Chapter 27 All of You in Me
All of You in Me
T
he next morning, when I make it back to my suite, I lean heavily against my closed door, taking deep breaths. I try to collect myself, grappling with last night.
Azaire is dead.
He’s dead like my ma and Xander.
Death. Defined as a soul moving to a new plane of existence—a plane that I don’t know if Azaire got to or not. But could death be something worse? Something with no destination and absolutely no returns?
Could death be nothing?
How long do I have until he fades from my mind entirely? How many years before I think of him for the last time? Or will I sit on my deathbed and remember him, immortalizing him in one, final moment?
I succumb to my unanswerable questions, my back sliding down the door as I crash to the floor.
Azaire is dead. He isn’t coming back. My final moments with him were spent tearing his heart to shreds, and that’s it. There’s no reversing the decisions I’ve made.
He’s gone like Ma, gone like Xander, and I’ll live with the loss.
My eyes catch the glimpse of a brown paper bag.
The brown bag filled with the ingredients for Azaire’s soup. The cured cattle, dried rosemary, and powdered pumpkin seed.
His ma’s ingredients.
What if Azaire is the last of his family line? What if all of him is gone?
I pick up the bag, holding it to my chest. Smelling it—as if it smells like him. It doesn’t, but it’s second best. It’s a smell he would know.
It’s a smell his ma shared with him.
I clutch to the bag until it wrinkles, my tears dampening the paper. When I find the strength to stand, I tuck the bag safely in my drawer.
My plan is to keep it forever as I lie in my bed, crying into my pillow.
?
After Ma died, everyone told me they were mourning her loss with me. It used to confuse me. How could they know how much I was mourning? How were they mourning with me?
Few people sat at her grave for a prolonged period of time. Few people mourned as I did.
With every word, I could feel the extent of their sorrow for Ma, but no one, besides my family, could feel even a fraction of my loss.
But this time, no one says anything. The emotions of those around me haven’t changed. Kids are still confused in class and horny for their classmates. No one knows Azaire is dead.
Except for Lucian.
I stay close to him, lingering like his shadow, using his emotion to avoid my own. At least with his grief as a barrier, my own can’t drive me insane.
But I can’t stay with him forever. Today, he leaves for Ilyria, and I’ll be left alone.
Alone with myself.
I don’t know which way to walk. Left or right? Up or down? I don’t know which way to go.
I don’t know what to do.
My feet stumble as much as my heart, and I find myself walking to Azaire’s room. I close the door behind me, staring at the room, not quite seeing.
I didn’t want to come here. I’ve been avoiding this. This is where the truth settles in: Azaire is gone. It’s something I know, but only vaguely, not intimately. His room makes the distinction feel imminent—the truth will settle any minute now.
Just like Ma’s study, Azaire’s room is a time capsule. Frozen on the day he departed.
I stand in the entry, staring.
His bed is made; Yuki’s isn’t. His stacks of philosophy books line the back wall. And his journal sits on the desk in the corner, a piece of brown ribbon peeking out on the bottom.
The day he showed me his writing, he told me he had more. He’d been so nervous to show me. But I was the one he chose to show. The one he wrote about.
What luck. What love.
How could I have ever wanted to push him away?
How could I not wish to hold him now?
He’s not here to hold.
I cross the room, pausing at his chair, my fingers brushing over the journal he once held so closely.
In the beginning, his heart would race at the thought of me holding this journal.
And now, it’s here—his mind laid bare on his desk, waiting to be taken.
One last piece of him, immortalized like Ma in her journals.
One final word to read with reverence, as if his soul still lingers within the pages.
I carefully open to the page marked by the ribbon, as if it holds a final part of him, still waiting for me to find.
I think she is wise, like the trunk of a thousand-year-old tree.
Strong, like the burning fire of our stars.
Elegant, like the flowing tide. I want to tell her that there is a piece of her in everything I see, a piece of her soul lodged within my own, and that it’s the most cherished part of myself that I hold.
