Desolate (Desolation) by Cross Ali

Author:Cross, Ali [Cross, Ali]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-07-02T22:00:00+00:00

chapter twenty-six

Michael

I could hear her voice. Feel her presence in the room. I longed to reach out to her, but I felt frozen as surely as if I’d been encased in ice. I’d been cold for so long. And I’d had many dreams of my love, though none as real as this.

She touched me, in the dream, and sent a chorus of screaming shards of ice singing through my already frozen veins. It hurt. It burned—but I wanted more. Hungered for her touch, even if it killed me. I wondered if I would ever get used to Hell, if the warmth of Asgard would ever leave me entirely. If I would ever stop dreaming of Desi.

With fervent desire I prayed it not to be so. I’d endure an eternity of freezing torture to see her in my dreams.

And then something new entered my mind.

A flash of golden heat followed by a delicious warmth that radiated from a point near the center of my collarbone. A feeling like warm honey spread through my veins—a small thing against the block of ice I’d become. Still, I felt my body relax a little for the first time in forever. Felt Loki’s iron grip on my soul release. Just a fraction. The smallest of concessions. But it was enough.

I took the first truly deep breath in what seemed like centuries. Even in sleep I could feel myself sink deeper into the bed on which I slept, feel the sigh of release.

“Cornelius!” Desi screamed.

My heart leapt, called to serve her, to care for her, but my body lay stone-still. This was not the dream I usually had, though I often dreamed of her need and my inability to protect her. Because I lived in Hell now. A place Desi had abandoned for me.

I felt a gentle touch—not Desi’s—but I couldn’t rouse myself. The murmur of voices hummed around me and I struggled to make sense of this new dream—though I began to suspect it to not be a dream at all.

When she touched my head, I knew.

Her fingers burned and tore into me like an ice pick. I felt like a drowning man who gasps for air only to be filled with water. I craved her touch, had waited for centuries to feel it again, but her touch would kill me while it fulfilled me.

My body lurched beneath her hand—the electric shock awakening my fuzzy brain.

She withdrew and I heard Cornelius ask her what she did.

But she hadn’t done anything at all.

“Are you all right, child?”

“Fine,” my beloved said, though she lied.

Because the burning ice that filled her veins was not her choosing—I knew its bite, its flavor. I’d lived with its constant presence since the moment Loki drew me down to Hell.

My love was not fine. Whether she knew it or not, Hell had reclaimed her.

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