Page 170 of Into the Heartless Wood
Through the haze I sense the Gwydden. I hear her voice in my head:You did not think when you offered your soul. You did not think how much it would hurt.
I cannot hurt more. I know I cannot.
And yet I feel her pulling my soul from me, like an arrowhead from a wound. It snags and tears; I don’t know if it’s the protection my mother wove around it, or if my soul simply does not want to leave me. But I tell it to go. I let it go.
It listens.
I do not know what shape my soul is. I do not know its essence or its color.
But when she rips it out of me in one final burst of agonizing, devouring pain, I feel the lack of it. The place it should have been.
I am empty of everything but pain.
My heart echoes inside of me like a stone dropped in an empty room.
You have my heart,whispers the memory of Seren’s voice.
And you have my soul,I answer her.
Blackness folds over me.
I step into the welcoming arms of death.
Chapter Sixty-Four
OWEN
ABURST OF PAIN.
The cold touch of rain on my skin.
The rushing of my soul back into my body, filling up the yawning void.
And I am not dead.
My eyes fly open.
The Gwydden is crouched on her heels, screaming and weeping, her hands pressed against her ears. She shimmers with silver light, but there is blood on her feet and her hands, blood on the bones of her horrible dress.
And I know with perfect certainty that it is Seren’s blood. That somehow it has saved me.
That wisp of smoke that came out of the king materializes once again, shrinking to a single kernel of light. It slips into the Gwydden.
She shrieks, clawing at her hair and her face. The last bit of her soul, returned to her.
But how?
Elynion’s corpse shrivels up and turns to dust before my eyes. The rain washes what’s left of him away.
The Gwydden has grown silent again. She kneels in the mud, her arms wrapped tight around her chest. She rocks back and forth, back and forth. She whimpers like a small child, a frightened puppy.
Her antlers shrink away into her head until they’re gone. Her skin shifts to a deeper green, mottled with gray. The bones of her dress turn to ash, and she’s left wearing a garment made all of leaves. Flowers grow from the crown of her head. Violets.
My hand goes to my mouth as I choke back a sob.
The Gwydden raises her head. She looks young. Fragile. “What’s wrong, boy?”
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand why I’m not dead. Why—”