Chapter 5 When I’m Done Dying
When I’m Done Dying
Now
I
wake on the floor, a pillow resting on top of my back. The door to my room is made of a precious stone from my home world, Eunaris. It’s supposed to block mental magics from passing through: in my case, emotions. It works for other Eunoia. It doesn’t always work for me.
I nearly pulled out my hair last night. Ever since Desdemona arrived, it’s been harder than usual to adjust. A new feeling in such close proximity takes a bit of time to get used to, and she’s the worst of them all.
She’s in constant, budding fear. Emotion is worse when it’s suppressed—even more so when you fear the emotion itself, and Desdemona does.
I toss the pillow, one I’d wrapped around my head in a foolish attempt to silence something beyond the mind, onto the bed. Then, I rise to my feet. Normally, I’d tidy my room, but the last few days have taken a different course than the usual.
I grab my bag and race out of my suite, straight to Azaire. I check on him everyday—heal him everyday. Sometimes for only a few minutes. I try to make it only a few minutes. Though, I tend to stay longer, hoping to see the wiggle of a finger, the twitch of an eye.
I’ve yet to see him awake.
Resting beside him on the bed, I begin to take my gloves off. My bare hands hover over his body, and today, I beg my magic to reach him—to rouse him.
“So sentimental.” The boy takes my attention. “The human body is so frail. Easy to break. So very difficult to fix. This will only end when it breaks you.”
“Are you suggesting I don’t save him?” I ask the boy out of anger, the green tendrils gushing from my fingertips with the influx of feeling. I pull my hands back, not wanting to deposit anger into Azaire’s broken being.
“Not at all,” he echoes in my mind. “Your conscience is far too feeble to withstand that.”
But I’m not doing this for my conscience. I’m doing this because Azaire deserves to live.
“I’m going to save him,” I say with finality and go back to healing Azaire, proving a point to my own mind.
The green light wrapping around my hands and Azaire fills the room. I try to mend him on a level deeper than the body. I try to reach his mind. To fix it.
It’s tiring, but in the mornings after a night’s rest, I have enough energy to spend. This healing doesn’t hurt, not like when I repair physical wounds. It’s different. Exhuasting. The coma that’s taken Azaire lures me in, and I fight it.
It’s a difficult task, and it takes focus, but somehow, it feels like his mind guides me through the worst of it. Today, as my eyes begin to flutter shut, energy rushes through my veins, filling my head.
It isn’t mine. I wonder if it’s Azaire’s. If maybe he’s waking up, or can somehow feel me and hopes to help.
It’s a kind thought—which is not something my mind often offers me—but it’s unlikely.
When I’m finished, I sit at the foot of his bed. I watch—his chest rising and falling in shallow rhythm. I feel nothing from him, as usual. And I contemplate, reaching for what isn’t there.
First and foremost, I make sure he isn’t in pain.
“Wake up, Azaire,” I find myself whispering, maybe to him, maybe to myself. “Please, wake up.”
His eyelashes flutter, and I sit up straighter, waiting for more. At first, nothing happens. Then, I feel a prickle in my hands. Something moving beneath my skin.
Him.
As if heeding my command, his eyes slowly flicker open. A smile breaks over his face like sunlight.
“Okay,” he mumbles, groggy, looking up at me in awe. “But only because you asked.”
I never knew I was worthy of such surprise.
“He could be the one,” the boy says. “Or just another one. You’re better off not knowing. Either way, it ends the same.”
I meet Azaire’s gaze, trying to see his eyes instead of the boy, who’s lingering nearby in my mind. But I can’t ignore the boy.
I can’t ignore him because he’s right.
It always ends the same.
“It’s fair to see you awake.”
“Yeah, I like seeing you awake, too,” Azaire mumbles, scratching his forehead, beneath his beanie.
Heat rises to my cheeks, and I take a deep breath. I don’t want to feel this, or what will happen if I let this go further. Because the boy is right: whatever this is, it ends in pain.
And I am better off not knowing that pain.
Every day I’ve come here, I’ve lived with the suffocating fear that I can’t save Azaire. And even if I did this time, I know one day I won’t. One day I’ll be too late, too weak, too feisty, maybe even too strong.
Maybe it will be me staying to fight that gets him killed—like my mom.
Maybe it will be me touching him—like Xander.
“Azaire…” I trail off as I look away.
“Bad news first,” he says. When I glance back at him, he smiles again, but his heart isn’t in this one. “I try to end things on a positive note.”
“I don’t…” I shake my head, biting my wobbling lip. “I don’t think I have good news.”