I see her subtle disposition for our worlds colliding with her love of them in the silent sounds of nature.
I see a strong belief in humanity, even when all it has to show for itself is evil.
I see her hope and not a lack of fear, but a strength to face it.
Gods, I don’t even know what I’m saying.
I’m likely rambling. I guess I love her.
I know I love her. And I’m so lucky to love her.
Even when my heart does stop beating, I think the entire universe will remember that it once beat for her.
The journal closes, my hand settling on top. I stop reading.
Is that the last thing he wrote? Was it before or after I broke his heart? There are so many things I will never know, but this feels to be the cruelest.
In the most wicked of ways, it feels like fate—his death. The universe has taken everything from me, and the one time I see a glimmer of hope, it ripped that shine from me, too. Likely on the very day the dead boy wrote about his heart ceasing to beat.
That the entire universe would remember it beat for me.
Me. As if I deserve that. As if I’m not just a magnet for disaster, the key to death itself.
I knew from the beginning: do not let Azaire into my life. Now, I’m forced to wonder if he would still be alive if I had listened.
I pull at the tips of my gloves.
When I was ten, I killed Xander because I touched him. Today, I stand in the room of the only boy I could ever hold.
The only boy I could touch, dead.
There are so many ways that my power is terrible—feeling people, killing people—but I think this is the worst of it. The world took away the only person who could withstand my nature.
I wish it was never my nature at all.
“So, you truly want it?” the boy asks. “Even after everything it’s done for you. Every way you’ve been able to cope by feeling others, you truly want your power to cease?”
I take a deep breath, halting my tears long enough to answer, “Yes.”
“I don’t believe you, Little Thorn. I don’t believe you one bit.”
No. He’s wrong. It isn’t true. This power is the reason for every problem.
In my mind, I spot the boy before me. I grab his arms, feeling him struggle against my hold. But my grip isn’t about strength—it’s about power. That’s what binds us.
That’s what breaks me.
Everywhere our skin meets, a thousand needles burst through.
Vines erupt from my fingertips. Dark green tendrils whip through the air, coiling around the boy as they tear free from my skin—each thorn digging in like a dull dagger. More importantly, they pierce him, too.
I stumble back, and the thorns respond, obeying my will. The once-small wooden barbs thicken and twist, doubling in size. As they drive deeper into his flesh, blood rises in thin lines.
A pounding ache blooms behind my eyes.
The rivulets of red slip down his skin, and I realize this is exactly what I intended. I want him to hurt. For him to feel my power—the power he claims I want.
“From the very first time my magic manifested”—I point at the thorns—“this is what it’s done to me.”
I fling my arms wide, and the vines rip free. They tear from his body, snapping through the room and collapsing to the floor.
Then, with a flick of my will, the thorns begin to grow from beneath his skin. Each stem twists upward, forcing its way through muscle and flesh. They tear out slowly, splitting him from the inside, until red blooms across his skin like scattered petals.
“Go ahead,” I say, my sudden anger reaching a new precipice. “Pull them out. See how painful it is.”
“Wendolyn—”
“Feel it for yourself!”
The boy does. Slowly, he lifts a hand and begins pulling the thorns—one by one, peeling them from the raw wounds they’ve left behind. But it’s me who crumples. It’s me who bleeds. Me who aches.
Because all he is… is me. How can I keep denying him? How could he be wrong?
The boy meets me on my knees. My aching, broken knees.
“My pain is yours.” He leans in, voice low. “Your memories mine. I know your woes.”
He lifts the sleeve of my shirt, revealing every scar.
“I know the worst of your power. I’m only trying to remind you of the best.”
I pull my sleeve down, covering the scars he never needed to see. He can always feel them.
When I open my eyes, I’m back in Azaire’s room, lying on the floor. When I’d fallen in my mind, my body must have fallen here, too. The remnants of sobs sit in my chest. Aching.
But they’re not Lucian’s. They’re not anyone’s. These are wholly mine.