Chapter 36 Darkened by Nightfall
DARKENED BY NIGHTFALL
GRAVES
The tops of the trees swayed in the wind, increasing in ferocity. The bridges that connected them swung heavily, an ominous creaking noise filtering down upon Graves as he stalked through the night, chasing after Luella.
The sweet angel who had her tiny hands wrapped around his beating heart; though, she didn’t seem to realize it.
Just as she didn’t seem to realize that hiding was futile. Her wings were a beacon to all, white and brilliant. A streak of pureness in the forest as she walked through the trees, stopping on occasion to rest a hand on a trunk and lean into it, brow pressed upon the bark, before she moved on.
She never even saw him as he trailed behind her.
His wings were folded tight against his back. The warm air had grown slightly nippy as the sun dipped, and it made his flesh pebble as wind skittered over his exposed back.
Finally, she stopped at the point where the line of towering trees met the sharp fall of a cliff’s edge, leading right down into the ocean. Her feathers twitched, and through their bond, he sensed an amalgamation of feeling.
How much of it was uniquely hers and how much was Graves’s?
He reached for his amulet, but his fingers drifted through nothing. Right. It was gone. His wings were here, and the amulet Tharen had crafted for him to hide them was not.
He’d grown so used to reaching for it for comfort that not being able to feel the cool chain or warm amulet—warm from the heat of his body or the magic teeming inside—made him feel one gust away from falling.
Or flying.
His wings twitched. What he wouldn’t give to fly right now.
Instead, he focused his gaze on his Vincire.
It was a gorgeous vision. With her standing before the cliffside, as if wishing to tip her head back and scream. Air sifted through her feathers, and he wondered what it would be like if she flew with him. Alongside him. Together, in the skies.
His gloveless hands flinched by his sides. No, she’d never allow that. He had ruined any chance with her with his lies.
A soft sniffling sound carried to him on the wind, and he took one step forward, boots shifting on the vibrant grass and fallen leaves underfoot. The crunch made her head snap toward him, and her blue eyes were just like the sea, just like the sky when it wasn’t covered with her clouds.
"Graves," she whispered, and he took another step closer, not stopping until he was right by her side, standing at the edge of the cliff.
He waited for her to speak.
She turned back to stare out at the ocean, darkened by nightfall, and he studied her profile.
"Why do you always find me when I am on the edge?"
Graves traced the shape of her wings with his eyes as he said, "Maybe because I am already there, too, waiting to fall." He didn’t know what it was about her. But every hang-up he had disappeared in her presence. He no longer minded his tongue.
"You know, if I had paid closer attention to you, I would like to think I would have figured it out. Eventually," she added softly.
He shook his head. "You wouldn’t have."
"Do you think me that naive?"
He did, but not in the ways she was thinking.
She was naive and innocent like a youngling with a fresh perspective, thinking there was good in everyone and everything—he was sad, however, because every day he saw that innocence diminish.
"No, I don’t. I didn’t want you to know.
I took care to hide this part of myself from everyone—including you.
I didn’t want you to find out… so you wouldn’t. "
At this, she turned to stare up at him. Her tone turned hard, and the wind turned harder.
"Until you decided otherwise." She exhaled sharply.
"Sometimes, I hate myself. I think that a part of me was growing to trust you all, which is foolish, because of what you’ve done.
But did I really have another choice?" She hugged herself, and she looked so small with the wind battering against her, making her wobble.
Graves didn’t know what to say to her. All his words showed up only when she was near, but now, they had left him again, and he was speechless.
"Nothing to say? I’m not surprised, Graves." Luella’s eyes narrowed, and even angry, she was tempting. Even as a tempest, she was a temptress. "No, I’m sorry. It’s Sorren, is it not? Sorren Graves Damaris," she enunciated. "The Prince of the Fallen Isles, and the liar whom I cannot escape from."
The wind whipped her hair, and in that moment, she looked nothing short of the prophetic being she was.
"Luella, please, forgive me—" Graves started. She couldn’t do this. Not here. She could not bring chaos to the Isles. To his family. He’d caused enough anguish to them to last centuries.
They didn’t need more devastation. How could he tell her this without making her ashamed of who she was, or ashamed of her rage and godsdamned righteous fury?
He wanted her to let it out, to let it free. To be who she had never been allowed to be, stifled by her false home.
"I don’t know if… I’ll ever forgive you for this," she said. "You’re a liar. You lied to me. It’s one thing to aid Vale in taking me as Serpentis’s war prize.
At least, then, when I thought you were the villain, I knew where we both stood.
But now? After you’ve tasted my lips and called me your sweetheart, the lines have been blurred, and captor and captive don’t fit us anymore. They haven’t for a while…"
The acerbic bite of her words lanced against him. She continued:
"You had to go and make me believe I was more than a prisoner, more than what I have always been. I’ve always been a prisoner. To my parents, to my life, to lies. And if there’s one thing I hate, S-Sorren, it is lies."
Luella stumbled over his name, and that was his undoing. The hesitation—the regression back to the heirus Princess she’d been in the dungeons, stumbling and small, beaten down. She had been bruised and hurt long before they’d taken her.
In one swift move, Graves fell to his knees on the cliffside, hands palm-up on his thighs. He didn’t touch her, he didn’t breathe. He just watched.
Her throat worked as she stared down at him. "What are you doing?"
"Whatever you want me to." The ends of his wings brushed the pebbles on the ground, and rocks dug into his knees. "Curse me, spit at me, throw me over the edge. Just don’t hate me—not for this."
Not when he hated himself enough for them both.
"How many lies have you told?" Luella asked softly.
"You know everything now. There’s nothing more," he rasped. He hid nothing from her now, save the reason for his leaving. He would tell her if she wished, but gods, it would hurt to dredge up those memories.
She searched his face. "How many other names do you wield?"
"Only one."
"Say it."
"Sorren Graves Damaris," he uttered into the windy night of his home.
She exhaled, and the salt air beat against his kneeling body.
"Luella," Graves said, "the only name I ever want you to call me is the one you know. I’ve always been Graves. That’s not changed."
"You’re wrong, because the Graves I knew was a lie. Lies, of which I don’t know if we can come back from." Her voice grew soft, the fury leaving her as echoes of lightning touched the sky. "I-I’m sorry. I cannot—"
Luella turned away from him and the cliffside—and left him kneeling there.
The sight of her leaving was one Graves didn’t think he’d ever forget—and one he never wished to see again. Even as she walked away, he couldn’t help but be proud of her, for standing firm in her choices, for the softly strong female she was becoming.