Chapter 50 #2
“Of course you don’t.” He sighs, giving me a sad smile like I’m a hopeless case.
“I’ll show you.” With a sweep of his hand, he indicates one of the dining chairs.
“Threnn. I’m still so fucking furious he frightened you.
” His fist crashes down on to the back of the chair, sending splinters flying.
“He got you alone. That never should have happened.” Another smash and the chair is no longer a chair but bits of wood clattering to the floor.
He takes one of the broken legs. “See? Name something you’re hurt or angry about, then…
” He makes a hammering motion with the chair leg before handing it to me. “Now it’s your turn.”
I eye the chair leg. “This feels a bit ridiculous. What’s it going to fix?”
“Nothing.” He shrugs. “The point of it is to turn your feelings outward so they’re not all inside, hurting you.”
He seems convinced. I suppose I can play along. Maybe it’s to ease his guilt over distracting me in his garden for so long.
“I’m pissed off that you tricked me with your garden.” I bring the chair leg down on the table.
A plate smashes. Cutlery spins away, landing in the corner. It’s surprisingly satisfying.
“I hate that you’re trying to keep me here against my will.” Another smash, another plate becomes shards. This time, a fork pings up, hitting the ceiling before crashing down into the shattered crockery. I smile. Not a forced smile for someone else. Real. For my own satisfaction.
He nods at the ruined table and clears his throat. “Just so you know… they don’t all have to be things related to me. It just so happened my most recent examples revolved around you.”
The hot thing inside me stirs beneath the ashes where I’ve kept it buried.
“I could probably trash an entire table just for you, Drystan.” I flash him what feels like a dangerous smile.
I don’t think I’ve ever worn one of those before.
It feels strange. Strong. Something that’s done to please me instead of someone else.
I name another half dozen things he’s done to irritate me and destroy everything sitting upon the table.
“Maybe an entire cottage.” My gaze snaps to him before I turn my attention to another chair—my chair leg is looking a bit splintered by this point and I’m sure it’s going to disintegrate in a few more strikes.
I close my fingers around the chair back, its elegant lines reminding me of—“Phaedra. I’m annoyed at how unrelentingly cruel she is.
” I bring the chair down on the stone floor.
It smashes into pieces. “And the village girl who pushed me over and I cut my hand so badly, they thought I might lose it.” I toss the chair’s back against the wall where its dried-out husk explodes.
Now my hand’s empty, the scar stands out pale against my olive skin. From palm to wrist—that’s the original cut. But a twisted line comes off it where the village doctor had to cut out an infection.
Annem stood over my bed, wringing her hands as the cold compresses failed to bring down my temperature. “I told you. You’ve wished her away. Our little girl will be taken by the Dark Lady.”
At the time, I was half feverish and not quite sure what was real, so I never thought too deeply about my mother’s words. But now…
I snatch myself away from the memory and find Drystan scowling at the scar. It isn’t a pitying look he wears, thank gods, but one of simmering anger, like he wants to smash another chair.
But I’m not done.
Because although I shy away from thinking too closely about my mother’s words or the bargain my father made, I have more to be angry about.
“Being tired.” I go to push over the table.
“No, wait. Being tired all the fucking time.” The table goes.
“I bore myself with it. The pain in my joints.” I kick over a chair, laughing wildly at the irony of my hips hurting as I do so.
“The way my heart betrays me.” The final chair shatters and I search for the next thing to break, pulse thrumming with exertion.
The vase. It sits on the side board. Sky-blue ceramic painted with daisies. Such a pretty thing.
I pick it up, its delicacy visceral in my palms.
“Being ill.”
I bring it down with a roar. The crash mingles with my shout. Pieces fly everywhere. And it finally feels like the world understands something of what’s in my heart—the suffering and fear I keep locked inside.
It’s the first time I’ve said any of this out loud. In this cottage, I don’t have to worry about hurting anyone.
“It taking my freedom. My friends. My life.”
The hot thing inside me breaks free of the cold ash. I let it burn me. I let it take me.
The air cracks with the sounds of destruction, filled with shards and splinters, the tear of curtains, the smash of windows. My throat tears from raging. My body complains, but I don’t listen.
“No diagnosis. No cure. And I tried and tried all these years to find something… and they burned my work anyway.”
The hot thing takes over completely and I become a savage ball of destruction, body barely able to keep up with all the things I want to break.
And I want to break it all.
I rage. I scream. I grab and tear and claw at anything I can get my hands on. I forget myself and find myself all at once.
And when there’s nothing left to break I stand there, breathless, hoarse.
Sure there’s nothing else, I’m left staring at the fireplace with its pretty floral plaque above the mantelpiece. Lavender, I think. Like in our garden. The hearth is empty. Not even ash remains, but I see the charred remains of my notebook—it’s seared in my mind. “They burned it all anyway.”
My knees crumple at the same moment my face does. He catches me. Of course he catches me. “They burned it all.” I bury my face in his arm, clinging to it, and I weep.
I don’t just weep, I sob. It’s deep. It’s ugly. It hurts. But it’s a release. And for once I don’t try to dam it and I don’t care that someone else can see.
He has me. He holds me. He lets me lay bare all the broken things inside.
I don’t know how long we stay there, tangled together. I just know that my sobs fade and I come to realize I’m sitting across his lap, clinging to his arm like it’s going to save me from a flood.
