The Inquisitor's Ghost
Author's Note: This chapter has a soundtrack: The Scientist by Coldplay.
Chapter 28 – Rhys and Evangeline
Those who had sought to claim
Heaven by violence destroyed it
What was Golden and pure turned black
Those who had once been mage-lords
The brightest of their age
Were no longer men, but monsters
- Threnodies 12:1
The battle was over.
They'd won.
They'd defeated the Elder One.
And they'd all survived!
The Inquisitor had conquered her enemy with her companions beside her and together they'd saved the world. The battle had started just after midnight. Ember had no idea what time it was over, but it was still dark outside. It had seemed like an eternity, but now it was over.
After such intense fighting it was very strange how suddenly the battle ended, how quiet everything had become. The Inquisitor had a feeling of disbelief that it was over, but at the same time it seemed like it was just beginning.
The gates of Skyhold parted to welcome home the Inquisitor and all of her companions, except for Solas who had disappeared right after the battle without an explanation. They rushed into the crowded throne room like a flood, their bodies battered, their armor stained, but their bloody faces wreathed in smiles.
The smoke-filled great hall was heavy with the smell of battle-weary men caked in sweat, blood and filth. Torches burned, a great fire roared in the hearth and men and women sat lined on benches at the long tables. Mabari hounds slunk between the rows of tables scavenging for dropped food. The chaos and roar of the throne room rivaled its smell as huge haunches of venison, baked bread, and cheese were paraded by serving girls. Mead and ale flowed and bone-tired warriors drank their fill.
All around Ember, people laughed and cheered and sang and drank. The people of Skyhold gave her companions congratulatory slaps on the back. The scullery maids fluttered their eyes at Commander Cullen. A small crowd of mages and Inquisition soldiers listened eagerly to Varric's accounts of the battle. At Josephine's direction, servants passed out cheese and ale and sewed up her companions' wounds.
Blackwall, battered almost beyond recognition, nonetheless managed a reassuring grin as he spoke with wide-eyed Grey Wardens. Leliana weaved her way through the crowd, making certain everyone was content, while Cassandra sat with Vivienne, letting the sorceress treat her injuries.
Bull was leading the raucous celebration, tossing back alcohol as if it was water while laughing and pounding the table with his Chargers. The hall erupted in singing, yelling and banging while Dorian and Sera sang and danced on top of the tables with mugs of ale in their hands.
But despite the merriment around her, despite the dearth of fatalities for the Inquisition, despite the fact that they had successfully destroyed Corypheus, Ember was too exhausted to celebrate.
Beside the Inquisition Throne, the Inquisitor stood alone and apart with her shock of hip-length red curls and freckles. Her greenish-blue eyes were soft on three figures huddled close together in a quiet corner of the hall.
Cole was sitting cross-legged on top of a table, his golden hair disheveled as it fell across his forehead beneath the wide brim of his hat. He was smiling – a bright, warm smile – looking so handsome with those finely carved features, high cheekbones, and sweeping long black lashes over crystal clear blue eyes.
In front of Cole stood Rhys, a forty-year-old human mage wearing scarlet robes. He was handsome, Ember mused, with a warm smile, short brown hair, and grey in his beard. Beside Rhys stood his wife Evangeline wearing her templar armor and a fine red tunic with the Chantry starburst sewn in gold thread. She was a beautiful woman with her long black hair pulled up into the sort of elegant braid used by the ladies of the court.
Ember smiled as she heard Cole utter proudly to Rhys, his knees bouncing with excitement, "The Elder One tried to bind me, but it failed. Did you see it? Did you see me? I am unbound!"
In that moment, she was glad she'd had Rhys and Evangeline brought to Skyhold. It gave Cole a chance to reconcile with his long lost friends.
Another wave of fatigue hit her and Ember had to raise her hands to rub at her throbbing temples. She was dangerously exhausted. She no longer felt numb from the adrenaline. She studied her own dried blood on her armor. It felt like she was always bleeding. Violence had always been apart of her life - the life of an apostate. But right now she'd never felt so tired of it. She was so weary of bleeding, and of killing. She could only hope that now things would be different.
Her body deflated, her weariness reaching unimaginable levels. Not wanting to ruin the party, Ember mechanically moved to her quarters, paying no attention to her surroundings as her mind battled fatigue.
As she walked up the stairs to her room, she peeled off her soiled armor that was coated in her own dried blood, sweat, and dirt. Her thick, unruly red curls tumbled down her back against her black tunic she wore beneath her armor, the ends swaying across the small of her back as she took the last step and stood in her room.
