26. Kiera
Chapter 26
Kiera
T he Darkhavens and I spend the rest of the day together recovering from the effects of the night before and I finally withdraw Caedmon's book. Now that I know he's not dead, it seems there's no other reason for the damn thing not to be working. With my back to the wall as I sit next to the window of my bedroom, I flip through empty page after empty page.
I'd already tried to knock on Maeryn's door, but there had been no answer. Whether she's out at the dining hall or going to check up on Niall, I don't know, but I'm grateful now for her resistance to going to the Cleansing. Even if she doesn't wish to be dragged into the main fight, having a healer who hasn't had something stolen from her will be helpful in the long run.
"Come on..." I mutter as I flip yet another empty page. I slap the book closed and shake it as if doing so will help me. Of course, it doesn't, so I fling it across the floor, relishing in the thump of it hitting the stone and sliding until it bumps into one of the sturdy legs of the four-poster bed. I glare at it from my vantage point, debating on going back to the prison below Ortus Academy and demanding answers from the God of Prophecy himself.
The God Council took something from us last night with that ceremony. I don't know how, but if something like that is possible, then surely Caedmon can tell us how to protect ourselves from it in the future. But if I go see him then I'll have to see her too. My mother. A knock sounds on my door and without standing up, I call out for whoever it is to enter.
The door creaks open, rusted-out hinges groaning at the effort. Ruen stands there, a tray in hand and I grimace at the contents. Though it's not the awful concoction that Kalix made us all drink, the food of Ortus has left much to be desired and I'm already feeling myself start to lose what little extra weight I had before coming here.
"I'm not hungry," I say. He comes in anyway, ignoring my words as he closes the door behind him with the back of his boot and then strides over to me.
Slowly lowering himself in front of where I sit, Ruen puts the tray of Ortus' soup and stale bread to the side. The sight of the food brings me back to my thoughts on the prison below us.
Why hadn't I thought about the fact that they're starving down there? That they're without warmth or food or water or anything? They're dirty and starved and shackled by brimstone; only their Divinity—or whatever true power Atlanteans have—is keeping them alive.
I close my eyes as shame swamps me. No matter what she and Caedmon had done, how they had conspired to abandon me to the not-so-tender mercies of the Underworld, I should have at least thought of sending food or something.
Ruen reaches for the half loaf of bread and I follow the movement. He sits back on his ass, legs splayed, booted feet planted on the floor as he tosses the hard rock of bread between his palms thoughtfully. Swallowing against the dry lump in my throat, I turn my gaze to the window at my side.
Rain is falling, plopping into the ocean waves beyond the gray walls of Ortus. The garden pathway below is not visible from where I’m sitting, but I can watch the swirl of storm clouds and picture the fall of water into the churning sea and deadened grass and stone, soaking the brimstone mountain with its wetness. Rain is simple like that, it has one purpose. To wash things away. I wish it could wash away this whole island ... even if I were still on it.
“You should send that to the prison,” I say quietly, letting my thoughts out and hoping Ruen doesn’t guess at the guilt beneath the surface.
His movements stop, the ball of bread landing in one hand and staying there. “I arranged for food to go down to Caedmon and your mother the day after we found them,” he says, surprising me.
Jerking my head around, I’m pierced by the cavernous depth of his stare. “You did?”
A curl of dark hair falls over the left side of his forehead as he tilts his head at me. “I did,” he confirms. “Kalix’s snakes can be quite useful in delivering supplies. They can slither into a lot of places others would prefer to remain hidden.”
The burden in my chest eases but only marginally. “I see.” I don’t know what else to say, but thankfully, Ruen doesn’t let me sit in the uncomfortable silence for long.
“I understand a part of why you hate her,” Ruen murmurs, and suddenly I’m wishing very much for the return of uncomfortable silence. Somehow, I think that would be better than the actual discussion of my feelings towards my mother.
“You don’t need to.” The defensive words are out of my mouth before I can think better of them. I want to drag them back, kicking and screaming though they might be, and lock them away. I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place. It’s pointless. Why I feel the way I feel doesn’t erase the actual emotion.
