Moon Shimmers(8)

Vanzir’s head dropped back and his eyes closed as he drank in the flow of life force. The look on his face was almost beatific, he was so immersed in the communion   as he drained the vroll dry. There was something different, though, from the times I had seen him drain our enemies. Instead of struggling, the vroll was curled on the ground, looking for all the world as though he had fallen asleep. He was calm, perhaps for the first time since the idiots had woken him up. Vanzir was singing him to sleep for the last time, in his own, twisted way.

I wasn’t going to cry, I told myself. But the tears on my cheeks still trickled down and I finally just let them fall. We had seen so much death over the past few years, had experienced so much collateral damage, and I had managed to remain strong. I had been tortured and beaten by my father-in-law and I had managed to remain strong. I had watched friends die and managed to remain strong. And I had escaped as a city fell beneath the siege of a sentient storm and managed to remain strong. Yet here, in a park at a midnight wedding, a vroll’s death threatened to sweep me under.

Before I realized he was by my side, Smoky wrapped an arm around my waist and leaned down to kiss my head.

“I wish it could be otherwise,” he said in that silken voice of his. “But love, when someone cannot adapt to the tides of change, they are best off in the past, where they don’t have to struggle or fear. Even if you had been able to save that creature, there would be no place he’d feel truly safe. The vroll is only a shell of what he was. He’s the last remnants of fear left behind. This is a kindness. He’ll go to whatever afterlife awaits a troll.”

I knew he was right. I had said the same thing more than once, in similar situations.

“I don’t know why this one hit me so hard. I think…he seemed so childlike. Yes, we were fighting him, but then when I understood what had happened…” I paused. Maybe that was what had hit me hardest. Not that we had to send the vroll to his death, but that someone else had given us no choice. “Whoever woke him up—they’re the ones I’m angry at. They meddled where they shouldn’t. They didn’t think of the ramifications of what they did. They just waltzed in there, deciding Oh, wow, let’s contact this spirit, without even thinking what might happen.”

Smoky pressed his hand against my lower back, his fingers touching the skin beneath the laces of my corset. His fingers worked like fire, sparking me off.

“You know as well as I do that most people—humans, Fae, even dragons—don’t usually stop to think out all scenarios. Nothing would ever get done if people were that hesitant. I think this goes deeper, my love. I think you’re just anticipating the changes coming up in your life, and you’re scared, and projecting that anxiety. Truly, this vroll…if he was still in full form, still a troll, you’d be fighting to kill him, wouldn’t you?”

I frowned, not wanting to face the reality that he was steering me toward. “Well, yes.”

“You wouldn’t feel sorry for him, would you?”

Again, I kicked the ground in front of me. “No.”

“Then face it, you’re not sorry for the vroll. You’re feeling melancholy because of your own life. Granted, it’s a sad thing that his spirit couldn’t rest easy, but if you let him be, he’d blunder around and destroy everyone and everything he came across because of his fear.”

Smoky swept me up in his arms then, a gentle smirk on his face, his ice blue eyes twinkling with just a hint of amusement. “Face it, my Witchling. Because you’re heading square center toward a destiny you never expected, you’re feeling trapped and afraid. Hush,” he added as I started to protest. “You and I both know this is the path you need to take. I didn’t say otherwise. But you’re still rebellious enough to wish you had the option to choose.”

A thud in the pit of my stomach told me he was right. Feeling almost ashamed—maybe I really didn’t care much about the life of a troll, given how much carnage most of them managed to wreak—I rested my head against his chest.

“You’re right. I know that moving out to Talamh Lonrach Oll, joining Titania and Aeval in the Barrows, taking the crown that belonged to Morgaine—this is what I need to do. But damn it, can’t I at least have the option of saying, ‘Yeah, sure, I will do this’ instead of it all just being thrust on me? I want some say in my life, damn it!” I usually loved it when Smoky held me in his arms, but right now, it just irritated me. “Put me down, you big lug. I love you, but I don’t need to be carried right now. I want to stand on my own two feet.”