Chapter 28 I’ll Grieve When I’m Avenged #2
Could it be possible he’s severed his ties to her for another reason? Maybe he doesn’t know about the monsters—aside from Azaire’s death.
“Oh.” I tug at the grass, my fingers fumbling. “It isn’t.”
Lucian turns to face me, but this time, I don’t meet his gaze. “Why do you bring her up?”
He doesn’t know.
“I… thought that you thought she was involved in all this. After your theatrics.”
“Do you?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Think she is involved?’
“Yes,” I admit, unable to keep the certainty from my voice. “She’s a smart liar.”
“How so?”
I think of her necklace. The way she evaded my questions so effortlessly.
“Never once have I been able to catch her.”
“Perhaps she was telling the truth,” Lucian suggests, his tone sharp.
“No.” I shake my head. “She just knows how to get around the questions.”
“As you know how to get around a subject.” Lucian’s voice drips with a self-satisfied edge, as if he caught me on a technicality. “What are you not saying?”
I let out a long, strange sigh. If I tell him about the prophecy, I can get him on my side. He’s probably our best chance of getting close enough to Desdemona for the kill.
“There was a prophecy,” I say. “It felt like… the end. I tried to kill her before it could commence. I didn’t try well enough.”
I feel Lucian’s reaction—something between anger and intrigue. I thought he would be relieved, maybe even pleased that I’m standing with him against Desdemona.
“Go on,” he says instead.
I want Lucian on my side. I want Azaire on my side, next to me, here.
I continue. “Then there was the kapha. I could feel it trying to communicate with her. If we can stop the prophecy at its source, we have a moral obligation to. And if she’s involved with—” I cut off, unable to get the words out.
Then we have to avenge him, I think.
I have a feeling Lucian knows what I mean.
But somehow, he doesn’t agree. He shakes his head, his voice steady. “A prophecy isn’t a good enough reason.”
A prophecy is the best reason. A promise of fate—a terrible, inescapable fate. What’s a better reason than that?
“The end of everything,” I repeat. “That’s what we’re facing; that’s what the prophecy was!”
“Tell me,” Lucian says, barely holding onto control.
He’s afraid I might convince him, but more than that, he needs to hear the reasoning before making his decision.
“What was it?” he asks.
Thinking of the prophecy is difficult enough. Repeating it is awful. I can’t imagine what it will be like when it manifests.
I can’t decide if I care about the prophecy—or if I’m just hiding behind it, using it as an excuse for my revenge.
One thing is certain: I must convince Lucian.
“Time fractures with the stone,” I recite.
“The one who leaves returns alone.
When the cracks in the universe divide,
love will be your demise.”
“That’s too vague—” Lucian cries, but I cut him off.
“You didn’t feel it!” I shout. I didn’t know I could make a sound like this.
My throat is raw, and my eyes are dry—yet the tears still come.
“You haven’t been out here for days thinking about what you could’ve done differently!
Like, if I’d just been able to kill her, maybe the monsters wouldn’t have attacked.
The kapha came for her, Lucian, I swear it! ”
But Lucian doesn’t respond. He steps back, shaking his head, unwilling to agree.
“This isn’t what Azaire would want.”
Something inside of me snaps.
How can he claim what Azaire would want when he feels like guilt? His will of iron to Azaire’s broken butterfly wings.
How can he claim anything?
“He wouldn’t want his death to lead to more death,” Lucian pleads. His eyes burn with possible tears. He tries to choke them down. “Peace, Wendy. You know he always wanted peace.”
Peace. He was supposed to be my peace. He was my love.
Instead, he was taken too soon.
A shout builds in my chest, and it feels so easy.
I wish I had let myself run free my entire life.
“I can’t do it! There is no peace without him,” I cry.
“I feel everything! Always!” I rest a hand on his tree, begging, once more, for him to be in there.
“But I can’t feel him. He’s not here. His soul is gone. He’s gone. And it’s like—”
As the words leave my mouth, a surge of knowing rises. Something snaps. It’s a cruel clarity.
Killing Desdemona isn’t an idea or a plan. It’s my future. My fate.
It’s why I was the one to deliver the prophecy.
“It’s like I can’t even grieve when she’s still around,” I continue, my voice hollow. “I have to avenge him.”
“She’d take you in seconds.” Lucian nearly snarls. “You don’t know the extent of her power.”
As if he knows the extent of mine.
That power pulses in my palms, like a blade pushing through bone. The pain floods my eyes, and five trees burst from the ground with it, growing taller than Azaire’s. With this anger, the weight of the power hardly hurts. Two trees grab Lucian’s arms, lifting him up, pulling him apart.
Unweaving him, unwinding him.
“Wendy!” he shouts.
He thinks it’s a warning.
But I think I’m tired of the universe underestimating me.
“Do you care for her?” I ask, pulling him apart with ease.
