Chapter 12
Sleep eludes me that night, and the next. My days break into meaningless fragments—long periods of solitude, separated by hot baths and snatches of slumber.
None of it feels restful. And none of it gets me closer to facing the Wildwood again.
A week into my confinement, the Shadow stops sleeping outside my door. I wonder where he’s gone, then decide I don’t care. Why should I? Ravenna visits me daily, and while I never eat the food she brings, or open any of the books, we make tentative peace. Maybe we even begin to forge a friendship.
When she’s not there, I sit in the window seat, staring out at the hourglass or counting the bioluminescent patterns on the walls.
Fifty-three branches twine around my bedroom, fed by one hundred and forty-two veins of pulsing pink light.
I’ve traced them so many times now I could draw them from memory.
Tonight, the stars throb outside my window, and I lie beneath the covers, my legs twitching with the need to move. I’ve spent eight days holed up in this room. Eight days dreading my return to the Wildwood. Eight days praying for forgiveness while my pendant ignores me.
And I can’t take it anymore. Something has to give.
I throw back the covers, my legs swinging to the floor. Moss cushions my bare feet, but its embrace does nothing to soothe the restlessness coiled in my chest. I need to move. Need to escape the cage of these four walls.
At least for tonight.
Before I can second-guess myself, I ease open my door and peer out. Silence lies thick in the corridor, broken only by the faint hum of magic as it streams along the castle’s walls.
No gargantuan goblins curled on my doorstep, thank goodness.
I step out. I’m still wearing the ridiculous dressing gown from my closet, and I rewrap it tightly before cinching the sash. It’s far from ideal, but it will have to do.
I turn right, following the flow of light along the walls, knowing it will lead me away from the dining room and the kitchens, away from anywhere I might encounter a crowd.
The castle feels different at night, more tranquil.
I pass doors and archways, each offering a glimpse of some new space I’ve never seen before—music rooms and parlors, open galleries where sitting couches nestle between cascades of glowing vegetation.
Part of me wants to investigate, but fae recline together here and there, and I hurry away before they notice me.
I eventually reach a staircase, which leads me to another, and another. The air cools as I ascend, the pink light giving way to green, then blue. And still, I climb. I’m higher, now. Much higher than my room.
The staircase tightens to a spiral, which expels me onto a landing. I stop and stare, because I recognize this place. This door. Beyond it lies the solarium, where Amriel counseled me about the Wildwood.
I hesitate, my soles cool against the landing’s floorboards. I should turn around. Go back to my room before someone finds me wandering in my dressing gown like a restless ghost.
But the freedom of the solarium beckons. I haven’t tasted the outdoors since the Shadow nearly took my leg off, and I need to. I need sky, an open expanse, freedom.
Or the illusion of it, anyway.
I reach for the handle. Maybe if I’m quick, no one will ever know I was ever up here.
The door opens on silent hinges, and I slip through.
Darkness folds around me as I shut out the glow of the corridor.
Glass panels soar overhead, so clear they barely seem to exist, and goddess, the stars shine so much brighter here than in Aethrolia.
They hang closer, too, as if I could reach up and pluck them from the darkness.
I weave between the shadowed telescopes, the anxious energy inside me finally calming.
The sky stretches, so limitless I feel lost beneath it.
But not in a bad way. In a way that makes my problems feel almost manageable.
Because beneath these same stars, the human world still spins.
At this very moment, my sisters sleep in their beds, their heads against the pillows, their dreams peaceful.
In the morning, they’ll wake beneath this sky like always.
Trek up the hill to the temple. They’ll kneel together and pray, touched by the cool rays of dawn.
At breakfast, my father will smile at them across the table. Evelyn and Brynne will split a single biscuit, while Carina will have her own. Then they’ll retire to read, each from her own copy of the Book of Disciplines.
So little has changed in their world. I may be gone, but beyond those trees and mountains, life moves on without me.
The knowledge pains me and soothes me in equal measure.
A faint sound scrapes through the darkness, cutting off my thoughts. I spin to face it, my stare piercing the shadows, then straighten. A hulking shadow occupies the chair by the windows. One whose outline I know even in the dark.
Amriel. He reclines there, his posture loose, the glint of reflected starlight betraying the wine bottle in his hand.
