Chapter 51
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
LYRA
Night is nearly morning by the time Gray and I finish talking.
We discussed things. We laughed. We cried.
We hugged. He told me all that happened at Bathara while I was away, and I told him everything that happened with me in Halfaria.
Including my Veilreading abilities. He was shocked—stunned, even—but he also said he wasn’t surprised, given everything else I can do.
I did not tell him about my final night with Casimir.
Will there ever come a day where you won’t see me as a monster?
Perhaps.
No. I did not tell him anything about that. Of the way Casimir held my face with such gentleness. The way he gazed at me with tender eyes—a look which is difficult to reconcile belonging to him. I also exclude mentioning the necklace he gave me. That is all knowledge for me, and me alone.
I now find myself standing at the foot of a cracked wooden door, staring at the rusted hinges while I debate whether or not I wish to knock.
He is probably sleeping. Most likely has already gone to bed.
Still, I walked up three flights of stairs and down the moonlit corridor to get here, so might as well knock at least once.
My knuckles lightly tap the wood, barely hard enough to even make a thumping noise.
Draven opens the door within an instant.
It’s the first time I’ve looked at him this closely in a while.
His mismatched eyes are punctuated by dark bruises painting the bags beneath them, sunken like craters.
His hair is disheveled, his jaw coated with black stubble.
Draven’s gaze is wild and desperate as it bores into me like a starved child doing its best not to dream. It is also haunted. Fractured.
He steps aside and pulls back the door even more. “Would you like to come in?”
I swallow, my throat already tightening. Wordlessly, I nod and enter the room. Unlike my own, the window in his is broken, a few glass shards remaining scattered beneath its sill. It allows a draft to chill the air, making me shiver with a cold which has layers.
Draven follows behind me, his hands shoved into the pockets of pants that don’t fit him quite right. He permanently maintains about three steps of distance between us.
There is nothing but silence for long heartbeats. Until Draven finally says, “You’re here.”
I release a quiet sigh and turn away from the shattered window, finally facing him. “I am.”
“And what should I make of that?”
“That I’m ready to have a conversation.”
He nods, the faintest curve tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Talking is good.”
My eyes fall to the jagged glass beneath the window. “Maybe not when you hear what I have to say.”
“Yet I would like to hear it nonetheless.” He glances at a fraying leather chair a few paces away. “Would you like to sit?”
“No. I’d prefer to stand, actually.”
He nods, then walks across the room, lifting the chair effortlessly and resting it at the foot of the wall directly across from me.
Then he sits down, folding his shoulders in, making him appear smaller in size than he actually is.
He braces his elbows on his thighs and peaks his fingers together, watching me intently.
I allow my chaotic, grief-stricken thoughts to flow, not bothering to ease into them with a careful introduction or topic sentence.
“There was a girl at Halfaria. She was only seventeen, the youngest member to ever join Casimir’s personal guard.
Gods, she was so proud of that. She helped me train.
Helped me do my hair and makeup, even when she didn’t have to.
She laughed with me. Helped guide me to better understand her people.
And then she was taken from me. By you. By your magic.
” My chin wobbles, and I don’t even try to hide it.
“She died in my lap, singing of all things. What am I worth, but the wills of men? Why can’t I fly?
Why can’t this end?” My voice dims. “That is what she sang with her dying breath.”
Draven’s jaw is locked tight, hands remaining frozen in front of his lips. “I thought they were mad and corrupted. I thought they chose to be that way.”
“So killing them all was the only option even if they had? What about searching for a cure? What about rehabilitation?”
He shakes his head, the motion weak and slow.
“In the heat of the moment, those alternatives didn’t even occur to me.
I was drowning beneath my own magic, put on edge by the nightmares the ward showed me.
” A muscle in his jaw flexes. “And I don’t say that as an excuse—it is not an excuse.
But it is a factor that played a role in what happened.
I assessed a threat, and I acted against it. ”
“By murdering an entire population of people.”
“How is it different from what I did at Foreigner’s Valley? At Bathara? What we do as Jurafen?” He doesn’t ask in a defensive manner—there is no bite or edge to his words. “How could I have known there were different types of Abdites if I was never given that knowledge before?”
“By remembering they were once people, too. By respecting the sanctity of life, regardless of who it belongs to. By not taking your experience with one person and blanketing it over an entire group.” I look up to the ceiling, the words Gray said ringing through me.
“But you’re right: it is no different than what happened in the valley or at the academy.
The only difference is now I know better—knew the people being slaughtered—and so now it feels different. Now, it hurts.”
Draven watches me, remaining silent, as if sensing I have more to say. He is right; I do.
I pace, all of my many thoughts and emotions stirred up and clattering around inside me.
“This very thing is the never ending cycle we’ve created for ourselves which allows me to understand how Casimir turned into who he is.
Makes me understand why he believes there’s no hope for humanity.
We see differences, and we judge. We don’t attempt to understand.
To listen. Not really, anyways. We fight and rebel against each other—what we don’t know—and we turn our misunderstandings into a perpetual cycle of violence.
” I halt in the middle of the room, my chest unbearably tight.
“I am sorry, Lyra. Please know how deeply I mean that. Had I known they were different…” He trails off, seeming to stop himself from saying he would have chosen differently.
Because the terrifying truth is, if it came down to me or them, he wouldn’t have, and we both know it.
“It hurts me knowing I hurt people who mattered to you,” he finishes instead.
The conversation Casimir and I had in that strange temple in the clouds surfaces in my mind. All that he said about justice, murder—the justification of it. I drop both my eyes and my voice when I muse, “Those lives lost are nothing more than a necessary means to an end, right?”
“I am sorry,” he says again, raspy voice soft. “I thought I was saving you.”