Magic seeps into his brain like gas, forcing words out that he may not know are there. “I think she’s hiding something,” he answers. His words echo, lifeless.
“No,” I say. This time I don’t give him an option. I pluck the truth from him, like dead leaves from a tree. “Beyond that. What do you feel for her?”
His tongue loosens, the truth slipping past like water flowing over stone. “I want her to be hiding something because I don’t want to face the fact that I’ve never been more attracted to a person in my life.”
How can he say that when the universe is unraveling? How can his attraction hold more weight to him than the truth? Lucian shakes his head in realization, as if this thought is dawning on him for the first time.
I nearly fall to my knees. My body trembles with the effort to stay upright.
Incredulity gnaws at me. This is what he truly cares about.
“I’ve lost everything!” I shout, the words ripping from my chest. “Twice! And you’re worried about your attraction to a killer!”
The sharpness of my voice surprises me, but it’s the only thing that feels real right now.
“It’s more than attraction,” Lucian says, still under my power, the truth shocking him.
And me.
The prophecy, the death, the loneliness and grief. The entirety of it dawns on me. The prophecy isn’t only Desdemona’s—how could it be, when it involves the entire universe?
In the depths of my mind, emotions flash. The dark and the light. The end of the universe. It is them.
They are the end.
“The prophecy isn’t only hers.” I am not in my body, not in my right mind. But I understand the prophecy now. “Love won’t just be her demise, Lucian. It will be all of ours.”
I shake my head as reality reforms.
I can stop this madness by killing one of them.
The branches that hold Lucian pick up speed now that I know what needs to be done. They seem to move of their own accord. I hardly have to pull him apart.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Lucian gasps.
It’s him or Desdemona. One of the two to save the universe.
“It isn’t up to you,” the boy says, watching my actions with revulsion.
“If not me, then who?”
“You will destroy yourself to save the universe. If it is what you wish, I will not try to stop you.”
I feel the boy dissipating into smoke. Into darkness and shadow, retreating to the corners of my mind.
Desdemona or Lucian—Azaire’s best friend. I don’t know if I can kill him.
But I have to, don’t I?
Who else knows what I know?
But he’s Lucian’s best friend.
I can’t. I won’t.
“I don’t know!” I shout, crashing to my knees. Tears rip through my body like knives, carving me whole. “But one of you has to die.”
Azaire promised we wouldn’t hurt—he promised there’d be no pain. Now there’s nothing but it. There’s nothing, nothing, nothing other than this nagging, ever-present awfulness. Like his corpse is rotting inside of me.
This universe, these gods I was supposed to believe in, they’re all thieves. They take and take and take and offer nothing in return.
A crack shakes me to my very being. The world beneath me hums with life, and I work to split it in two. If I am to be tormented, I will also torment.
The ground gapes before me, swallowing itself whole. Collapsing in on itself. The world falls into two pieces as a savior approaches. I feel it the same way the kapha approached Desdemona. With intent.
I turn, facing a moonaro. The same kind of beast that attacked Calista, Lilac, and me. There’s another one.
My body tenses, every muscle ready for the fight, but the creature doesn’t move toward me. Instead, its gaze shifts, locking onto something behind me.
It stares at Lucian.
A savior approaches.
This monster is here for Lucian. Is it possible? Has Lucian been in on it with Desdemona all along?
I channel my magic toward the moonaro, prepared to kill it the way I killed the pernipe. The trees holding Lucian release their grip, poised to ensnare the creature. But the moment Lucian is free, the monster bolts, darting into a distant concave of trees.
And Lucian is saved, as the monster intended, when he lands on solid ground.
I turn to face him. I’d hoped that when I let him go, he would fall into the crater I made. I suppose I’ve never been lucky.
Exhaustion tugs at my limbs as I stare at him, trying to take one solid breath.
“You’re part of it?” I ask, my voice breaking, sounding nearly resigned.
“Why?” Lucian asks, keeping his distance while he decides his next move. “What did you feel?”
I step forward, raising a finger at him. “It wanted to save you.”
Lucian gets ready to fight. To fight me. I tremble as I lift a branch in midair, guiding it toward his chest. He ducks, but I continue the attack, losing awareness. Blow after blow, fight after fight, pointless aim after pointless aim.
Then I’m choking on his shadows, and I don’t even care.
Kill me, Lucian, I want to taunt. Kill the girl your brother loved.
He wraps me up in shadows.
Reunite me with your self-proclaimed family, you fucking asshole.
I don’t mind death. I never have.
In fact, I think I’d prefer it to this existence.
But Lucian falters. He does not go for a life-ending blow. He stands still, contemplating. He wants to kill me, and I want to goad him into it.
Instead, he says, “I’m not a part of anything. I don’t want to hurt you. But touch Desdemona, and I will kill you.”
From beneath his nest of shadows, I spit on his face.