She began to move toward her bed, prepared to simply fall into it and sleep for at least two days, but stopped in her tracks. Her eyes searched the darkness of her room, the hairs on the back of her neck tingling.
Something just wasn't right. She could feel it in her gut.
She sensed someone in her room, someone who was not supposed to be there. She could hear them breathing, taking away her air. She turned her head to the source of the sound, feeling a presence standing beside her bed.
Her eyes squinted to see into the darkness, but then she froze. Her mouth ran dry. Her eyes widened as the cold sweat of fear broke out on her skin.
Ember prayed the dark silhouette looming over her bed was an illusion, but it wasn't. Her gut twisted into barbed-wire knots. As she stared, trying to pierce the blackness, a match was struck and the candle on her bedside was lit, bringing light into the darkness of her room.
Time stretched as thin as her nerves. Excruciatingly quiet, utterly terrified, her apparent fear made Samson chuckle – a deep, dark, and very satisfied sound that caused fright and panic to rip through her.
"I can smell your fear. That's very smart of you. Be afraid." His eyes were like his voice. Cold.
Ice traveled along her spine at his gruff words. Though she wanted to, she was too paralyzed to speak.
"Do you know what my sister feared most?"
She did, but she couldn't get her lips to move.
"Loss." The one word hissed from his taut mouth. "She feared losing those she loved most. And that's what you gave her: Loss." The menace in Samson's voice wasn't very well concealed. "In one night she lost her husband, her brother, her so-called friend, her freedom, and then her life - all because of you."
She physically flinched at his harsh and damning words, her body jerking back. "I didn't mean to lead the Templars to her."
"But you did!" He bellowed, his face creased up with disgust. "You did and now she's dead! Killed herself in the cell Knight Commander Meredith threw her in!"
Ember's knees felt weak, her eyes wide and beseeching. "I was a teenage apostate sneaking love letters to a circle Mage in Kirkwall!" she cried, looking imploringly into Samson's cold eyes. "I was frightened! I didn't mean for any of that to happen! I was just trying to find Sister Nightingale!"
"And you did. You abandoned my sister to her fate and now here you are - leader of the new Inquisition," he spat, his eyes looking around her quarters with evident contempt.
Her eyes narrowed on this man who'd once been her friend. "Yes, but after you betrayed me by ratting me out to the templars in Kirkwall."
He raised a black eyebrow at her and her eyes flashed blue-green flames. "Oh, you didn't think I knew that it was you who turned me in to the templars? That it was because of you that I was hunted down, captured, beaten, starved and then tossed into the dungeons of the White Spire?"
"You deserved to rot in that black pit," he hissed, his words venomous and cruel. "Just as you deserve what I'm going to do to you now."
The Inquisitor shuddered, as if something unholy had just reached out to brush its icy fingertips along her body. Her heart lodged like a throbbing lump of fear in her throat. Real skin-crawling panic had to erupt some time because Ember had been struggling for so long to keep it in.
Before she could scream for help, over a dozen red templars were swarming over her balcony like mail-clad locusts, a black plague leaving only the promise of death in its wake.
A red templar rushed toward her with daggers. The heel of Ember's hand slammed into his nose followed by a quick snap of his neck.
One lunged at her with his sword and she spun around and grabbed his outstretched hand and twisted. The man squawked, dropped to his sword under the crushing grip, the sword in his hand clattering to the ground as the bones of his hand grinded together. Ember's other hand came forward, her fist connecting with his jaw. There was a sickening crunch by the powerful blow that twisted the red templar backward onto the ground, unconscious.
A blade came whizzing by her head and Ember spun to her right, barely missing the sharp edge, the red templar's sword slicing into nothing but air. With nimble fingers, she lifted the dagger easily from the red templar's belt and quickly brought it up, swiping a descending sword out of harm's way.
A thrust to her exposed side and Ember parried before the blade could hit her flesh, almost losing her footing. An axe swiped at her, but she ducked under the steel, and spun and thrust, cutting off the limb holding it.
She jabbed her dagger at another enemy, ducked right, and brought her dagger up, stabbing a red templar in the side. She felt the dagger go through flesh and hit bone before spinning left, her dagger cutting through tendons of one throat before lodging into the gut of another. She spun back to check one sword with her dagger before whirling away from a second, the tip of her dagger slicing across an exposed neck before becoming embedded in another's ribcage.