“Kiera.” Pain ripples out from my head in waves, all of them combining into one massive tsunami the likes of which I’ve never even heard of in fairytales. It’s not real. It’s too much. All of it.
I don’t want to talk about this. I stand abruptly, towering over him and though I refuse to look down, I can sense his attention on me. “It shouldn’t matter,” I tell him before rephrasing. “It doesn’t matter.”
I step over his legs and stride across the room to where I’d thrown the book. Bending down, I pick it up and wipe off some of the dust that had collected on its cover due to its slide across the floor.
“If it doesn’t matter, then why did you ask me to make sure they had food?”
My breath shudders out of my chest at Ruen’s voice as it penetrates my head. “That’s not what I said.”
I don’t turn around, but the sound of his boots scraping on the floor and the shift of air at my back tells me he’s risen to standing as well. My shoulders tense at the soft swish of footsteps as he draws nearer. Setting the book on the end of my bed, I glare at the wall, refusing to face him.
“You said that I should send the food to the prison,” Ruen repeats my earlier words, and my hands ball into fists. Things were easier when I hated him, when I hated them all. “You feel guilty for not thinking of them before now, don’t you?”
I close my eyes as if that will shut off the emotions, but of course it doesn’t. All it does is shut out the image of the world around me and send me toppling head over my ass into the oblivion of all the reasons why it fucking hurts so much.
Whirling around finally and not caring that Ruen is even closer than I suspected, his body nearly touching mine, I bite out my next words. “Why the fuck should I care about a man that kidnapped me from my mother? Or the mother that let me go to the Underworld instead of saving me?”
The image of Ruen’s face shimmers in front of me. Damn. Damn. Damn. No. I cannot be crying right now. I take a deep breath and try to suck in the tears, but they remain clinging to the edge of my lashes, just on the cusp of falling.
Ruen’s hand comes up, the bread forgotten on the ground behind him. He cups my cheek and bends until our foreheads touch. His eyes bore into me, and a burning, itching sensation swells in my chest and expands outward.
“You can want to love someone and still feel betrayed by them,” he whispers softly.
I close my eyes, hating the feel of hot liquid breaking free and rushing down my cheeks. My hands land on his chest and push him back. “I can’t explain it,” I confess. “I don’t want to.”
“Okay.” His voice remains just as soft as before. “I won’t ask again.”
I open my eyes again and find my hands hovering in front of my face, not quite touching though still there as if they want to either wipe away the tears or hide the evidence of them. My breaths come in shallow pants, all of the air I’m trying to take in making it the barest inch down into my lungs before it’s sucked back out again.
Turning from him, I escape to another side of the room. The walls have become bars of a cage, but I can’t go into the corridor; I can’t escape him now. If I do, then others might see the tears, and … I would rather die than show this kind of weakness.
I want to die, anyway, I realize. I want the room to just open up and swallow me whole and erase my existence completely. I’d rather that than tell him the truth.
“Kiera.” His footsteps as he comes closer are a warning bell.
Acid burns at the back of my throat.
Sensing his growing nearness, I part my lips to tell him … well, I’m not entirely sure what I’m planning to tell him. Go away? Leave me alone? Those sound like good choices, but neither comes out when I do manage to speak. Instead, it’s the thing I most want to hide: the truth.
“It hurts,” I whisper, my voice so thick with emotion that it comes out as a rasp.
The footsteps cease, and for a moment, as silence reigns, I wonder if Ruen just simply disappeared. I can’t see him beyond the focus my eyes have on my fingers and palms. As if I’m still deciding what to do with them.
“Her being alive hurts?” Ruen sounds confused, but he keeps his tone light, gentle. I suspect it’s because he realizes that I’m on the brink of something—of breaking maybe and he’s trying to be kind and comfort me as if I were a frightened animal. Were I in any other mood, I might laugh at that.
