He monitors the golden tripwire he had left in her mind, a near constant focus on it. Never enough to intrude upon her thoughts, but enough to know where she had even brushed a touch over it. Whether it reverberated from thoughts blown in its direction. But he only receives silence in return. Only the constant and unending darkness from what she refuses to touch. It is maddening, and he struggles against the primal rage that swells in his throat. The constant battle against himself to not intrude. To not force himself into a situation where he was clearly not wanted and not simply march to Hyaline and end it.
But he restrains himself, barely.
She would ask for help if she wanted it. If she needed it.
And he would be waiting.
The frustration demands an outlet though and that is what he is doing this night. Once the sun has set, he tears himself free from form and becomes a shadow on the wind. He races along each winter breeze, whipping it into a frenzy until the trees of the forest howl and the leaves blow as he runs past them. He screams into the wind and it echoes back to him, feeding into the cycle of fury and confusion and hurt.
And it is only when that ripple of the tripwire sounds that he pauses at all. It rings like a gong in his head and he pulls up sharply, unsure if perhaps he had tripped it himself with his own intrusive thoughts or he had just imagined it. But it sounds again and he trembles with fear of what it means before he grabs ahold of the golden thread now connecting them. Grasping it tight he explodes into a cloud of shadow, following it desperately to the other end, bursting into being just a few feet away from her.
He comes just in time to see her lay there, body lifeless, the blood dripping into her eyes.
The sound that comes from him is inhuman, a scream that tears his throat. His magic booms out of him, knocking into the rocks and cliffs so that they begin to tumble further down the coast. He only has enough awareness to shield them both, the rocks sliding off and bouncing away from her lax body. The ocean’s tides reversing for several moments as the impact pushes them back. He stumbles forward blindly, falling to his knees by her side, and he barely has time to brush aside her forelock before she goes up in flames.
A cry comes from him then, sharp and agonized, as he reaches for the ash that scatters and covers his face in the blacked smudges. He should have been faster, he thinks. He should have fought harder. He should have forced her to accept his help. He should have ripped that bastard’s throat out the second he felt her pain when they last met. All of his regrets rises up like a tidal wave and he closes his eyes against them, the pain of the loss staggering, blinding—in a way he couldn’t have anticipated or begun to understand.
So he misses when the fire returns except the sudden wave of heat against him.
And he opens his eyes slowly, his face streaked with the dirt and the tears, the rubble of his destruction around them, to see her lying there with her eyes open, breath once again filling her chest.
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas
all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)