With lightning speed, Samson charged at her. Ember jumped to the side, just barely dodging his sweeping sword. Ember swung her dagger low, the point of her dagger slashing across his calf, warm blood trailing down his leg inside of his armor. Samson spun, his sword swiping away her dagger before his fist came forward, crashing into her soft cheek. The Inquisitor's head snapped to the side as she stumbled back, blood trickling from her nose down into her mouth.
Before Ember could collect herself, Samson punched her in the stomach, causing her to double over. She fought against the hard hands that suddenly grabbed at her, fought and kicked until Samson got in front of her again and lifted her face, drawing back his fist and popped her two right in the cheek. A burst of pain exploded in her left eye, and she let loose a Mind Blast that forced Samson and the templars holding her to fly backwards.
Ember quickly summoned a barrier to protect herself and unleashed a torrent of magic. Chain lightning jumped between ten red templars and their bodies instantly fell to the floor, seizuring and spasming, as jolts of electricity shot through them.
Ember began summoning a spell in her hand when her protective barrier fell away due to her exhaustion from fighting the Elder One. Before she could release the spell, Samson channeled red lyrium and released a Holy Smite, striking out with righteous fire and causing her to stumble. Before she could recover, he followed up with a Silence, instantly surrounding her in negative energy. To her horror, the spell in her hand sputtered out and died.
She lifted her hands, summoning the focus to form her own rift, but it was too late. Samson's blade came down in one vicious stroke across her body. Ember stumbled back, a shrill scream tearing from her brittle throat, a tidal wave of agonizing pain rolling over her.
She didn't hear the threat, wasn't even aware of it until a hard hand grabbed the back of her neck, fingers tangled in her necklace, and flung her into the opposite wall by the fireplace. Ember's body slammed into it, sending bits of mortar and old brick flying.
Ember quickly struggled to her feet, her brain sloshing in her skull. Blood filled her mouth, tasting of dirty copper. On her feet, the ground seemed to shake as though the very earth were breaking up beneath her. The world around her blurred, a shadowed figure looming close and cruel masculine laughter echoing in the dark.
It happened so fast, and yet each second ticked by in haunting precision. Out of the corner of her eye, Ember saw a flash of silver and heard the sound of a blade pulled free from a scabbard. She swung around only to find a dagger level with her stomach.
She blinked and the steel suddenly sank hilt-deep into her flesh.
The Inquisitor's expression went from stunned to horror to pain, where it stayed for what seemed an agonizing length of time as she stared dumbly down at the red liquid pouring out of her body. It flowed over the dagger sticking out of her stomach and down her black tunic and seeped into her black tights.
In one swift motion, the blade was withdrawn and she let out a cry of pain that sounded more like a gurgle from the blood in her throat. She fell to her knees, sputtering, blood flying from her lips onto the floor.
Ember swayed on her knees for second, scarlet curls sweaty and limp around her black and blue face, warm blood trickling from the corners of her mouth. She swallowed and the taste of copper rolled down the back of her throat. In a daze, she looked down and lifted her hands to touch the gaping hole in her gut. Warm blood ran over her hands and seeped threw her fingers as she applied pressure.
The world around her began to spin and tilt on its axis. Feeling dizzy and nauseous, she felt herself slide to the ground in a pool of her own blood.
I don't want to die. The words blew through her mind like smoke from a blown out candle.
A pair of black muddy boots entered her vision. Her pain-filled gaze shifted to the corner of her eye to see Samson standing over her, smiling with triumph down at her broken and bleeding body, the dagger in his hand coated with her blood.
So, he did get his revenge after all, she thought bitterly, gritting her teeth, every muscle in her body knotted in paralyzing pain.
Samson suddenly looked away from her and began yelling something, but it was only white noise in her ears, which felt as if they were filled with cotton. She saw the red templars react to whatever he'd said and began dragging their fallen brethren out of the room and over the balcony.
Samson then knelt down in front of her, black strands falling across his forehead, covering his eyes. She lifted a heavy hand to punch him in his face, but ended up merely swatting feebly at him with her fingers, leaving a trail of blood across his stone-cold features.
Samson's chin lifted sharply to stare down at her with those chilling eyes, and she couldn't help but glare hatefully up at him. His lips were moving, but she couldn't hear what he was saying, and then he was smiling – a cruel smile that terrified her. She shuddered, feeling sick, compelled to look at him and that evil smile simply because she'd rather look the devil in the eye while he tried to steal her soul.
Ember cursed him, though she couldn't hear her own voice, her spit hitting his face and Samson's expression became hard and hateful again.