“But why does saving me mean you must persecute all of them?” I whisper, finally lifting my eyes from the ground to look at him once more.
His face pinches together, and he opens his mouth, but then closes it, lips thinning. “It shouldn’t.”
Silence lingers between us, heavy and uncomfortable in the way which it should be right now. Draven’s head is bowed, hands folded against the tops of his knees.
“Her name was Neilina,” I eventually say. “The girl I told you about. That was her name.”
He doesn’t move, save for the heavy rise and fall of his shoulders.
I study him, taking note of the defeated hunch of his frame, the rigidity in his muscles.
It pains me to see him like this, but in a way, I am also glad to see it.
Not from some twisted sense of malice or pleasure, but because he is capable of feeling guilt and remorse for the loss of innocent lives.
For the actions which brought their deaths about.
To hurt is to be reminded of our humanness.
To show remorse is to acknowledge that something precious was taken.
I go to him, pieces of the thorns in my heart remaining in the shadows behind me. I lower myself slowly to my knees, taking his face in both my hands and bringing his eyes to meet mine.
They are moist and rimmed by an awakening puffy redness.
For a brief second, I flashback to the hills surrounding Bathara, when I was walking with Kiran to meet Draven for training.
Let’s just say there was the version of Draven that was supposed to exist, and the one that actually existed, and it was not in alignment with the version his father wanted.
Growing up, Draven was soft-hearted, incredibly sharp-witted, quiet, and caring.
That’s what Kiran told me that day, and now, watching Draven, I can see the whispers of such a boy.
So much so, I almost feel like I may have met him once.
Held his face exactly as I am holding Draven’s now.
To the world, Draven was made to be hard, jaded, and sharp as a finely-crafted blade—forged in the blazing fires of Tynan Dalmar’s will.
But as Draven drags his glassy eyes to meet mine, I can see it so clearly.
That inside his world, he is someone who wants nothing more than to love and be loved—to live quietly, away from the heat of politics and decisions which erode one’s soul.
Someone who has suffered great loss and is scared to suffer it for someone he loves again.
On the outside, he is ruthless. On the inside, he is frightened.
I can see it so clearly now.
Draven pushes his tongue into his cheek, blinking back unfallen tears. “So you knew their names?” he asks after a passing silence, filled with nothing more than our syncing heartbeats.
Grief claws at my heart, air trapped by a lasso around my lungs. “Every single one of them.”
“Will you tell them to me?”
“All of them?”
He nods, the gesture nearly imperceptible.
My chest is so tight, it feels like my sternum may collapse from the weight of my own heart’s making. “I will.”
I expel some of the weight through my lips, clenching and unclenching my hands at my sides. Then, with a newfound steady calmness I have not felt since leaving the Wastelands, I say their names.
Every last one.
The sun crests on the horizon by the time we go to sleep.
There is a bedroll near the wall farthest from the broken window.
After hearing every name, after more words and a few more tears, Draven escorts me to that bedroll.
My mind and body are a plundered thing, so I do not protest before dropping down onto the thin material.
My eyes flutter, tempted to close the moment my head falls against the upper flap.
But I hear Draven’s feet shuffle, prompting me to force them open a while longer.
He is bent at the waist beside me, draping an extra blanket over my body.
When he starts to rise, I reach for his hand.
“Sleep beside me.”
His throat bobs before he nods. He goes to the corner, gathering a few more tattered blankets.
He spreads them on the ground beside me, then strips the combat boots from his feet.
He lays down on his pallet, and I lift up the blanket he draped over me, inviting him into its warmth.
He nestles beneath the fabric, pressing his firm chest against my back, reaching for me and swallowing my torso with his arms.
Draven drags me back against him, and we become two halves finally finding their whole.
It feels like every hollow space between my ribcage and sternum is being gripped by fists, my heart an erratic flutter in my chest. Yet the sensation is so different from all the other times before.
This is a swelling inside me which seeks to tear me apart and rebirth me in something new.
I can feel it so keenly—the way my heart is already accepting the permanence of such powerful, immovable feelings.
The kind which supersedes one’s self—becomes bigger than what one’s body feels capable of containing, threatening to burst open at any given moment.
They mingle and coalesce with the lingering sadness.
With the forgiveness and acceptance I offered Draven at the end of our conversation.
Everything isn’t suddenly better, but I recognized my two choices as we talked: either I choose to forgive him, or I don’t.
And after seeing him hold so much remorse, after watching him listen so intently as I told him the names of every lost soul—after considering my own actions at Bathara; my own choices which led me there—I knew which side of the line I was on.
So now as he holds me, as he strokes my skin mindlessly and tightens his other hand around my waist, I am a conglomeration of all that I was, am, and could be.
A mess of dissonant feelings. Perhaps what makes me most proud of that statement is the way I know what those feelings are.
The fact I have learned how to navigate sitting with them, processing them.
I interlace my fingers with Draven’s, squeezing his hand before letting it fall back to rest near the base of my stomach. He shifts to press a kiss to my temple. When he stills, I nestle more securely into the crook of his arm.
Our chests fall into a steady rhythm.
Right as sleep reaches its mystic fingers for me, Draven murmurs against my ear, so softly I nearly don’t hear the words, “I am not a good man, but you make me want to be a better one, Lyra.”
Emotion swells into my throat. “That admission alone might make you one of the best men I know.”
He hums, stroking my hair with his fingers. “You are the best thing I have ever known.” The words come out slow and rolled, almost how one speaks while drunk.
They are his final words before sleep claims him.
His fingers still, and I listen to the gentle tune of his breathing. It is my companion into the dreamland, a welcome melody.
And as I drift off, I feel the vital piece missing from me finally click back into place.