Ch. 35

“Delirium”

The cold surges again, up my arms, pooling at my shoulders and heightening my sense. Claws dig into my palms, shifting as I approach, faster than I intended, until I am standing right in front of him. My vision narrows, zeroing in on him. He is standing now, but he doesn’t flinch as I approach, no he watches me with a mixture of amusement and something else — a challenge, maybe, or anticipation.

I shove him, and he lets himself fall on to the tree stump behind him, that stupid smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. His gaze settles on me, and I catch the hint of something warmer behind those cerulean eyes that dance with a bright orange flame now, there is a softness I can’t explain. Something deep and far more complex than his usual mocking gaze. I ignore it, focusing on the anger simmering with the cold inside me instead.

“What do you know?” I hiss, the edge of my voice sharper than the claws digging into my palms as I try to contain the ice surging within me.

“Me?” His tone is lazy, but I catch the way he studies my face, how is eyes flicker as if trying to speak to me. “Oh, I’ve always known plenty.” He leans back, his hands resting casually at his sides, as if he is daring me to come closer. His eye move to my hands, then to my face, and something changes in his expression. “But maybe the question should be, what do you know… about this, Princess?”

His words catch me off guard, and I feel the weight of whatever this is — something implied and bounding that hangs thickly between us. My mouth goes dry. The cold swirls tighter around my shoulders as I fight to speak.

“This?” I echo, the slipping out before I can think. “You think I know what this… thing is?”

Zanir’s gaze sharpens, mixing with a strange combination of hope and caution. “Do you feel it, Mihaela? The pull, the thread that keeps bringing us together?” He pauses, searching my expression. “Does it make you wonder?”

I press my lips together, fighting to ignore the memory creeping into my mind — a boy standing at a port, a fleeting glance, a hand stretched out in invitation. But that can’t be true? Just a trick on my fragile mind. I tighten my jaw, shaking my head, but he only sighs, as if he has already guessed the answer.

“It’s there, isn’t it?” he continues, voice softening. “That feeling that creeps up your spine, that feeling that settles in your chest… it’s familiar. Every time we are near each other, every time you catch me looking at you.” His eyes drift over me, lingering as if begging me to remember. “Doesn’t it remind you of… something?”

I glance away, jaw tight, but the memories are insistent, slipping into my mind no matter how hard I try to force them out. His voice is low, persistent, each word pulling me back toward something I had long forgotten.

“Think, little bat,” he murmurs, leaning closer, his voice gentler now. “You were young, as young as we could be. The port… the sea. “Do you remember a rugged boy with a face you could never quite forget, even if blurred?”

A surge of frustration and something sharper — longing, maybe — swell up in me and I clench my fists tighter, claws digging into my palms, blood sticking to my fingers. How much how I forgotten? How much was lost? How much isn’t real?

The faint, fleeting memory moves forward, vivid now. A boy, around teen years, standing on the port, holding his hand with an easy, open smile, his face half-shadowed under the sun… and his eyes… The flash is gone as soon as it comes, but I gasp, feeling its trace heavily in my chest.

Zanir watches me closely, his eyes almost tender, as if he is hoping for me to piece it all together. “Does he seem familiar?” he asks, his voice barely louder than the breeze that blows a few fallen strands of my hair.

—

My breath hitches, another memory breaking through. I am younger, my heart racing, standing at the edge of the forest, seeing hundreds of trees going for miles and miles, but my eyes stop as shadows move through the trees, and someone emerges. And there he is — that same boy from the port, no longer hidden behind fog, but flesh and blood, waiting by the trees, a touch more confident as he looks my way. His eyes, blue that mirror a calm sea, a quiet, warm recognition in them. But it is his face… his face… Zanir’s face.

—

My vison clears, and I stare at him, heart pounding as realization settles over me. “It… it was you.” My voice so quiet is cracks, but his expression changes, something softens in his eyes, a hint of relief that I can’t ignore.

“Yes,” he says softly. “I have been waiting for you to remember, little bat. Waiting for you to see that there is more to this than you know.”

The connection between us hums with a life of its own, and I feel the full weight of it now, threading through my chest, may past, and pulling me toward as though it was always meant to be this way. And with each breath, I feel the thread tighten, a tether that is both terrifying and irresistible, a bond that feels as old as my own heartbeat.

A cold pulse travels through my limbs as I stand there, my heart pounding with the weight of what I am realizing. The memory of him at the port, in the forest — young, familiar, waiting for me — has cracked something inside, and with a wave of confusion and fear that crashes over me.

That… that had to be over a hundred years ago, right? How old did Zanir say he was? If I knew him back, then… if we shared some kind of connection… then that would mean I have lived far longed than I believed. What if this is some kind of trick? I feel a sharp jab of realization pressing down on me, pressing the air from my lungs as I struggle to make sense of anything.

My breath hitches. Who… what am I, really?

And why can’t I remember? What kind of creature am I to have lived so long and remember, so little? Am I some sort of monster? A twisted beast born with fragments of a stolen past?

As my thought spiral, I feel the cold shift in my veins, spreading through me in waves. The edges of my vision blur, the sounds around me heightening, sharpening. My muscles tense as I feel something changing, like a floodgate opening within me. But I don’t fight it as the chill seeps into my bones, pouring out of me in icy breaths.

“It is not a trick. The gods and goddess have always had a wicked sense of humor. But, as for what is happening here?” Zanir's voice slips through the cold, but I don’t look at him, and I know he is watching me. A stare mixed with curiosity and reprieve — as if he has been waiting for this exact moment.