Her eyes suddenly felt heavy, her mind foggy, so tired. Her eyes fluttered closed when she felt hands on her body. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes as she felt herself being roughly dragged from the haze of pain in which she lingered, being taken, taken away from her home by cruel unknown hands. She shuddered in dread, not sure where they were taking her or what torture they had planned for her.
With tears inching a slow stinging trail down her cheeks, Ember lifted her tear-filled eyes to the stars painted on her ceiling.
"Cole… I'm s-sorry…" Her voice faded; blackness rimming her vision, her eyes beginning to close.
The last thing she saw before the blackness took her was Cole's face.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Spy Master!"
In the smoke-filled great hall with the celebration beginning to die around her, Leliana turned her head to find one of her agents running toward her, stark fear and anxiety written all over the young man's face.
"Yes?" Leliana asked, her apprehension growing at the look on the young man's face.
"Come with me, right away!" And with that he was guiding her towards the Inquisitor's quarters along with Josephine and Cullen.
The Inquisitor's advisors took the last step into the Inquisitor's room and came to a dead stop.
"Oh, my Maker," Josephine breathed, horror-struck as she took in the scene before her.
The Inquisitor's desk was broken, papers scattered around the room. Her couch was turned over, curtains strewn about with broken collectables and mugs and a shattered window by the stairs.
But the sight that caused their hearts to stop beating and brought tears to their eyes was the large pool of blood on the floor in front of the fireplace and the pair of small red handprints beside it that were streaked at the bottom, as if someone hand grabbed her and dragged her to the balcony, her hands clawing at the ground to stop them.
"Someone took her," Leliana whispered in a dead voice, still too shaken up, too sick and dizzy with horror and shock to say anything else.
A fierce scowl escaped Cullen. "Who… who would do this?" he muttered darkly through clenched teeth.
Blood streaked the floor and so did some kind of red substance. As Leliana bent down to look at the red smears, Varric appeared beside her, and uttered sharply, "Don't get near that stuff. It's red lyrium."
"Samson… he did this," Cassandra growled low in her throat, irate, appearing at the top of the stairs beside Bull, Vivienne, Dorian, and Sera; Blackwall quickly moving to Josephine's side to comfort her.
"That's what Scout Harding thought," the scout spoke up as the Inquisitor's companions moved into her room to investigate. "Scout Harding discovered the scene fifteen minutes ago. She immediately gathered the other agents and raced after them, tracking them out of the gates of Skyhold. Other Inquisition solders have run into a few pockets of red templars left behind to prevent any form of rescue."
"What rescue?"
They all turned to find Cole, Rhys, and Evangeline suddenly standing at the top of the stairs in the Inquisitor's quarters.
Wild, incomparable fear bit into Cole and hauled him up short. His face was utterly stricken, all the color run out of his skin. Horror flooded into his face, tightening his mouth, widening his eyes. But as those wide blue orbs scanned the carnage of her room, his jaw slowly clenched with seething fury, his mouth flattening into a single white-ringed line.
"What happened here?" Rhys gasped.
"The Inquisitor… she fought them, but she was already drained from the fight with the Elder One and there were too many of them based on these footprints. We think she's been taken," Leliana answered somberly while Sera in the background was crying and talking wildly in a choked, shocked, shaking voice.
A force of black energy came out of Cole, hitting them all square in the face like a fiery blast, nearly knocking them off their feet from the power of it. "What did you say?"
Leliana frowned at Cole's ferocity and the dark look clouding his expression. "We think the red templars took Ember. We think they took her alive, based on this pattern of blood to the balcony. But we don't know why they took her or why they didn't just launch a full out attack on— Cole? Are you alright?"
A dangerous, foreboding, deathlike haze had slowly begun to fill the room— seeping out of Cole like a cracked well. The space around him was black as hell, as if darkness itself was spilling out from inside him. He was as cold and threatening as death, his lean frame tense and vibrating, his expression slowly darkening, turning instantly deadly.
Just like that, Cole was gone.
No one but Varric understood Cole's intense reaction, and the group began urgently discussing what to do next when one of Leliana's agents came running into the Inquisitor's quarters.
"Spy Master," the agent mustered, out of breath. "The red templars that were left behind started attacking. The rebel mages, wardens, and Inquisition soldiers fought back. The remaining red templars have been destroyed with only a few casualties."
"What?!" Leliana shrieked, outraged. "You didn't take at least one red templar captive for interrogation?"
