Do you believe that you can walk on water?

Ashetta didn’t look up again as her husband began moving around the temple. She didn’t see him shrug, but she was listening. She had turned fractured eyes up to the shrine once more, and every word dropped like a stone into the deep, murky blackness that she was, sinking down and down and down into the bottomless dark. Nothing. Nothing. She shivered and felt something crumble away in her chest, but she kept listening. Stayed dutifully silent. Nothing. No one. She struggled to maintain steady breath now, and she could not, would not, turn to look at Alistair. She didn’t want him to see what was in her just then - the raw and wide open cracks and breaks and fissures in who she was. He wanted his wife back. He wanted her back, but gods, who the fuck was she? She had never been anything else but this, not once, not in over thirteen years. What else was there to her beyond this? ’Idiot girl,’ that cruel ghost hissed in her head, and her hands held to arms a bit tighter.  Gods what had she done? What was she supposed to do? How could she ask for help, for anyone, when she knew there was no help to be had? There was no saving whatever was left of her. ”Tell me it’s okay to love you.” But it fucking wasn’t! It never had been, she had told him that from the start, she told him. She nearly whirled on him and told him just that, nearly shouted into the empty temple that she didn’t deserve this. Gods, the only love she had ever known before she found her way to Northwind had been a lie, and it had been painful, and it had rendered her soul into the twisted thing it was now. She had deserved every moment of what she got before, how could anyone believe she deserved different? She had devoured the heart of the distant thing that created her. She had finally ended her torment that began when she was only six years old. Only she hadn’t. The torment lived in her, breathed in her, festered in her. It was vile and twisted and it hurt, and it was shameful. Shameful because she embraced it, took it, and she fucking ran with it. She couldn’t put that on anyone else, on Alistair. She wouldn’t. These were her consequences and wounds, the paltry penance for over a decade of making sacrifices in blood in exchange for her own life. How else was she supposed to do this other than alone? She’d had to adapt violently and quickly to know how to survive without the guild controlling her every breath.. And she’d done it poorly, but there was no other way. These were her consequences and scars. No one else’s. Ashetta’s lip trembled as she finally looked away from the shrine, turning to face Alistair as he raised his hand, displaying that precious ring. Heat flared in her chest suddenly, heat she didn’t want, but she couldn’t stop herself from the way her lip curled back. ”Don’t you fucking dare tell me that means nothing,” she snapped, her voice echoing into the ornate temple. Her eyes blazed with a current of fury she rode on to cover the hurt. She felt something like dread prickle up her spine, and she blamed it on the veins of brilliant blue flickering and flashing beneath her skin. She pretended not to notice the tears that gathered in her eyes, refused to let them fall. Nothing nothing nothing nothing. Her hands were shaking as they dropped to her sides, breath labored as she looked from the ring - her father’s ring - then back to his face. She loved him, gods, she fucking loved him. She felt something crack in her chest. ”I have given you everything I have left! Everything! You have access to my soul, Alistair, I don’t know what else to give you to show you that I love you! You want your wife back, but do you know who it is you’re asking for? You fell in love with a fucked up killer, and I -” Ashetta cut off abruptly when the candlelight dimmed, and then crimson light suffused them. She abandoned her anger, her hurt, her fear, and she whirled to face the shrine - she hadn’t noticed the smoke rolling from it until then. Her magic suddenly crackled with unease, and she began glancing about for an illusionist, or perhaps a conjurer, something.. But the world trembled with the growl that seemed to rumble from everywhere at once. The blood drained from her face, and the raven-haired girl took a step back. So at odds with that thunderous growl, that whisper snaked along her skin, prickled in her and deeply unsettled her. The smoke didn’t smell right, and it burned her eyes with it’s smell.. As she whirled back around to face Alistair, she shifted, and the she-wolf bounded a few paces to her husband before snapping her teeth at his shirt, tugging him after her. ’Get out of here,’ she pushed down their bond. She had to get him out. She was powerfully tempted to stay, to investigate… but she knew Alistair would never leave without her. She gave another snarp tug with her teeth at his shirt, tearing a small hole into it when her head started to spin. The voice, the presence.. They were bad. The smoke was bad news too, it seemed. Her golden eyes looked back at the shrine as she began trotting for the exit, at the blood-red light and smoke… ’Thank you,’ she thought to whatever god had so harshly answered her. ashetta it's live or die my way.