My breaths ease from shuddering to calm as he strokes my back, though I still give the occasional hiccough. Eventually, I lift my face from his arm and grimace at the wet patches I’ve left. “Sorry about your shirt,” I whisper with a watery grin.
“Don’t do that.” Before I can ask what, he smooths away the hair stuck to my wet cheeks. “Deflect. Pretend all that didn’t happen. Go right back to cheerfully denying all your feelings. We don’t have to talk about them, but don’t pretend.”
I take a breath to say sorry.
“And don’t apologize.”
I laugh, which becomes more tears, and he cradles me against him. It’s easy to let go when he holds me like this. Like I don’t have to worry about anything, not even sitting upright.
“I have you, Avellan,” he murmurs against the crown of my head.
When my tears settle once more, I don’t lift my head and look at him. That might make it easier to stay in this state of speaking rather than locking up or deflecting.
I’m angry at my mystery sickness, yes, no surprise there, but my parents? That feeling is a strange, hot coal in my chest. One I turn over and over.
Life at home has been suffocating for some years now. Annem is always there, keeping an eye on me. But does she need to be? I’ve survived in Drystan’s fortress without someone always on watch in case I drop dead.
Asti and Drystan have both protected me in the Underworld and Min takes care of me, but I’ve never felt suffocated in the same way.
Of course, my parents have spent my life protecting me from The Morrigan and her bargain. But they’ve also been keeping me from what little life I could have.
The labyrinth has been tough, but it’s shown I have more strength than I realized.
I could walk from our cottage to the woods and enjoy their shade in the height of summer.
I could walk down to the village and beg a ride back from one of Lowen’s friends.
I’m not too proud for that. I might not be able to do all I once could, but I can see a bit of the world beyond our garden walls.
I can live rather than sitting atop my cliff, longing.
And yet…
“At least with my family, I know there will be someone there. They care about me. Love me.”
Although, things in the Underworld aren’t the same as when I made my deal with Drystan. I’m not alone.
He hums a soft acknowledgment and I think that nudge is him nodding against my crown. “Of course they do. Who could fail to love you?”
It’s a pregnant question, even if it’s only hypothetical.
But there’s still a cold knot inside me. “Drystan?” He answers by stroking my back, and I press into him. “I’m afraid.” It’s a whispered confession I barely dare to voice.
He says nothing, just keeps this quiet space safe.
“My illness… I know it’s coming for me, even if I feel a bit better for now. I’m still…” My eyes burn as I try to breathe past the terror that saying this out loud will make it come true. “I’m afraid I’ll die alone.”
His hold tightens, strengthens, like his arms are fortress walls and I’m the precious thing they’re keeping safe. “Avellan,” he sighs.
I nod, waiting for him to admonish me for fearing him or tell me that death is natural and must come for all. Even little nothing humans, however pretty the nickname may sound in their old tongue.
“Do you think Death would let that happen to you?”
I frown in his hold. “But he—”
“I.”
A single word. A single letter.
A tear through the fabric of everything I thought I knew about him. About life. About Death.
Through the tear, the remaining lines of the rhyme find me.
Death upon the water.
Death upon the land.
When your Death comes calling
The Raven King will take your hand.
I always thought it meant Death would come for me, not…
“I am the god of death, Avellan. And I wouldn’t let you die alone. Not ever.” His voice rumbles through me, in my flesh, my bones, a promise that doesn’t vanquish my fear entirely, but leaves a crack in it—makes it conquerable, so I can take this moment of peace.
Death holds me tight, and I find myself not wanting to escape.
We sit there a while longer. Me and Death. I have no concept of time, I only know it’s dark outside and something sweet dusts the air.
Eyes sore, I lift my head, blinking at the white blur at the window. It resolves into clusters of star-shaped flowers. “I didn’t notice the jasmine was flowering when we arrived.”
“It wasn’t.” He sits back and follows my gaze. “It blooms for you.”
Sure enough, as I watch, it grows through the window, buds forming, unfurling, spreading their heady scent.
I enjoy it until my eyelids droop.
“Come on.” Somehow, he manages to stand and lift me, all the while keeping me clear of the debris on the floor. “Let’s get you home.”
Home. Not the cottage. The fortress. Yet somehow thinking of that cold place feels as warm as his arms coming around me.
As he carries me from the cottage, my thoughts drift, aimless in their exhaustion.
I can’t help thinking how he’s acted against me, but only in the labyrinth.
We seem to have reached a strange kind of alliance outside of it, where he guards the secret of my illness and runs me baths that smell as sweet as this night.
Maybe he isn’t so different from my parents—they were trying to keep me home, and he’s trying to keep me here.
Yet as he places me on his horse and mounts behind me, I register something. He didn’t need to help me tonight—that does nothing to prevent me escaping.
There’s a far simpler explanation. Old as he is. Old as all the tales I was read as a child.
He has feelings for me. I’m not delusional enough to call it love. But something on the way to it.
And I have feelings for him too, even if I shouldn’t.
This is messy, isn’t it?
Especially as, if I can get past the Gauntlet of Despair, and somehow beat the final challenge, I’ll be watching tomorrow’s sunset over the sea, back on the surface where I belong.
The perfect kind of bittersweet ending to one of those old tales.
For tonight, though, I’m here. And in his arms, I know one thing.
I feel more at peace than I ever have before.