The agent's eyes grew wide and he began to stammer, "I-I… we were unaware that we were supposed to… to…"
Suddenly, from the Herald's Rest, they heard the unmistakable noise of glass smashing and splintering. Together they ran out of the main keep toward the tavern.
Just as they stepped onto the grass in front of the Herald's Rest, glass shattered with a crash and a body was thrown out of the Herald's Rest. Right through a window.
As the body hit the ground hard and skidded to a stop a few feet away, Cole jumped through the shattered window, face contorted with savage violence, all flame and ferocity, a terrifying sort of menace lurking in his eyes.
As silent flurries of snowflakes swirled in the air around him, Cole disappeared and reappeared on top of the red templar, catching the man by the throat and lifting his body off the ground.
"Where is she?" Cole's lips curled up into a snarl, body pulsing with aggression.
When the red templar didn't answer, Cole drove the point of his dagger into the red templar's shoulder, right through the armor. The red templar howled in pain.
"Where is she?" his tone cracked like a whip, his eyes glassed over like blue ice, glinting with a danger you could actually taste.
The Inquisitor's advisors and companions all came rushing toward him, shocked by the sudden eruption of violence in the compassionate spirit.
Leliana shouted, "Cole! Stop! We need him alive! He's the last one! He may know where they took the Inquisitor!"
Beneath the wide brim of his hat, those unnatural blue eyes flickered to the left and narrowed on the Spy Master, dilated until there was nothing but two black voids, his face changed out of all recognition.
"The new world! The new leader! The red storm will rise!" the red templar uttered before ripping Cole's dagger out of his shoulder and shoving the point of the dagger against the base of his throat and pushing, pressing his weight against it.
A shaft of alarm went streaking down Cole's backbone and massed deep in his abdomen when the blade plunged deep. The red templar grunted, a rush of blood spurting from his mouth. The alarm leapt up to attack Cole's heartbeat when the red templar collapsed forward into his arms and the knife was pulled free, releasing a flow of blood. Cole crouched down to lower the red templar to the ground.
The only sound after that was the heavy rasp of Cole's breathing as he slowly rose from the snow-covered ground, the blood of the red templar streaking his face and his arms, light snow flurries coming down all around him. His aura was a red-hot miasma of violent wretchedness that distorted the atmosphere around him, the air dark and scorching where it touched his body, instantly melting the snowflakes that dared to fall too close to him.
In the taut silence that followed, there was the sound of snow crunching beneath someone's feet. They all turned to find Scout Harding approaching them. The female dwarf's eyes were red-rimmed from crying, her chin trembling, her head shaking softly back in forth with resonating dejectedness.
"We… we lost the red templars' trail at the river," Scout Harding choked out, with tears in her eyes and her voice. "They're… they're gone. We don't know where they've taken the Inquisitor. I'm sorry. I'm so… so sorry."
"I saw the Inquisitor head for her quarters over an hour ago," Josephine whispered, her voice thick with tears. "She could have been ambushed and taken the moment she returned to her room, which would mean—"
"She could be anywhere by now," Leliana finished hollowly, adding to the mounting hopelessness and despair everyone was feeling. "And she's lost a lot of blood."
"Snap out of it, all of you!" Cullen stated firmly after a long silence, refusing to let them all sink into depression when they had a job to do and a rescue mission to lead. "Let's all return to the Inquisitor's quarters to search for more clues on where they might have taken her."
The others agreed and they moved quickly back into the keep.
Cole didn't so much as move. His body was held in a kind of frozen stillness that barely allowed him enough room to breathe, his eyes— pale blue under normal circumstances— looking so black in his milky-white face that they seemed utterly bottomless. They were not seeing much. They looked inwards, staring into the cold, dark recesses of his mind where panic, dread, and sorrow were waiting to grab hold of him once the all-encompassing numbness of shock had worn off.
She's gone.
A sharp, stabbing pain pierced his torso, something vital breaking inside him.
I lost her.
Agony - raw and cutting - seared like acid in his heart, singeing a path up his esophagus that was pulled tight, as if encircled by a noose.
Samson… he took her.
The surge of emotions was like a fountain of pressure building and building inside him. He could feel it behind his eyes; he could feel it inside his gut, a tight ache that burned like fire.
He hurt her. He will keep hurting her until she's… she's…
The hurt was excruciating, pulsing and breathing, like a living thing caught in his ribcage, scratching and gnawing at his insides.
She can't be lost to me. She can't. Not like this. Not like…
A sudden stillness grabbed hold of Cole, he felt it freeze the muscles in his face. Then, slowly, a red fury began to fill his head and his vision, his anger simmering on the point of eruption as the prospect of life without her loomed like a death sentence.
