Chapter 34 #2
“I’m going to talk now, and I will keep my hold on you because I want you to listen to me.”
Finally, she raised her head until our eyes met, and I could see the pain she was in.
Purple bruises were spotted across her face, small cuts above her eyebrows, her lips dried and split with scabbed-over blood.
Lena had always seemed invincible; I hadn’t realized that the Authority had so much power over her.
“I allowed you into my life, telling myself that we needed each other. I wanted to save you because you reminded me of what it felt like to be human and broken, to become a monstrous version of yourself and someone else have the power over you. I blamed Levette, telling myself he’d done this to you with the same cruelty that the Authority had to me, but I was wrong, Warren.
” Lena grimaced, trying to shift in her seat.
No position would be comfortable until she had fed and rested properly.
“He loved you so much that he would have done anything to save you. I believed that you and I were alike, but I think Levette shared similarities with me that I was blinded to before.”
I wanted to be angry with her for bringing him up, for speaking about him as though they were friends.
The urge was there to throw our friendship in her face, ask her why she was choosing him.
Logic had not completely left me, however, and I knew that those words would be petty accusations over nothing.
I had no right to question anything after what I had done.
I honestly did not even trust myself, anyway.
“You were miserable as a human, and immortality has not healed that part of you. You have toyed with Levette’s heart—and your own—as though it were a game.
You blame him for turning you, then you love him too much to say goodbye, and when you ultimately make poor decisions, you throw your anger at him and leave.
That pain you felt when he said enough was enough?
You will never begin to understand what it is like to be loved and to watch that person leave.
At least for you, you get to say goodbye. ”
Lena had always seen me, understood me in a way that only Levette had.
She had cared for my pain, sharpening it into a tool that I needed to survive the long years of forever.
Life itself had become a game, because otherwise it was a procession of death, decay, and perpetual heartbreak.
I had thought that was what she was trying to teach me, but I was wrong.
The gentleness of her words was my undoing, a way to break through whatever was happening inside me. To hear her words, to understand that she had paid a price for love too—it was unbearable.
I told myself that I was protecting Levette every time I walked away, but I had been breaking him down instead. The only heart I was protecting was myself, and even that was a mass of broken shards I pretended to stick together.
Part of me wanted to tell her she was wrong, that the intention behind my actions mattered.
I knew that was wrong, though. I was toying with the person I loved most, abandoning him before he realized he didn’t want me.
Defensive abandonment, a step ahead of the game before the other shoe dropped, and he chose to leave me instead.
“Do you have any idea what you have cost me?” Lena asked quietly, her voice breaking.
Black tears welled at the corner of her eyes, and I wanted to leap forward, to comfort her somehow.
“I told you,” she whispered quietly, “that I needed it to go well, that I had a plan for my freedom. You chose to be selfish. I never believed I would have a best friend, not after losing Ria, but you wiggled your way in and I hate myself for how happy that made me. Your friendship was healing for me, and I finally started to believe that maybe I did deserve it; maybe I didn’t have to suffer alone forever.
“I have made so many excuses for you for years. I have swept your mistakes under the rug and made sure that the Authority did not place blame at your door, or mine. But this? Neither of us can be shielded from it. You chose yourself over me, over Levette. You broke his heart, and you broke my trust. The last time I felt betrayal this deeply was when my own family chose to sacrifice me. When the people I trusted decided to murder the love of my life.”
I recognized something in her voice; her grief calling to mine. She was not angry anymore, laying way to the full, ugly truth: she was crippled by her own pain, and I had added to it tenfold.
She was not condemning me for how I felt or the brokenness that remained inside me. She was criticizing me for letting it dictate my life and ruin everything good that came with it.
Lena struggled to her feet, making her way over to me. She unchained my arms before placing her hands on either side of my face, closing her eyes.
A flood of memories flashed through my mind. I didn’t recognize them at first, before I realized—they were hers. Lena was giving me pieces of herself, making me understand just how badly I had wounded her.
Centuries of her life played in my mind—snippets of the same woman with her, different each time but undeniably the same person. I watched as Lena smiled, danced, and kissed with the love of her life, true happiness radiating from her.
Then the memories shifted, a dark shadow bleeding into the edge as her lover was stolen from her. Time and time again, I heard Lena’s inhuman scream as she watched her die. A never-ending punishment that she had no choice but to endure.
When Lena pulled her hands away, the tears were traveling down her cheeks as she sobbed silently. She stepped back, letting me fall to my knees in front of her. I gasped, the veil of her spell lifting, and realization settling in.
“Valeria was worth it all. She is worth it all,” Lena spoke quietly, taking her seat again.
“But now, because of your actions, I have to wait another lifetime to see her. They will keep her dormant for an extra cycle, holding her as a prisoner while I do their bidding, before granting her life. That is what you cost me. You stole her away from me, and now I will miss another chance to love her, and to say goodbye.”
I had never seen Lena in a weakened state, nor had I ever believed her to lack power in any aspect of her life. But I understood then. She had witnessed Ria dying brutally, being ripped away from her by the very people who controlled her since she was a girl, thousands of years ago.
There were thousands of nights when she lay in bed, the space beside her empty, and cried to herself. Sleep did not claim us, and so she had no respite from that devastation.
The world around her moved on and Lena was forced to stay the same, never changing or experiencing life or freedom. She remained, while everyone else moved on. Waiting, painfully loving despite the emptiness in return, until Ria was given to her again.
I wanted to be mad at her for keeping it secret. I wanted to rage at both her and Levette for loving a person I didn’t know. But my soul knew how wrong that was. If I allowed myself to tap into that darkness, that twisted emotion, then I was just repeating my same mistakes.
It was time for me to take accountability and accept the blame that deserved to be laid at my door.
Lena would always choose a handful of moments with Ria, even knowing the outcome. I ran from it, and it sickened her. Even if she could never bring herself to say the words to me, I knew it.
She was angry at me because I treated Levette like his love was disposable, when she had spent centuries pleading for a single second more with her beloved. I took for granted what she craved more than anything.
The only thing Lena truly wanted in life, and I squandered it before her eyes.
“I—Lena, I didn’t understand.”
Sorry was a weak word, and I knew it would do nothing for her.
It was small, mortal, nothing in comparison to her grief.
None of my words were big enough to convey how ashamed I felt of myself, how much my heart broke for her, or the rage I felt on her behalf.
I would destroy the Authority if I got the chance, but if Lena had been unable to take them down after so long, what chance did I have?
I swallowed slowly, clenching and unclenching my fists at my sides as I willed myself to strip away all the false bravado. Lena deserved my honesty, even if it was painful.
“I thought that…maybe if I left first, if I didn’t give him all of me, then I wouldn’t be the one to break when he chose to leave.
Hanging onto my anger seemed easier. He loved me so much that he was willing to take it, and I thought that was okay.
I allowed myself to believe it was how it was supposed to be between partners. ”
Lena shook her head. “Your partner is never supposed to be your punching bag. He has never deserved to take on your hatred for the voices in your head.”
I nodded. “I grew up believing that how I felt was wrong, that it made me in league with the devil. Levette waltzed into my life, and I fell in love with him, and then he turned me. I became what I was always taught was a demon. If I wasn’t angry at him, it meant I had to honestly face the fact that I am everything I was taught to hate. I’ve never been ready for that.”
It hurt to admit it. To say the words I feared aloud.
I ran my fingers through my hair, blowing out a breath. A few tears slipped free as I looked up at my best friend, realizing the ways I had been torturing her, too.