Chapter XXXIII. Domenic #2
Domenic tilted his head back, blinking as his vision blurred. “I’m just trying to do the right thing. The noble thing.”
“So am I! Of course I am! But do you even know what that is? Because I sure don’t.”
He didn’t. He never had.
“And I don’t think admitting that makes me less capable,” Ellery continued fiercely. “I think the idea that we’d always know what to do is yet another impossible thing that’s been asked of us.”
A laugh escaped him like a whimper. She had no idea what might truly be asked of them.
But for all Domenic could curse destiny for stealing their future, it bore no blame for their present. Domenic had shattered that all on his own. And he could no longer conceive of a single reason why.
He stepped closer to Ellery.
“What if I hate them for asking too much?” Domenic gestured viciously at the people around them, at everyone, at everything. “What does that make me then?”
Ellery met his gaze boldly. “Sometimes I hate them, too.”
Always, always they were the same. Even if they were terrible.
He could never think her terrible.
“Shit, El.” He snaked his arms around her waist and drew her against him.
“I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.
I’ve been trying so hard to act the way I thought a Chosen One should.
Because if I don’t, people get scared. I’ve seen it.
And I know what fear feels like. I can’t stand everyone’s fear being my fault. ”
Ellery cupped his cheek. “Even if we’re responsible for everyone, the way we feel matters, too. You’re the one who showed me that.”
He leaned into her touch. If he had to die, he could choose no better place than in her arms. “I’m …
embarrassed to admit how long I wanted this.
I knew from the first time I saw you. From the first time I learned who you were.
And for years, before you even glanced at me, I couldn’t look anywhere but at you.
And knowing you, seeing who you really are, you’re so much more than the perfect image I’d fantasized in my head.
And when I’m with you, the way I feel, what we have …
It’s terrifying. Because I should be fighting for the sake of everyone, but what I’m really fighting for—what I’ve always been fighting for—is this. You and me.”
Ellery’s eyes widened. “Dom, do you really mean that?”
“So what if I do?”
“Well, then maybe you were right. Maybe this is a mistake.”
However, for all Ellery’s logic, she wrapped her arms behind his neck.
He nudged his forehead against hers and shuddered at the exquisite cold of her magic, the torment of it.
The dancing lights of gas lamps and shimmer of graffiti brightened around them.
Yet they were elsewhere. They were in a forest bathed in color and stars and impossible dreams.
But his own confession festered inside him. He couldn’t kiss her and not tell her. Even he knew it wasn’t right, wasn’t noble.
“No, we shouldn’t,” he agreed.
Yet as he readied to admit the awful truth, no words came. Maybe it was his cowardice, his selfish want to survive. But ever since Hanna had told him that every Chosen One had sacrificed themself, a desperate hope had lurked in Domenic’s heart.
He and Ellery weren’t like every Chosen One before them. They were the Chosen Two.
And if Domenic wasn’t sure, what good was it to burden Ellery with this same fear that’d been unraveling him? He’d already broken her heart once. He refused to do so again.
As he lowered his mouth to hers, suddenly, someone kicked him behind the knee.
He spun around deliriously. Hanna and Kester glared up at him. His heart careened to a stop.
“I knew it,” Hanna snapped. “You are so fucking typical.”
“Hanna,” Domenic croaked. “It’s not…”
He had no idea what he meant to say, but it didn’t matter, as Hanna cut him off to bark at Ellery, “The seeds, the hearts, whatever they are. Give them back. Now.” She held out her hand.
Ellery didn’t protest. She withdrew Maltherius’s and Eledrium’s hearts from her pocket and relinquished them to Hanna. “Wh-what are you going to tell the Council?”
Hanna’s gaze flitted furiously between Ellery, then Kester, then Domenic, as if she wanted to fight someone but couldn’t decide whom. Then she grunted, defeated, “I don’t know.” And she stomped away.
Kester hugged their arms tight to their chest. Their brashness from earlier had dimmed, though after Syarthis excavating their mind, Domenic couldn’t blame them.
“So after I just endured that delightful experience, you’re still not gonna listen to me?” Kester spat. “Fine. Why should I matter to you? I’m just a person who has to survive whatever bad choices the two of you make.”
They stomped off, too.
Ellery tugged Domenic’s sleeve and muttered, “Come on. Let’s just go.”
He hesitated. However direly he wanted to escape with Ellery, he couldn’t reconcile with one person he cared about while betraying another. He needed to make things right with them both.
“I’m so sorry, but I can’t leave Hanna. Not like that.” He looked at Ellery pleadingly. “I promise I’ll catch up with you. Is that all right?”