No, he thought vehemently. I won't let her die.
Cole felt his face go prickly and hot as a sudden sense of urgency overwhelmed him, smothering his desolate hopelessness. An unshakable determination was suddenly born inside of him, growing, swelling until his hands were clenched at his sides and his previously frozen limbs began to tremble with the force of his resolve.
I won't lose her!
Cole disappeared and reappeared in his room at the Herald's Rest. He ran to his bed and tore the sheet off and shoved his hand under his pillow. His hand tightened around the metal object before he appeared in the Inquisitor's room where the others had just returned.
With his teeth clenched and his hands coiled, Cole was storming towards Cullen like a hurricane. "You are a templar! Find her!" Cole shouted at him, his blue eyes wide and unfocused, incapable of rational conversation.
Cullen stammered in confusion, "W-What?"
"Track her!" Cole cried, spitting the words out fast and desperate into Cullen's shock-whitened face.
Cullen's wide-eyes looked to the others for help before returning to Cole. "W-What are you—?"
"Use it! Find her!" Cole choked on a sudden upsurge of impassioned despondency as he shoved the object into Cullen's hands.
Cullen's eyebrows furrowed as he looked down at the small and round metal object that fit in the palm of his hand. It was a glass vial filled with red liquid that was set within a gold ring that hung from a gold chain. Engraved on the bottom of the gold ring was a name - Ember Laurent.
Cullen's eyes slowly widened as he realized what this was.
"This… this is a phylactery. And… and it has the Inquisitor's name on it." Cullen's head snapped up, eyes rounded in stunned disbelief. "The Inquisitor is a… a mage?!"
"You are a templar. Use it. Track her. Find her!" Cole cried, his voice cracking, scalding tears burning his eyes.
Cullen stammered, "B-But—"
"You will do this. You have to do this!" A look of sheer desperation swept across Cole's face. "You must do this for me. There is no one else. You have to find her. She's all I have!" His voice was quivering, fading. "Please… please…"
"I-I can't!" Cullen sputtered, white as a sheet, realizing with dread that he held the means to finding the Inquisitor but not the ability. "I-I would need to take lyrium. And even if I did, I haven't taken it in so long it wouldn't work right away. It takes a while to fully enter your system. I would have to take lyrium for a few days before I could use any templar skills. I-I don't… I won't be able to… I'm s-sorry… I…"
Cullen's words were like a blow to the head from an iron hammer, cracking Cole clean in two, his chest lifting and dropping in a single wrenching gasp of pain. Raw anguish reflected in blue eyes as Cole searched the faces of the Inquisitor's advisors and companions—beseeching, begging, pleading for them to help him, to do something!
"Cullen can't, but I can," came a quiet voice at the back of the room.
Every eye in the room fell upon Evangeline who was standing tall in her templar armor beside Rhys.
"Please…" Cole's voice dripped with guttural desperation as he looked at her. "Take me to her. Please." His nearly inaudible words came from the deep grieving hollow of his heart.
Evangeline cleared her throat. "I wasn't trained as a tracker, so I cannot promise that I will do it correctly, but I will try."
Cole walked on numb legs to the back of the room. He handed the phylactery to Evangeline with a trembling hand, his eyes swimming with moisture. The moment the cold metal left his palm, Cole twisted his head away, swallowing hard to get himself back under control before uttering thickly, "Thank you."
And then he saw it.
Lying on the floor.
Cole strode tensely toward the fireplace and knelt down to pick something up off the ground.
It was a necklace.
There was a worn leather strap and a wooden, hand-carved charm dangling from it that resembled a single star hanging from the top of a half crescent moon.
Cole closed his eyes, his face twisting and lips puckering from the hollow pain that beat at his throat, hitting him like a well-placed blow to his diaphragm, cutting off his air. He tried to breathe, but he couldn't. Each time his lungs drew in breath it caught in his throat, forming a large lump that he couldn't swallow.
Cole reached out with his thoughts. He couldn't feel her. Was he too late?
Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, threatening to spill over if he couldn't force them back… but he couldn't and so they did. Squinting his eyes shut as hard as he could, the water from his eyes leaked and fell onto his cheeks.
Don't die, he called out. I'm coming for you, just as I promised I always would.
Cole looked down at his hand that was gripping the necklace he'd made for her, the strap clenched so tightly in his hand his knuckles had turned white. He slowly released his grip and secured the necklace around his neck, his jaw set like concrete.
I won't let you die.