Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
Iwas bloodstained and out of breath, my grasp on the ether filling my mind with dark deeds and drawing me closer to the edge than I’d ever come before.
But I couldn’t stop. His screams were a balm to the ache of loss inside me, and I knew I was past the point of needing them to stop, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
It wasn’t enough.
It could never be enough.
A cry of alarm from a woman in the room outside drew a small measure of my focus but I couldn’t summon the energy I needed to release my hold on the dark magic and investigate it.
I understood now why Moya had warned me against this level of their dark practices but it was too late for me to stop. I didn’t want to stop anyway. I could hear my sisters’ laughter in accompaniment to every piece of pain I dealt the man who had stolen their lives from them.
This was the least they deserved. It was the least I deserved. And it was all I had left to me now.
The ether tempted me deeper and I could distantly feel my lips curling in a wicked smile, the slickness of blood on my hands, the fatigue in my limbs. I was going to let it sweep me away.
And then I’d be gone and this pain I existed within would be no more.
But…something nagged at me as I tried to let myself slip into the darkness and drift away upon a tide of it.
Like a hand grasping the edge of a doorframe and trying to haul me back through it.
But why would any piece of me cling to that life of endless disappointment, pain and suffering?
What reason would any part of me have to cling on?
Every time I grew close to figuring it out, the ether beckoned me back again. It still screamed my name, though I knew I wouldn’t be able to do what it wanted if I let it have me. But what did that matter? What did anything matter?
I’d caught up to my prey and he was suffering on the verges of death. He only lingered this side of The Veil because my dark hooks were sunk so deep within him that he couldn’t fall through it.
If I let go, he would fall too. Down, down, down into the dark where he could be judged and punished forever more for his crimes.
Perhaps I’d be right there beside him in that place of torment and judgement. I’d certainly earned that fate. There had to be countless Fae who had dreamed of enacting vengeance upon me just as I was upon Cayde. And they deserved their pound of flesh.
I only hoped I might be able to sneak a glimpse beyond the bars of my cage of torment and see my sisters there, free and at peace in the place beyond.
Just once. I didn’t deserve more than that, but if I could be assured that they were at peace then that would be enough for me. It would all have been worth it.
A door crashed open and panicked yells echoed in the distance like raindrops settling at the base of a well.
I was going to leave it all behind anyway. Every single piece of it. At least I would whenever I figured out how to stop myself from clinging on.
Hands grasped my face and pulled me around so that I found myself blinking stupidly up at the features of my one good thing. My secret respite from my pain.
Bastian was saying something. Yelling something. His fingers dug into my skin and I frowned through the haze of dark magic.
My vision began to clear as I looked at him, my eyes aching to see the silver which shot through his irises.
This was what I’d been holding on for, what I hadn’t so easily been able to let go.
Him.
I sucked in a ragged breath as reality flooded back in on me, my hold on the ether shattering and my body sagging with relief. I fell against him and he wrapped me in his arms while I fought to simply stay on my feet.
My body felt as though it had been crushed beneath a giant weight, my veins seared with hellfire, my skin raw and tender.
A sob broke from my chest before I could contain it and he only held me more tightly.
“It’s not enough,” Bastian murmured and all I could do was shake my head as the weight of disappointment soured in my gut.
“He shouldn’t just get to die,” I said. “He shouldn’t just get to take them and then go on living, but death…death is too fucking easy.”
“Easy?” a horrified voice gasped and I stiffened as I failed to recognise the source of it.
“We have a problem,” Bastian growled.
“Someone might have heard her scream,” Everest said and I turned my head, forcing myself to step back just enough to be able to see her where she stood, restraining a woman in a sheer, pale green gown, Everest’s knife tip pressed to her throat.
I knew that woman. I’d studied her portrait.
“You’re her…” I said, my eyes roaming over the red-head who was staring at me in utter horror. “The one he betrayed first.”
“F-first?” she stammered, her eyes on the bloody wreck of her husband’s body.
Cayde was still breathing…just. A low groan of pain wheezed out of his lips but he couldn’t speak. He had no tongue after all.
“We need to go,” Bastian said darkly.
“And the problem?” I asked.
