66. Emmerick
Chapter 66
Emmerick
C rumbling marble. Firose stared at me from within the amphitheater.
“Come on!” I yelled.
But instead of following me out the gates, she stood still with her brow furrowed.
“What are you doing?”
She closed the metal gate in front of me and worked a charm to lock it. “Go,” she commanded.
I shook my head. “You’ll be crushed—won’t that kill you?”
“Maybe,” she answered with a weak smile.
My throat closed. She stepped away from the gate and met my gaze. “Go, Emmerick.”
Tears welled, but I understood.
There would be no living with the sort of guilt she held. The darkness that had leaked into my mind the past months left me feeling like I, too, would truly never be the same. She had lived with that weight for four centuries.
The walls began to cave, marble falling into the pit. “You don’t have to do this—we can leave here now, go somewhere quiet, live a peaceful life.”
Firose smiled wider. “It is nice to imagine that someone will live on to think well of me,” she said. Then she stepped back into the dust.
Clutching the metal gate, I swallowed hard before feeling the vibration of the impending fall of the walls.
I turned away from her and ran.
The magic coursing through my veins shuddered as though part of me died in the collapse behind me.
“Tea?” Elsedora interrupted the memory that had repeated itself since I’d left Firose in the falling theater.
Her eyes were bleary and red, and her posture held none of its usual swagger and confidence as she walked across the sitting room of Umber House.
Death had not taken me yesterday. Yet I felt so damned empty.
“No, thank you,” I answered.
Darvanda had brought Sybilla to their bedchamber, where Wyeth was treating her wounds. I’d gritted my teeth when I’d realized they’d already begun sharing quarters. It felt like I was encroaching on a delicate new life she’d woven, with new friends to rely on. New hands to mend her. New lips to kiss her.
Intense anger still gripped me even with Caym gone, but the sadness in realizing how much I’d destroyed weighed down my will to act on any emotion lest it taint my morals further.
Elsedora watched me, taking inventory of my eyes. We still didn’t know if ridding Caym of his true form meant I was rid of him too.
Surprisingly cozy, the sitting room was fitted with a few dark leather sofas and a reading nook that overlooked the now grayed courtyard. The terrazzo glinted in the rising sun, and the walls were wainscotted in dark wood.
Elsedora had not seemed to have heard me because she poured me a cup with a shaky hand.
“The Moon warlock—he was your friend?”
Her mouth drew into a line, and she nodded. “Something like that. Firose?”
“Something like that,” I answered.
I sipped the tepid, earthy tea.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I nodded. “Me too.”
Fen entered the sitting room, and Van trailed behind, which told me Asterie must be nearby. She entered behind Fenris with a stack of clean clothes.
“Em.” Her shoulders sank upon seeing me, and she set the clothing down on a sofa. “You’re alright?”
I sighed. “Right as rain.”
Asterie’s lips pursed. “Liar.”
At that, I offered her a weak smile and said, “It’s good to be back.”
Was I back?
Fenris sat down beside me and slapped my shoulder too hard. I grimaced.
“Quite a mess you’ve made,” he said in jest, but I stiffened.
“Fen,” Elsedora warned. “He’s not done anything.”
“It’s fine, really,” I said.
It wasn’t. Nothing seemed fine.
I bottled that rage. It could be neatly packed beneath heartbreak, confusion and regret.
A creeping chill climbed up my neck; it was a horrifying, familiar sensation. I gasped and met Elsedora’s stare. She’d never stopped assessing my eyes.
“I know that look,” she whispered with a haunted expression. She turned to Asterie and Fen. “Fetch binding cuffs! Now!”
Then, everything around me blinked out into a void of nothingness.