wasn't horrifying enough, now he was watching as a shape formed. Wispy and ephemeral at first, like a dream, something his eyes hinted at, but couldn't latch onto. He witnessed, cold with dread, as the shape became real and solid, and another man who looked exactly like the dead one took his place on the lip of that same well, feet planted in the hard earth, shoulders back, dark purpose carved into his every line.
Alive, but not. A man, but not.
The boy didn't understand. He didn't need to. Didn't need to know the details of what happened to know it was terrible. The wrongness was in the air all around him. It was a pressure, a chill, like a creeping sickness. Quiet, but no less dreadful for it.
He didn't know what to do. Didn't know how to understand what he saw. That man-not-man stood at the edge of the well, at all that shine now stained with blood, at the dead body, exactly like his own, that was likely floating in it. Staring down, unmoving, not even breathing.
Suddenly, all he could think about was being away from that place, from whoever he'd seen die, and whatever he'd seen born. Away and away. His heart beat like a drum, and his legs twitched. His foot snapped a twig, and the man-not-man looked up, fixed on him and…
The boy ran.
I am here to tell you my story. Here, in this small, lightless room. You want to open me up and examine my beating heart. You desire to know how I came to be what I am.
To understand the end, you must know the beginning. I will dissect myself for you. I will open my veins and I will bleed.