The cold bites into my skin, something white begins to drift down from the sky down around us. My senses are burning, my claws have cut deep gashes into my oozing palms. My ears picking up every sound, from the faint crackle of ice forming on nearby leaves to the shuddering of my own heartbeat. I feel my body drifting, my beast clawing at the surface. My mental shaking under his weight.

“What am I?” I mumble, more to myself than to him.

“Ah,” he counters. I feel his gaze sweep over me, and then he laughs, low and almost… admiring. “Those ears suit you.”

My hands fly up, and I feel the pointed tips of them, the unmistakable shape of my beast’s eat atop of my head. Rage surges through, so hot compared to the iciness of my veins, and it is blinding, washing away my fears and doubt. I turn on him, baring my teeth… my fangs, my voice a low snarl. The frustration of my forgotten memories, of the murky past, the fragments of faces and voices I can’t place — all of it fuels the dark beast inside.

“You think this is funny?” My voice is low, rougher than I recognize. I could eat him alive, I think, feeling the dark thrill of the thought. I could rip into him. The taste of his blood on my fangs, savoring every drop…

Zanir’s eyes flash, and he stands towering over me, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “That sounds delightful,” he breathes, a dark glint in those flaming cerulean eyes that may burn anything that gets too close.

I freeze, caught in the grips of my own instincts and the way his words cut through them, sparking something deeper, something feral. I feel the cold freezing my bones, my blood, my muscles, my senses. Everything around me sharpens — the bite of the increasing wind, the crisp scent of pine, the distant cracking of frozen branches. It is as if I slip, further and further, past the edge of my mortality and into something darker, something primal.

My heart pounds, his voice replaying in my mind, as if my own thought have turned against me. The realization sinks in like a well-aimed blade. He can hear me. Hear my most guarded, unfiltered thoughts — the place I fear treading, the dark, wild parts of myself even I don’t dare confront. He is in here, invading the one sanctuary I thought was truly mine.

My claws dig deeper, but I barely feel the pain as rage festers, moving through me like an ice storm, cutting, sweeping through like a blizzard, igniting every nerve. The beast, ever-present and seething behind the walls and a door I have carefully built, slips through those cracks, sensing my anger and bursting forth without warning. It doesn’t need a door, doesn’t need permission, it flows with my fury, feeding on it, rising until I am barely myself.

Everything is so loud. I hear pounding feet, shouts, horses whinnying in panic — the apparent scent of fear drifting in the air, crisp and potent. My ear twitch, picking up every sound, every heartbeat.

I shake my head, struggling to fight for control, to lead myself back. But is as if he is there, pulling me back into the depth of my own mind, taunting me with this invasion. I look back at him, lavender eyes blazing with both the beast’s fury and my own, my voice low, seething.

“You have no right,” I snarl, words more a growl. “Get out of my head.”

A crackle of energy pulses through the air, cold and sharp, swirling around us until the outside world fades away, trapping us in ice with a single shadow. The chill radiates outward, seeping into the ground, crystallizing patches of frost at our feet, but the rest of the forest remains untouched — all warmth, all life, halted right here, between us.

It is as though the world itself has changed, folded in upon a single space, carving out a separate reality where only he and I exist. The edges of our strange boundary glimmer faintly as the sun tries to peek through. It is like the barrier I have summoned before, but this time it is darker, richer, and tinged with the faint violent hue of my own power, and if my energy is binding this frozen world around us.

Snowflakes begin to fall slowly in the small space, deliberate spirals, each one catching in the mist that rises from our breath. They dissolve into delicate tendrils of frost the moment they brush out faces or the boundary between us and the outside world. In here, I feel the beast thrumming under my skin, clawing to break through, stronger, wilder, eager to drown out every stray thought with pure instinct. I feel the transformation inching up my spine, my sense reaching to an almost painful clarity.

But Zanir stands there, unmoved, his face is an unreadable mask of calm, control. His eyes gleam with that unsettling mix of curiosity and amusement, as though my unraveling were nothing more than an intriguing spectacle. He watches me, unflinching, even as my claws flex and the inky purple of my transformation spreads across my skin. It’s as if he savoring every moment, every flicker of power, as he though he belongs here in the depths of this cold, as though he has always known what lies beneath my surface.

The power, the beast, roars within me, and yet even at the edge of this fury, his presence is a one fixed point, grounding me in a way I can’t explain.

“You’re not afraid,” I mumble, my voice thick with a growl that doesn’t feel like mine.

He tilts his head, a faint smirk playing at his lips as his gaze lock on to mine, piercing through the storm. “Should I be?” he says, his tone as calm and smooth as if we were exchanging pleasantries over a glass of wine.

I feel my claws relax ever so slightly, blood dripping down on to the wet, frozen earth below. But the coldness seeps into my flesh, searing like I have stepped into a dream and I am no longer quite certain what is real.

Zanir closes the distance between us, his presence overwhelming as it has always been, filling the space like a shadow — dark, inevitable. His eyes, those burning cerulean flames, watching me with something too ancient for me to understand.

His hand rises to my neck, his fingers grazing the tender, scaring skin, with a touch that is both delicate and searing. The sensation pulls me in, drawing me down a path I never expected to tread.

His thoughts — they’re just there, waiting, like an echo that refuses to fade. And then, without warning, I find myself slipping into the depth of his mind, feeling his memories as though they’re my own.