“I won’t let you kill this woman,” Everest said firmly. “I saved her life when I fled Cascada. I won’t let her die here now.”
“You’re the one with a knife to her throat,” I pointed out. “And I didn’t come here to murder civilians. Tie her up and let her people find her when we’re gone if you care for her so much.”
“I curse you,” Septa Thorngrove spat at me, her eyes wet with unshed tears. “I curse you as you did him. I will see you dead for this, Sky Witch. I will–”
“Doesn’t work like that,” I sneered but there was little bite to my tone and I was almost certain I was only still standing because Bastian was holding me upright.
“Finish it, spectre. We need to leave,” he urged, taking his sword from his scabbard and pressing it into my grip. I’d lost track of my own blades, though as I looked down at the bastard who had earned the worst of my wrath I found them all lodged in him at various points.
“He did a terrible thing to earn this fate,” Everest was saying to Septa, though why she cared enough to try and do so, I had no idea.
“He murdered two warriors who trusted him. He killed them in cold blood. Stabbed them in the back. I know there is a lot of death in the world and I know there are a lot of Fae seeking revenge but if it brings you any comfort at all to know that he earned it then…” she trailed off when Septa failed to reply.
“Why are you bothering to explain this?” I snapped, my head ringing with the after-effects of so much dark magic, her words driving into my skull and making it ache. “Who cares why I did it? They’re all the same anyway. Any one of them would have done what he-”
“How can you say that while standing in the arms of a Stonebreaker?” Everest growled.
“You’re a fucking fool to say that and a damn liar too.
Didn’t you make a deal to escape this place and live away from war?
Will you still preach that prejudice shit about every other element than yours then?
You were born in Cascada for the stars’ sake! ”
A hollow laugh fell from my lips and she fell quiet as she took in the hopeless, emptiness of me.
“Don’t you get it, kitty-cat? I’m done. The moment I run this motherfucker through I am out of reasons to keep doing anything at all. I only kept moving all this time to see him ended in payment for their deaths. And that’s it.”
Bastian’s grip on me tightened and a growl rippled through him.
“You’re full of shit, Vesper,” he snarled. “You know you have far more than that to live for now if you choose it – but that’s the fucking problem, isn’t it? You refuse to choose it. To choose me.”
“It isn’t you that’s the problem,” I snarled, shoving free of him and stumbling back, the world spinning as dizziness struck me, but I clung onto my anger, my disappointment, my pain, and I let it sustain me so that I didn’t fall.
“It’s me. Look at me, Bastian. Really look.
This is what I am. And it is not deserving of any of the things you try to claim it is.
You’ll see that clearly soon. You’ll see that the only reason you think you want me is because I’m the only thing you have.
But it won’t be enough. I can’t be enough. ”
“It isn’t can’t Vesper. It’s won’t!” he yelled, the booming roar of a Dragon echoing in his tone, his anger, his hurt.
I’d done that. And I couldn’t make myself undo it either.
The silence dragged and was only breached by Cayde’s agonised groans. I couldn’t make my tongue bend around the words I should have. I couldn’t bear to do it. And I knew that Bastian could see that, see me, bloodstained and wounded, inside and out.
“We shouldn’t be doing this here,” he snarled, swiping a hand over his face and turning his back on me.
“Finish this in whatever way you want. I can’t stand by and watch you choose to destroy yourself anymore.
” He strode up to the wall and slammed his fist into it, the rock shattering beneath his strike, a spiderweb of damage falling apart before he turned and headed back out of the door.
“That’s it?” Everest asked in a low voice as the sound of Bastian’s footsteps faded and I found the hurt in my heart only sharpening.
“What?” I muttered.
“You said you have nothing to live for beyond Cayde’s death.
But what about the promises you made? What about the other reason we had for coming here?
You know we can’t do this without you. You know the whole world is at stake.
Are you really so damn selfish that you plan to die before completing that task? ”
“Yes,” I said simply, because I was. Coming here had reminded me of that.
Finding Cayde, fulfilling my promise, all of it had only brought my grief right back to the forefront of my mind.
The corruption in my heart blinded me to everything else as I found myself right back where I’d been when I’d found myself coated in their blood, their bodies broken on the ground beside me.
“The world?” Septa whimpered. “What are you talking about?