Her jaw clenched, like it wasn’t. But she nodded. “Yeah. Go.”
Domenic scoured the crowds for Hanna, but she was too short.
He considered silencing the music, climbing atop a stool and calling for her—him, a Chosen One, at 2 a.m. in a bar.
But as he squeezed Valmordion, he felt that familiar heat of Syarthis, familiar in a way that ran deeper than friendship, deeper even than blood.
He found her out in the cold.
Hanna sat against the wall with her knees to her chest, clutching Syarthis to her heart. A circle of wet pavement haloed her from the wand melting the slush.
She didn’t look at him. “So did you tell her, then? How your great love story ends?”
“Not yet.” He didn’t tell her it was because he wasn’t sure. Hanna would only call him a fool.
“She deserves to know, Dom.”
“Like I did, all this time?”
Hanna glowered at the nearest trash bin.
“I’m sorry, Hanna,” he snapped. “I really am. I’m sorry I’m so fucking predictable. But I’m not going to bother explaining myself if you’re just gonna keep hating me anyway. And for the record, I really don’t want to die with you hating me.”
“I … I already told you. I could never hate you.”
“But you’re mad at me. You’ve been mad at me since, when? Since the night I bonded with Valmordion?”
She smeared her nose on the back of her hand. “Yup. That sounds about right.”
“Why? Tell me, and I’ll fix it.”
“I’m not sure you can fix it,” she murmured. “It’s not your fault. It’s never been your fault. I’m just … not very good at being a person, I think.”
“Tell me anyway. Let me try.”
“All right.” Her voice cracked. She cried. “But you can’t look at me when I tell you. You can’t.”
Domenic slid down beside her. He fixed his gaze on his own trash bin. “I won’t.”
“I really believed you back when we were kids, when you promised there was some greatness in store for us. You were so sure, you made it hard not to get my hopes up. And well, we were so powerful, weren’t we?
Even then.” Her laugh was weak and wet. “And after it was me who had to save us from Syarthis that day, I was still stuck hoping for that great future you talked about. I waited for you to get better. I encouraged you. I hid everything about my job from you because I was so scared of upsetting you. And shit, I was mad at you then, too. Because I was killing myself trying to prove to everyone that I wasn’t going to … to explode. And you were just…”
“Pathetic,” he finished for her hoarsely.
She didn’t disagree. “And when it was you who bonded with Valmordion … well, I thought we were all fucked. Then Peak couldn’t shut up about you stopping that scurge in Oldermere.
And suddenly, you’ve slayed one of the Dire Three.
You’re yelling at Sharpe, something I’ve sure as hell never managed to do.
You’re some whole new, capable person! And every time I heard a reporter call you a hero, I could’ve thrown up. ”
Domenic thought he was about to. “I’m so sorry, Hanna. I—”
“No. Don’t apologize,” she choked. “I’m not done.”
Again, he obeyed, but it was getting harder not to look at her. His vision swam.
“I knew you were supposed to die, obviously. Iseul and Peak, they wanted to tell you. Glynn sure wanted to tell Ellery. But I told Sharpe you couldn’t know. That you couldn’t handle it.”
Domenic held his breath so she wouldn’t hear how hard she’d struck him.
“I meant it. But I also thought maybe, if I tried hard enough, Syarthis and I could find a way to save you. And I-I’ve tried so hard. I’ve watched all the past Chosen Ones burn in Syarthis’s Archives so many times that sometimes when I look at you, I just see…” She sobbed.
He couldn’t play along anymore. He grabbed her and pulled her against him. She was comically small in his arms, and feverishly warm compared to the cold press of the pavement.
“It’s okay, Hanna. You don’t need to save me.”
“I will always be trying to save you.”
Overhead, the icicles weeped, droplets splattering on their cheeks.
He pressed his forehead to the top of her hair.
“You were right to be mad at me. I should’ve at least asked what it was like to wield Syarthis, no matter how ashamed I was that it was you who had to.
I should’ve been better for you first. But do you know what kept me in the vigil chamber when Glynn told us all we could leave? ”
She uttered some incomprehensible noise against his chest.
“You. The Danmere Duo. That I’d promised you I’d be someone worth hoping for.
” Domenic floundered for the right words.
“I mean, all of Alderland needs me to play a hero. And fuck, that’s not me.
But from that first press conference, whenever I thought of a real hero I could pretend to be, someone who actually inspired me to be brave, I immediately thought of you. ”
Hanna shoved him away. “Ugh. You’re so sentimental. It’s disgusting.”