Chapter 42 #2
“I certainly was a large contributing factor. Though, there were others involved in mending you. Since I had healing magic before the Mother Goddess ‘blessed’ me, I always hold the ability. Whether there is a healer around or not. I can just amplify my healing by binding to more healers, multiplying my strength. It’s why I suspect once you accept the primary magic you wish to wield into your veins, it will always be with you.
I think it’s a peculiarity of Binders.” A sharp look.
“Which, don’t think I have forgotten about your need to provide me with an answer on that. ”
I glance up to the sky, mocking preoccupation. “Sorry,” I say when I drop my chin to look at him. “Did you say something?”
He snorts a laugh, shaking his head. “You’re a child.”
“Compared to your age, I definitely am.”
“My body is frozen at twenty-seven, you know.”
I shrug. He laughs.
“A healer,” I muse, my mouth creeping up with a smile. “Who would have thought?”
“It is rather shocking, given everything.”
Yet when I take a second to think about it, it really isn’t.
Well, I mean, sure, it is entirely at odds with the version of the monster who shoved a blade through Griff’s chest and confessed to mass murder.
But if I attempt to remember him in the early entries of his journal, the man I saw in the visions the Veil gave me, he was an advocate for diplomacy and peace. Constantly was choosing life.
Until he didn’t.
My voice drops into a whisper as a flash of his blade ripping through Griff’s chest haunts me. “Why’d you do it?”
His voice is soft. “Do what?”
“Murder my friend. Murder other people’s friends. Their loved ones.”
He tilts his head back and stares at the stars, quiet for a beat. “It was a means to an end.”
“But when does the end no longer justify the means?”
“I suppose that depends on who you ask; who is narrating the story.” He tips his chin back down, eyes finding me once more.
“I did what I had to, just as so many others do. To my people, my actions are heroic. To your people, they are villainous. Tell me, who can say for certain which group is right?”
I cup my cheeks in my palms. “The group who doesn’t choose violence. That’s who.”
“So who should win wars then?”
“Nobody,” I mutter. “It’s not like anybody truly does anyway.”
He studies me before moving through the water in my direction, stopping only once directly in front of me. Moonlight practically glints off the planes of his chest. “Can I ask you something selfish?”
The shift in his tone has me lifting my face from my hands to better meet his gaze. “Alright.”
“Will there ever come a day where you won’t see me as a monster? Where perhaps you might even understand me and my intentions?”
It catches me off guard. Not so much the question, but more so my answer to it. The fact that I feel compelled to answer him so honestly. Answer him at all, even. “Perhaps.”
A look flashes in and out of his eyes. It looks like shock mixed with relief, both merging together with a glimmer of hope—though for what, exactly, I don’t know. Yet the weight of it presses upon me all the same.
I resume kicking my feet against the swell of water, glancing away. “I wanted to be a healer once,” I murmur out of nowhere. “When I had no magic and would fantasize about it awakening as a small girl.”
My toes graze just above the surface, accidentally splashing water droplets up and across my cheek. Casimir reaches forward and gently swipes them away, the pad of his thumb gentle against my skin. As his fingers pull back, his knuckles graze my cheek. “You would have been good at it.”
My lips twitch. “You think so?”
“I do.”
He takes a step closer, and I officially have to lift my chin to hold his gaze. We remain like that, holding each other’s stares in a silent moment of something I dare not name.
I suck in a breath. “I should probably go to bed.”
His eyes do not leave me. “Yes,” he agrees. “You probably should. Neilina will be training you in my place tomorrow, and I know what she has planned for you. You’ll need rest, trust me.”
Yet neither he nor I move. Instead, it feels like we get closer—though of no active action on either of our parts.
It’s like clouds drifting, swept up on a breeze they have no control over.
My knees break apart from each other, and Casimir steps closer to fill the space between them.
He towers over me now, his chin tilted down while mine remains lifted to peer up at him.
We’re so close. The closest we’ve ever allowed our bodies to be before.
He reaches his hand out slowly—tentatively—and he glides his thumb along my jaw, cupping my face, leaning toward me as he searches my eyes.
The action makes me think of Draven. The way he would cup my face in his hand. How good it felt when his fingers wrapped around my jaw, roving down to the base of my throat. How desperately I wish he could touch me like that again.
Yet I know he can’t, because I have to stay away from the kingdoms so he can have his life.
I’d rather that than see him forced to marry Arden because of me; to have the rest of his life written out for him with poisoned ink only so I might be free.
No matter how much it breaks my heart to know Draven will never hold me again.
Will never show me the depth of how good a kiss can be once more.
I know I will have to move on eventually—if there ever will be moving on from him—but that is a day still held captive by the long night.
Dawn is nowhere close to rising in that horizon.
Because… there is just no denying how right it had all felt with him.
How familiar he seemed to my soul. Like I had already met him.
Had already wanted him, at least to some capacity, before I ever even accepted it as fact.
I don’t suspect such a gift of feeling is so easy to move on from.
Casimir’s face has dropped to be so achingly close to mine.
There is a part of me which considers letting whatever is about to happen play out.
A part of me which believes I may even enjoy what happens next if I do.
Especially when I glance up and see the concerted way Casimir is looking at me right now. Yet I just…can’t.
I turn my face away from him, and I swear something withers in his eyes. So sad. So tired.
So broken.
Casimir pulls his hand back, immediately retreating two steps. He stares at the hand that just held my face, curling his fingers into his palm before dropping it down to his side.
I want to say something. The air between us is already so different, all signs of that electric current eradicated entirely. Yet every time I open my mouth, my voice simply doesn’t work. My words don’t work.
Casimir straightens. “Try to finalize your decision on your primary magic during your training with Neilina tomorrow. Play around with different magics. Be honest with yourself and decide which one truly feels right in your veins. At this point, we cannot effectively move forward in your training without your decision.”
I nod, the motion stiff. “Alright,” I murmur. “I will.”
“Good.” He smiles tightly at me, and I can’t help but to think a smile should not be so sad. “Goodnight then, Lyra.”
“Goodnight, Casimir.”