He must hear my sudden intake of breath, because he chuckles, a low, liquid sound that floats from the shadows and coils around my insides.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he says.
I hover, caught between staying and leaving. I could go, just turn around and walk away, but something about finding him like this—alone in the dark, staring out over the forest—carves an ache into me.
I step closer without consciously deciding to. “No. You couldn’t, either?”
“I never can.” He makes a rueful sound. “Not anymore. This place used to help. I’d come up here as a boy, wish on a shooting star. As long as I saw one, I could go back to my room, fall right to sleep.”
I stay still, waiting for more.
“It doesn’t work, anymore,” he continues. “Now that I know there’s no use in wishing for anything. But I still come up here, still watch for the stars. Old habits, maybe.”
Heat swishes and swirls inside me. He’s never spoken to me this way before. Never sounded so…unguarded, and it makes me wonder just how much wine he’s had tonight. “I find that hard to believe.”
“What? That I used to wish on stars?”
“No. That you were a boy, once. I can’t picture it. You must’ve always been this big. You must’ve always had that scowl.”
He chuckles, and I pull my dressing gown tighter, as if the velvet and satin can shield me from that smoky caress. There’s a looseness to his laugh, a husky warmth I’ve never heard before.
“That didn’t come until later, I assure you.” A few moments pass in silence. “I didn’t learn to scowl until I met Alanna.”
The words prod at me. “You mean…once she cursed you?”
“Yes. Well, before that. When I realized what she wanted from me. Though I didn’t know yet how much my life would change when I refused her.”
I hold that in my mind, taking its measure. The idea runs counter to everything I’ve ever been taught, and yet…I don’t know anymore, what I really believe. “Does the curse hurt you that badly, then?”
He shifts in his chair. “If having half my soul ripped away and being forced to live without it hurts, then yes.”
A corner of my heart cracks. He says it so matter-of-factly, and yet I taste the weight of pain buried in those words. “Do you hurt right now?”
This time, his laugh is so soft I barely catch it. “Do you actually care?”
The answer slides to the tip of my tongue, but an eternity passes before I let it fall. “Yes.”
He doesn’t respond. The darkness between us breathes, as if it’s waiting. For what, I don’t know.
“Come here,” Amriel says hoarsely. “Come closer.”
Hesitation pricks at the base of my spine. “Why?”
“Because. I want to see you.”
“That’s not really a reas—”
“It’s the most honest reason there is,” he says. “And I hate being honest. So come here. Just let me look at you.”
Goddess, how much wine has he had? I swallow my fluttering heartbeat and make my way toward him, stopping amid a pool of starlight. Shadowy lines from the window frame stripe the floor between us.
Amriel exhales, long and slow. I can’t make out much more than a silhouette, a pair of gleaming yellow eyes. But his smell consumes me—icy metal and winter berries, the astringent tang of wine. Each note dances along my nerves, coaxing them into wakefulness.
“You have fae braids.” His voice sounds strained. “And a fae gown.”
I shift my weight. “Yes.”
“What about your leg? How is it?”
“Better. Fine.”
He makes a sound I can’t interpret, then lifts his bottle and drinks. His arm falls loosely to his side again, flopping over the side of the chair.
“You’re drunk,” I say.
He huffs. “Yes. Very.”
I gnaw at my lip. Just another transgression in his long list of sins, and yet… “Does it help? With the pain?”
He weighs that. “Not as much as some things. But yes. A little.”
Silence descends, freighted with the thousand questions smoldering in my throat.
Seeing this side of him, thinking of him as young, once…
I want to know how deeply he hurts, whether he remembers what it feels like not to.
I want to know if he used to be kind, and what he used to dream about.
If he’s ever wanted something so badly that his heart strained against his chest. If he’s ever believed in anything.
And, if so, where those parts of him went when Alanna cursed him.
“Come closer,” he says. “Come here.”
I swallow roughly. I already know what happens if I stray too near. I lose all sense of direction, can’t even tell which way is up.
But my toes inch forward, driven by a force I don’t understand. “Why?”
A faint growl emanates from his chest, twin embers flaring in his eyes. “I’ve already told you. I’m not going to say it again.”
My feet ignite with the need to move, to obey, but I fashion my willpower into an anchor and fasten myself to the floor. “I’m not a dog. If you can’t tell me why you want me, then I’m not coming to you.”