Asoharith is back to her old tricks, creeping around the edges of our lives and trying to spoil them. I am pleased to report, however, that these tricks are not nearly as effective as they once were.
I am getting ahead of myself. I only know this because with Freya’s help, I have managed to get a lock on the connection that was once between myself and Shannon. She has not finished her writing—not even close—but she managed to put together a summary of sorts that captured the essence of our combined story.
She may complain, but she is truly a talented writer. The story she wove spoke of two women, much the same in essence, but very different in choice. It spoke of how it is choice that makes us who we are, and of how very much choice there is in love.
As I listened to her read it to me this morning, I remembered how I had to choose to love Shannon, how I had fanned the feeling carefully into a flame, feeding it out of my own soul. I remembered also how she chose not to love me or anyone but herself, slamming the door to her soul. I felt again that rejection, and I let it burn inside me. Ero’an was right—it was agonizing.
But it tightened around my heart, and I knew then where Asoharith was. And I leapt up, alarm ringing in my soul.
“What?” Freya demanded—she had been waiting with me for the revelation to come.
“George and Kara,” was all I had time for, and then I darted to their side.
I could feel the tension hanging in the air the moment I arrived. It was pernicious, so subtle that I didn’t blame Therai for not noticing it building. She would have soon, for Kara and George were arguing in the house—something about a prank that Kara played, something that shouldn’t have bothered George as much as it did. And just down the street was a figure crouched, teeth bared in effort, and icy tendrils of antagonism crept out towards the house.
Credit where credit is due—even knowing in my soul that she was there, I was not able to see Asoharith through the veil of shadow she wore. Pelaios is a dangerous creature, and it may be that we will have to find and end him before all of this will truly be over.
She fled the moment that she sensed me. I still felt her, but I didn’t follow quite yet—I wanted to be sure that she hadn’t harmed George or Kara.
Even as I turned back to the house, the back door opened, and Kara stalked out of the house. “Will you get off my back for just one minute, George?” she barked over her shoulder. Her phone was ringing in her hand.
“Don’t you answer that, Kara, we need to sort this—”
“It’s Freya,” Kara retorted.
“And does Freya get to know everything about our marriage?” George asked, following her out onto the porch.
“I don’t know, does she?” Kara snapped.
“Kara,” I said, letting my voice resonate.
They both stopped and blinked at me.
“Answer it,” I went on. “She is worried.”
It’s strange—hearing the story also seemed to have had a secondary effect, for even as I felt a thin force pulling me in the direction of Asoharith, I also felt as if Freya were on every side of me, as if she had wings to wrap around me.
Kara answered the phone without another word. “Cobb, what’s Ace doing here with his war face on?”
“You tell me,” Freya answered through the phone. “He was tracking Asoharith.”
Kara blinked. Then she dropped her head forward and sighed. “Well. That actually explains a lot.”
I was surprised—it explained nothing to me.
“Oh,” George said, evidently coming to the same conclusion. He looked chagrined and rubbed the back of his head. “So I guess I owe you an apology, Kara.”
“Guess you do,” she said wryly, but there was also an apology in her glance at him.
Therai stepped forward and signed her confusion. I was glad not to be the only one.
“Cobb, I think this was her new plan,” Kara said. “She saw how well we worked together at the duel, and she’s trying to break us up. This fight, and then David being snippy about my work, and Jan stirring shit with sending me that picture of George and Renee—”
That is what she was doing? Why would she take a picture of them, much less send it to Kara?
George frowned at his wife. “Wait, she didn’t seriously think—it was her fucking brother’s funeral! We were literally standing over his grave!”
“Well, I think she wouldn’t have on her own,” Kara said. She was beginning to smile. “And oh, yeah, Freya, George actually got this creepy email from Elliott the other day, remember him?”
“My ex Elliott? What was he doing messaging George?”
“Sharing this little rumor that he heard from his sister.” The laughter behind her words seemed jarring to me against the unkind allegations she was reporting. “A rumor about you and me being real friendly in your office.”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Freya groaned.
“You mean to tell me that Asoharith has been instigating these awful rumors?” I was horrified. She has been lurking so close to the edges of their lives.
“Yeah, but don’t you get it?” Kara asked me. “None of it has worked even a little bit. I set Jan straight right away, and we weren’t even mad about Elliott’s story—George and I actually had a good laugh about it. She’s trying to bust us up, but she can’t touch us. We know better.” She high-fived George, who was grinning now too.
Therai was not so easily comforted. You and George were fighting just now, she signed, and you so rarely fight.
“No, but now we know why we were fighting,” George said. “We’ll be watching for it now.”
“Even so, I am not easy that she was able to get so close to you at all,” I said.
Kara snorted. “Let her come. We’ll take her apart. Because there is nothing she can do to break the three of us up, and if she keeps trying, we will break her.” There was a cheerfully violent light in her eyes.
Therai met my gaze. Better, maybe, if Asa’el can find her again and tell her that himself.
I nodded and closed my eyes, taking a breath and looking for that pain in myself. It was still there, and as I thought about the moment that Shannon turned away from me, it tightened and drew me away, right into Asoharith’s path.
She drew up in her flight and hovered just in front of me. I still couldn’t see her with my eyes, but with them closed I knew precisely where she was, including where the bone knife in her hand was pointing.
“It won’t work, you know,” I said to her.
It was a strange moment. So close to her, I could feel the connection burning all through me, cold and jagged and cruel. But I also knew that she felt it too, and it held her spellbound and silent.
“It will take much more than you to separate my friends from one another,” I went on. My whole body was shuddering with the effort to maintain the connection. “There is a trust built between them that will take more than tricks and suggestions to break. They are laughing at you.”
She bared her teeth, and I felt the spike of her anger.
“Even so, I will not let you come so close to them again,” I said, and I summoned my bow.
The instant that I turned my thoughts to the weapon, however, the connection shattered, and Asoharith vanished. I would have tried to follow, but exhaustion struck me like a brick between my wings—I nearly fell out of the sky. It was all I could do to get back to Freya, who took one look at me and called Brid and Inca to bring me back to heaven.
I am better now after some rest, but I will not be able to try the connection again anytime soon. It was too powerful a thing to use lightly.
I am proud of my friends. They have come a long way together, and they have let it change them for the better. They are stronger now than ever before, and their resilience in the face of this insidious attempt gives me comfort. Even if I should fail, they will be able to protect one another.
I should not talk about failure, but it is a possibility. Maybe it is the ache of memory that makes me think of it, the reminder of the failure that lives in my soul and quite literally haunts me. I know that it is possible that I will be the one who will fall in this fight, and I need to accept that. It is strange, but I am finding it hard to mind just now. At least Freya will not be alone, and I will have fulfilled what Shannon wanted of me in the end.
Somehow, though, I do not think Asoharith would find the joy in my death that she thinks she will.
Brid says I must stop being maudlin and get some sleep.