Page 110 of Entwined

Azar chose to die rather than sacrificing his memories of me. He chose to keep me and lose himself, but now he’s not the one making that choice. I am. What would a monster do? What should I decide?

But when the whip comes down yet again, and when Axel groans, low in his throat, I can’t even think about what it means about me. I can’t contemplate right or wrong. There is only Axel and the pain I’ve caused him.

I can take it all away.

Will he know what he’s lost? I ask.

Freya shakes her head.

Then do it, I say. The only person who will suffer will be me.

So be it. Freya smiles.

There’s a bright flash of light, and I’m back in the light room.

“You’re a real conundrum. You’d choose to spare a stranger—strength of resilience to overcome rather than power to destroy, but when faced with the misery to endure the trials for love, you choose to erase it.”

Tears well up in my eyes, and I collapse into a ball on the non-floor of this strange place. “I can’t abide the choices that I make harming him.”

“Isn’t that his decision to make?”

I shake my head, forcing myself to look at her. “You made it mine.” Even here, even in this place, I can feel the shining bond between Axel and me.

Her smile is serene. “Even now, you don’t change your mind.”

The bond dissolves, fading away like acid-eaten rope. I collapse to my knees, so gutted as it disappears that I can’t breathe. I can’t see. I can’t even think. A pitiful moan escapes my lips, and just before it’s gone, I hear it.

A pained roar that must be Axel as our bond evaporates.

He didn’t want to bond me again, but he refused to give up his memories of our time? Refused, knowing it would mean that he lost Azar forever?

There’s another bright flash, and then I’m standing high in the air, on nothing, as always in this place, watching Rufus and Gordon below us. They’re thrashing and roaring and moaning as the horde of demonic beasts consume them, bite by bite.

“The cursed have been starving for millennia, you know.” Freya’s voice is quiet. “They were always a little depraved, but it’s only grown far worse in our sojourn in this barren place.”

I swallow. “But what?—”

She shakes her head. “No more ignorant, uninspired questions. I can’t take it.”

“I can’t just watch them. I’m not like you. I don’t relish the pain of others.”

She turns slowly, her eyes sepulchral. “Is that what you think of me, that I relish any part of this?” The pain in her eyes is raw, and yet, she stands, tall, strong, and severe. “I have hated every moment of my life since the forging, and here I have remained, hating myself and hating Odin for abandoning me. I choose to maintain my position every single day, every single moment, because it’s the right thing to do.”

“What is this barrier?”

“The blessed,” she laughs. “Is that still what they call themselves?”

I nod.

She points. “And these, my subjects, are the cursed.” The horned creatures truly do look cursed.

“It hurts less in that form,” she says. “So most of them assume their humanoid shape, but when they sense that you’re near—their only possibility of escape—sometimes they can’t help themselves.” Freya grabs the skin of my arm and pinches, hard.

I cry out.

The demons below whip their heads upward and snarl. Three of them shift, before my eyes, into the black, burned dragons I saw before, swimming through the lava. Their trumpets of excitement sound more like the wails of the dying.

“Don’t worry. They won’t harm you while I’m here.”