I want to, but … if I know anything, it’s that oftentimes people desire that which they cannot have. I cannot have my life back, my childhood, or my father. My mother, showing up now? Alive? That doesn’t make me feel better. It doesn’t make me feel like less of an orphan. At least with my father, he hadn’t wanted to die. He hadn’t chosen to leave me, and maybe Ariadne hadn’t chosen to leave me in the beginning, but later on…
Caedmon had shown her what my life would be like. She knew what I would suffer if she stayed away and still, she’d chosen to do it. She’d accepted my fate instead of trying to fight for me. She had decided to let me go to the Underworld, to be tortured, to become a killer.
No child should ever have to kill to survive and yet I had. I can’t stop hating her for that even though I know I should be grateful that she cares in her own way.
I shake my head at Ruen’s question. “No.”
A beat passes and then his footsteps start again. They don’t stop until a shadow is hovering in front of me and strong hands grasp me by the wrists, pulling my hands away from my face. Ruen’s midnight blue eyes, the flecks of violet and royal purple staining the depths, catch on my face with more bewilderment and—my heart thumps against the inside of my breast—concern.
“She’s alive, Kiera,” Ruen states. “Your mother is alive and you are not an orphan. You’re not unwanted. This is?—”
“I know!” I snap, cutting him off. My voice breaks halfway between the two words. I close my mouth and swallow before trying again, in a softer tone, this time. “I know.”
His frown deepens, but as he promised, he doesn’t ask what he wants to. He doesn’t ask me why her being alive upsets me so much, why I can’t just be thankful.
I contemplate answering the unspoken question anyway. A part of me doesn’t want to, is sure that he can’t understand. A man like him—who has no doubt idolized his own mother for her sacrifice—may never understand. He would be overjoyed were it his mother still alive, but as his mother has proven … she loved him enough to die for him.
Mine…
No. I shake my head. It’s better if I keep these thoughts to myself. They would only upset him.
I tug at the wrists he holds locked in his grasp. “Let go.” The request isn’t an order, but a whispered plea and after a moment, he concedes. My arms slowly lower back to my sides. My tears dry up and I take a long, unsteady breath.
“We should focus on why the book isn’t helping,” I murmur, shifting the subject, needing it to change before I shatter completely. “Caedmon is alive so it can’t be the fact that his power no longer works on it.”
“We should ask him,” Ruen suggests.
I know he’s right, but to ask him would mean we’d need to return to the prison. Returning to the prison means seeing her again. Turning away from him, I stride back to the bed and pick up the book. With it in my hand, I hold it out to him.
“You should take it to him.” I lift my gaze to meet his. “You should be the one to ask.”
Because I can’t. I won’t see her again if I can help it. Maybe I don’t want her to starve. Maybe I don’t want her to die. But I also don’t want to face her. I don’t want to feel so fucking rejected anymore.
A beat of silence passes through the room and then, with careful steps, Ruen approaches me and gingerly takes the book from my hand. I release it too soon and he catches it before it can crash to the ground. My chest is an ugly, empty thing. Hollow and achy.
“Okay, Kiera.” Ruen brings the book closer to his chest with a nod as he straightens. “I’ll go to him.”
“Thank you.”
He turns to go, but before he reaches the door, Ruen pauses and glances back at me. I close my eyes and silently beg him not to say anything else, but of course, as is common with these damn Darkhavens, they never do anything I want.
“Even if you resent her for leaving you, Kiera,” he says softly, “you cannot run from her forever. Eventually, this war with the Gods will be over. She will either be dead or freed. Running from her won’t heal you. If you don’t face your problems with her then they will always drag you down. Take it from someone who knows a lot about scars—inside and out. The more they go untreated, the more they fester. Cut off that part of your heart for too long and it will decay. You’ll look back one day and see that you’re dead inside.”
With that final statement, he opens the door and leaves. The smile that comes to my mouth is anything but amused. It’s a twisted thing that forces my whole body to collapse onto the edge of my bed as my hands lift back to my face and more tears cascade down my cheeks.
Why doesn’t he see? I’m already dead inside.