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Onyx Storm: Chapter Sixty-Six
And then I hear nothing.
He’s gone.
“He’s gone.” It’s all I can say, all I can think. “He’s gone.”
My chest cracks open, I find my hand flying there checking for physical damage.
“Tairn. Where is he?” I whisper as my knees buckle. Brennan reaches out for me but my body is dead weight. My head falls in my hands as I crumple in on myself.
“Where is he!” I demand of my dragon like I’ve never done before, but on the outside my face doesn’t so much as twitch.
My emotions barrel into me like a tornado, the same we just escaped. I feel my feet lift off the archives floor in my mind. Or maybe it fell away beneath me, leaving me in free fall.
Tairn’s roar cuts through the sound barrier of my mind, but I don’t move. Can’t move. What’s the point? He’s gone.
“Where are they?” I whisper to him as I realize she must be gone too, she would never have left him.
I can feel it now, Tairn’s emotions whipping around the tornado in my mind. Spinning it faster and faster. He roars again, the sound pure unfettered torture. I feel him step up behind me as I sag even further towards the ground, rocking to my side. His massive black wings sweep around us, blocking everyone and everything out.
We don’t sleep, but we stay like that until the temperature drops and the voices surrounding Tairn’s wings have long since disappeared.
Like when Andarna left, he leaves our bond open, but instead of offering his strength, we lie in our loss together. Side by side, neither of us saying a word, what is there to say? We might be bonded together, but without them, both of them, we are untethered. From earth, from our hearts, our very souls. Floating in the abyss between planets.
Hours pass or maybe it’s minutes… A lifetime later, a faint scratching sound breaks through the silence, pulling us from our endless free fall.
Tairn’s wings crack open, I don’t have to search, I see her instantly. Felt her curl up on the other side of Tairn a while ago. But I couldn’t move then. Even now my eyes can’t seem to focus.
“Violet?” Andarna whispers.
I shift to my hands and knees and slowly stand, I don’t know how I take my first step, I am hollow. I should be in pain from lying on the ground for so long, but I can’t feel any more. My feet shouldn’t be able to carry my weight, but I walk to her. It’s not her fault. I know that. But I can’t seem to look her in the eyes. I place my hand on her foreleg and pause as I pass by.
“We can talk later.” I say back, my voice sounding as empty as I feel, and walk down the path towards his house.
-
I don’t know if I made it back to his room unbothered or if I just didn’t see any of the people who tried to speak to me on the way. My stride doesn’t falter until I am before the threshold, frozen in front of the wards that keep this room ours. All ours.
When I step in I know it will forever alter this sanctuary we’ve created.
Desecrate it, I bite out.
I disconnect from my body as it flies through the wards and into the room. I can hear my screams in the distance as I tear through the room, ripping every book off the shelf. Hurling every relic off the bookcase and then the desk. I fly to the armoire and rip it open, yanking our uniforms off their hangers. Stitches pop and buttons fly but I don’t stop. I empty every weapon out of the piece of furniture, rip the blanket on the top shelf, everything. Then I use all the strength I’ve built in the last eighteen months and shove the thing over, sending it crashing to the ground.
I whirl around looking for my next victim but I stagger. My gaze catching on the bed, the dark blue sheets mussed from the morning, when we didn’t bother to make it.
Suddenly, I am more tired than I’ve ever been. But I can’t get in, can’t even touch it. If I touch it, I will climb in and never climb out.
And I just got myself out of it.
The bone crushing exhaustion hits like a tidal wave, as I shake off the blanket. The one his mother made him. The voice in the back of my mind says. But I don’t let myself think about that. I carefully grab a pillow off the bed, only daring to touch the corner of the case and step to the armchair. I don’t let one thought about the last time we were in this chair fully form.
I lay my head on the pillow I propped up on the arm of the high-backed chair and curl my legs under me, dragging the blanket as I go. It smells like him. I bury my face into his pillow and shut myself off.
-
The sun hasn’t risen yet as I stand on the hillside where Aretia looks over the Cliffs of Dralor. The one he told me he grounds himself on, while giving me my first crash course on shielding. Right before he… Stop, I say to myself.
My hand hurts from how hard I’m clenching my fist. The skin of my palm about to split, the sharp edges of the emerald cutting in. I bring my hand back again, but this time I can’t get it further than my shoulder.
I want it gone, I want to throw it over the cliffs and into the abyss, because then maybe it can keep my heart company at the bottom.
But I can’t make myself let go.
“I can’t let him go. I will not.” I say to myself.
The finality of it wrapping around my shredded soul and finally, I take a shallow breath. Small, but it’s the first that doesn’t burn as bright as a Luminary. Maybe just the scalding temperature of dragon fire without the extra amplification.
I slip the ring back on my fourth finger, where it belongs and look up into the never ending horizon. The sun’s first light just starting to crest. I need him. I need his ruthlessness, his cold calculated wrath. But he is gone. So the role of Xaden Riorson will now be played by Violet Sorrengail.
Without another thought I turn my back on the horizon, passing Tairn standing at my back, and all but stalk towards Riorson House.
My house.
I don’t stop until I fling the massive door of the assembly room open with the flick of my wrist. Until I am fully, comfortably situated on the only seat left empty.
My chair.
The assembly members don’t know how to react to the intrusion. Brennan stares from across the long table like he’s never seen me before, mouth still open from his unfinished sentence. Tairn’s power flows through my veins, a never ending river of fire, and I savor the burn. “I am getting him back. Help or get the fuck out.” I say with that lethal calm I learned from him. “Now.”
My husband.