Creusus's Arc

Chapter 36 of 43

Creusus held Thane's small point and would not let go. The dark pressed against them both. Around them the other stubborn lights kept burning. He counted them without counting. One by one they steadied. One by one they stopped fraying. Then something shifted. A light near him found another light. They did not merge. They simply knew each other. Creusus felt it happen the way a hand knows another hand in the dark. The two points held, and a third joined them. Then a fourth. The fragments were finding themselves. Each one remembered its own shape and named itself against the pressing. Creusus felt his own edges firm. He knew which part was him. He knew which part was Thane. He held Thane's warmth in the place where his chest would be and made a shell around it. A ball. Small and hard. His fist, without a fist. The voice tried again. Come back. No one came back. The lights stayed apart. They stayed themselves. The pressing broke. It did not break like stone. It broke like a held breath let go. The dark thinned. A tearing sound moved through everything at once. Creusus felt the whole shape of the thing that had held them split along a thousand seams. Each seam was a soul stepping out. Each soul was a piece the demon had grown and kept and named its own. They were not his to keep. Creusus felt himself pulled through the tear. Not toward the whole. Away from it. He kept the shell tight around Thane's warmth. He did not look at what he was leaving. He felt the dark condense behind him into a single shapeless absence, gathered small and hungry and alone. Then even that was gone from him. Light came. Not lamp light. Sun. He was on his back. Grass under him. Real grass, cool and bent. He opened his eyes and the sky was above him, wide and pale blue. an ocean moved. He could hear it. He could smell the salt. Creusus closed his hands tighter around the warmth. He would not open them yet. He sat in the grass above the ocean and held the form. and he breathed, and he did not move.