Mercurial by Naomi Hughes (ebook reader with built in dictionary .txt) 📕

from them, webbing the sky, the lake, the ice, the peaks, until everything was veined white with impossibility.

Earlier, he had thought that his pain was so great and so muddled that he could not tell which part of it sprung from his injuries and which from his oath. Now, too late, he realized that none of it sprang from his oath at all. He was sitting immobile, staring down at the body of the girl he’d sworn to protect, and his oath was not grinding down on his bones or driving him to action. It was…gone.

It was gone, and he was free.

And it felt wrong.

The wrongness spread itself within him. Its wings opened, feathers whispering over his soul. This was not how it was supposed to go. This was not what his god had promised him. And he thought he had no longer wanted what his god had promised—for him to save the Destroyer, and save the empire through her—but he realized with a terrible suddenness that he did, he did, and it was too late.

He closed his eyes. Tipped his face to the sky, and despaired. The moment he’d fantasized about for two years had finally come to pass, and all he could think about was the way she’d cried without making a sound when she had failed to build a fire. The fierce, innocent triumph in her smile when she’d held up the rabbit she’d won from the stoat. The defiance in her cry as she’d launched herself at the mooncat for his sake.

He had done this. He had led the Destroyer into the wilderness in the hopes that this, or something like it, would occur, and even as he had, he hadn’t quite believed it truly could happen. Even as he’d struggled to break through the ice and save her a moment ago, he’d imagined her saving herself: a column of fire and steam geysering against the mountains as she rose from the lake like an avenging goddess. But instead, the way she’d died had been wholly human. More like the way he’d thought he would die—saving someone else, with no care taken for his own life.

He tilted his head down and looked at the Destroyer. At Elodie. She was splayed brokenly over his lap, her lips blue, frost creeping over them already. She was gone. Her heartbeat had ceased and his obligation to her had died along with it. Whatever wrongness he felt now, he could do nothing about it. It was over.

Except it wasn’t. He had grown up in the Skyteeth, in the harsh winters full of alpine blizzards and homemade ice skates and fishing holes carved into frozen ponds. He had been taught from his childhood how to rescue someone who fell through the ice. Even minutes after death, his stepmother had taught him, a person could be saved. She had demonstrated how to breathe air into someone else’s lungs. Had warned him that wet clothes had to be immediately removed lest they steal all the remaining body heat. She’d told him that even if these efforts succeeded, the rescued person would likely need further attentions immediately—a warm fire, blankets or furs, potential medical treatment for frostbite or hypothermia—or they could perish again in very little time.

There were no further attentions to be had. He was far too weak to build a fire and they’d used all their firewood in the cave anyway. The sled with the scavenged clothing was too far away for him to drag both himself and her. He was bleeding out, and even if he survived that, he was still dying of rust phage. He could not take care of both himself and Elodie. If he revived her, she would surely only die again without the attention she needed, and he would swiftly follow.

But it was the right thing to do, and Tal was as helpless as he had ever been against that—so in one final act of faith, he lowered his mouth to the Destroyer’s.

He pressed his lips to hers and exhaled. His breath feathered across her lips, melting the frost. He felt her chest rise against his with the inflow of air.

He lifted his head and gasped an inhale. Pain curled its grip tighter on him, unbalancing him, dragging him toward unconsciousness. He resisted. He had chosen to do this and he would see it done. “Help me,” he rasped. The prayer was coated with bitterness and the expectation of answering silence, but a prayer it was nonetheless. The Unforged God didn’t answer, but Tal found himself able to bend down and breathe into Elodie’s mouth again, and again, found the strength to lay her flat on the ice and push his palms hard against her breastbone the way his stepmother had shown him. He pressed down once, twice. Again.

The wrongness within him eased. A slow, gentle warmth replaced it: his god’s support. He couldn’t find it in himself to push it away.

Beneath his hands, Elodie’s chest suddenly contracted. She jerked onto her side and violently vomited up the water that had drowned her. Spasms shook her and she made a soft, reedy sound that was nothing like the Destroyer. He found himself reaching for her. Pulling her hair back—her loose, wild curls crunched in his hands, already frozen—so he could see her expression. Her eyes were open but glazed, unfocused. She looked as if she were half in a dream. She turned her face to his and lifted a trembling hand to touch his bare shoulder, the white line on his collarbone.

“So…so many scars,” she murmured, with the hoarse, drowsy tone of someone who wasn’t awake at all. “Who gave them to you?”

“You did,” he answered, his voice wretched.

Her hand fell away. Her eyes drifted shut again. She was breathing, but now she was shivering hard enough to crack her head on the ice.

He reached for the shirt and coat he’d thrown aside. There was no oath driving him to defend her, no outside force left to