Azaire’s eyebrows knit together, his mouth falling. “Oh.”
“We have to end here,” I mutter, the words shrinking in my throat.
All the joy seeps from his very marrow and, in turn, from my own, leaving me in grayscale.
“Why?” He sounds as sad as he feels.
I lick my lips, stuttering. “I-I don’t know how to do this—”
Azaire cuts me off. “Can you look at me?”
Only now do I realize I’m looking at a willow tree in the garden. More specifically, a single leaf on the tree. At the lighter shade of green that marks its veins.
I look at him to ease his desperation. It makes mine worse.
“Did something happen while I was unconscious?” Azaire asks. He really wants to know, to fix it.
I can’t let that happen.
“It’s not that.” Looking him in the eyes is killing me, but I endure the steady slaughter. “It was my mistake.”
“Mistakes are still your choices,” the boy says. “You get to make them, and you’re making the proper choice now.”
“Okay,” Azaire answers.
The way I feel—whether it’s Azaire or me—isn’t good. It scarcely is. Emotions are fickle, even the okay ones are easily demolished. The not so okay ones tend to get worse with time.
I would like to say something more—I have something more to say. Alas, my vocal cords have frozen.
I rise, turning to the door and prepared to walk through it.
Until a hand catches my wrist, oddly strong for a boy who could’ve been on his death bed this morning.
He would have been, if it weren’t for me.
I turn to face Azaire, and he meets my gaze. His mouth hangs slightly open, eyes wide. His skin nearly brushes my own—but my long sleeve stops him.
“Don’t go,” he says.
I know he doesn’t need my healing. This is about a yearning.
Still, I ask, “Do you need me to stay for something?”
“No,” he murmurs, tugging me closer to his bed. “Just don’t go.”
I look down—at his hand on my glove, nearly touching my skin—and all I can do is numbly nod.
“Okay.”
?
When Azaire’s fallen back to sleep, I feel bad for leaving.
But I don’t turn around. There’s something I need to do, something I’ve put off so I could heal Azaire.
For days, I’ve ignored the flooding thoughts each time the tide brought them in.
Ma, the monsters and Arcanes, the woman who was taken to The Void: everything Lucian told me but couldn’t explain.
Today, I’ll get answers.
I go straight to my suite, resting my hand on the mirror in my bedroom and visualizing my old home on Eunaris.
Portals are the only means we have of traveling between worlds, but they’re not without danger.
You need time, patience, and clarity of mind to open a portal properly.
If you don’t, you could get stuck between the mirrors—between worlds—and no one knows what happens after that.
There’s only one mirror in each town on Eunaris—one way to portal in and out. And I haven’t been in years. I concentrate on the sensory details: the groaning wood, the sweet scent of flowers, the view from the community garden—rolling mountains, roaming animals, and ranging greens.
The mirror vibrates beneath my hand, the glass rippling like water as an image of my hometown begins to replace my reflection. It stretches to match my height, and with a steady breath, I step through.
The moment I cross, the air shifts, thick with the warmth of the place. I’m immediately engulfed by the heady scent of orange blossoms and violets—Ma’s favorites. It could turn cloying with the memories, if I let it. But I have to hold on to what’s left.
The community mirror is just past the gardens, and I walk through them to make it home. It’s a graveyard of memories. Only, all the good ones have withered away into the one. I hold my breath, shunning the scent.
The home where my brothers and father reside is small compared to what we have at Visnatus Academy, but it looks as I remember. Everything is made of dark wood: the kitchen, the tables, the chairs, and stairs.
I feel sick to my stomach at the sight. All the memories it holds. The last time I set foot in this house, Ma’s body was split in two. Dismembered, never to be put together again. The gore covers my eyes, coating the world in thick, iron-scented red.
As I double over, refraining from puking, I know that this is entirely my own feeling—the grief, nausea, and guilt—-untainted by anyone around me.
It’s rare to feel anything that’s entirely my own.
I step into the house, the dark green couch and wooden table luckily empty. I run through, making a beeline for the steps, and tip-toeing around the one that always creaks. Trying hard not to alert anyone of my presence. Praying no one can sense it.
Pa is here—I can feel him in his room—but no one else.
I stop. Despite all that happened, his dead wife and missing daughter, he feels nearly the same. He was always the rock in our home, and Ma was the muse. She was who we went to for a laugh, but he was who we wanted for a cry. Steady in the mind, solid in his form.
Ma was a free spirit, nearly like the air—try to grab her, and she slips right through your fingers.
I can feel her here, too, but I’m not sure if it’s magic or habit.
I continue up the stairs.