Page 114 of Commanding Flame and Shield
ALVARA
The ice was everywhere. Everywhere…and nowhere. Just as I had been for these long months. Or…was it years? Time had long-since ceased to exist, as the ice across my eyes was impenetrable as steel, biting at my skin. Again, I threw open my hands. Threw them against the chains that kept me tethered to what I assumed was the dais I had glimpsed before the helmet’s face guard had locked over my eyes, confining the world to thin slits of light and shadow. In those fleeting moments, I had seen the stark, towering onyx marble castle walls. As though the room had been carved of stone and midnight, it erected above us as tall as Grayshell.
They didn’t break me. Didn’t hurt me. I kept waiting for the torture to begin, for the breaking and healing. For the whips. For the bones that mended wrong. Waiting for them to draw screams from me until I caved and my very spirit broke. But they never came.
They had left me…in this vast, empty blackness. Left me chained to this dais. No one came. Not to hurt me, or save me, or feed me. But hunger did not come for me either. That hollowness in my belly was not for food, but rather forthem. For my family, left behind. For home. For him.
I could see a man's terrorized face, for the briefest flash, and shied away from the image. What had become of him? Was he alive? Had they made it out? What had been the point, again? What were we meant to do...August. I missed him. I missed the others too. But mostly, I missed August. His laugh, his smile, his knowing when his shield would bless me. The way he looked when he talked about his family. About…
Stop. Don’t think of him. Don’t think of any of us. Build your walls. Shield your mind, Ally.The voice was hauntingly familiar. Devastatingly familiar. I should know that voice. Should know it as well as my own. But his name. I couldn’t remember his name…shouldn’tremember his name, I realized, as a set of light blue eyes, and eternal smile flashed in my memory.
The demon….The demon? The plan had…gone…sideways, and the demon...
Fuck. I had forgotten where this started. Sweat pooled in my palms against the gauntlets. The demon….
I began to build my walls, thicker, taller and deeper than they had ever been. I built them of the eternal light of Grayshell, built them of the never bending will of my sire. The owner of the voice. The owner of the voice I wanted here, I realized. With me. Always. But not here—not really. This wasn’thereto begin with. So, I built the walls of sun and backroads, laughter and singing.
I took a deep breath, and became the ice that bound me, and the walls transformed to embody that too. Inhaled the reek of carrion, brimstone, and cold steel to become that, as well.
Pain shot through me like a spear, radiating down my spine from my neck. An icy spider danced down my back across the rivulets of sweat, and my hands clasped around my windpipe—biting metal met the skin of my neck as the gauntlets stung it. My muscles were shaking, terror having long since gripped them. With a tug, my mind yanked forward towards the pain, forward towards the coughing and choking, forward towards…my name. Someone was…
He was calling my name.
The unforgiving marble below my folded legs seemed to rumble, to respond to that face and name. Seemed to purr in gratitude.
A flash of…Alec, his name was Alec…pinned against a wall, and then the unseeing blackness snapped into place. Panic spun a web within my guts. Panic, and pain, and fear. Shame. I realized, it was shame that made me feel as though I would soon vomit. I’d gotten them into this mess. Had they gotten out?
I tried to lift my hands the last few inches to peel off the damned guard over my eyes, but the chains cracked painfully against the movement, and I growled. Panic threatened to choke the life from me—the walls pressing in on all sides—as the air slowly seemed to leak from my lungs.
Think, Ally, think. Slowly, cautiously, I laid down, pulling myself as close to the base of those chains as I could. Finally, my fingers reached my face. They were as frozen as the rest of the world, more ice melting on my skin as they clawed and pulled at the helmet locked around my head. I sobbed as it refused to release, sobbed as I clawed under the metal over my eyes and still, it didn’t yield. Warm liquid trickled down my cheeks. Blood, or tears, I wasn’t entirely sure.
Alvara, come back to us! You are Stronger than this.
God, that voice. That buttery, beautiful voice. The voice of a thousand lullabies, of comfort, warmth, and home. So familiar.Hisvoice. As though he was the only man—the only soul—that existed, he called to me.
But the stones. The helmet. The chains. How in the world was I supposed to reach him? Panic, slick and oily, seeped further into my body. I didn’t dare say his name. He was more powerful than any of us, more powerful than—don’t.Don’t say his name. Their names. Don’t.
Higher still, my walls solidified. A tower within a tower. The stones stacked side by side, with no gap for anything to slither between. An impenetrable fortress sealed in concrete and iron.
Hours passed. Perhaps days. Still, the blinder would not budge.
Still, no one came.
Not to ask questions, not to demand the truths be told. Not to hurt me...not to save me. Just unrelenting cold. The eternal ringing of that voice. The one that meant I was safe. That I was home. That voice that was as much a part of me as my own hammering heart in my chest. Sleep. I needed to sleep. Exhaustion clawed at every inch of my mind. Perhaps here, laying on the bitter stone floor, was as good a place as any to finally...just...close my eyes.
Fuck. Don’t you give up, Ally. Come on, baby. I command you to come back. You are still here. You are stronger than this.
The words—that voice—clanged through my body like steel on steel, rattling me to my very soul. Dammit. Iamstronger than this. I am Alvara Goldman, second in command of the Grayshell Hierarchy. The most powerful seeralive. A wielder of all elements. I am stronger than stone. Stronger than ice...
And so, I became them.
Forged myself anew with the stone, turning crystalline, and fire, all at once.
Embodied the strength, and will, and light buried deep.
I know!I cried out, into the void. He was there. He wasn’t leaving.
“Get off of me,” I snarled, tearing at the metal plate. “Get. Off. Of. Me.”
