Chapter 29 As It Should #2
“It was summer. The air was warm, the sky was cloudless, the sun bathed everything in a golden glow. I stood in a thicket of trees—birches, I later found out—with long, spindly trunks that seemed to lean on each other for company. I stumbled out of them hurt and bleeding, and across from me was a house with a person sitting on the porch, an old lady by your human standards. She saw me, with my gray skin and pointed ears and heavy armor, and she didn’t scream.
I was afraid of her, but she wasn’t afraid of me.
She ushered me inside, tended my wounds, fed me, and made a bed for me.
Every day, she taught me a little bit of your language.
She bought me whatever book I asked for, about your history, your art, your silly jokes.
I called her Nan. That’s what her family called her when they chatted on the phone, although she always hid them from me—she even removed all the pictures from her walls when I arrived.
“I stayed with her for a human year, learning everything I could about your world. But I was a kid. I wanted more than books and stories—I wanted the real thing. So one day, I snuck out. I followed the road to the center of a town. People didn’t immediately scream when they saw me.
But then a dog barked at me. It startled me, scared me, and I reacted: I threw up a shield of Dark that hurt the dog’s leg.
The owner fetched a gun out of her purse, with bullets of light that scorched my skin off.
I called on the Dark to widen my shield, but I must have pulled more than I thought.
The Dark cocooned around me and suddenly I was back in Itkalin. ”
Silence folds over the princess, tempering her limbs to a slow crawl through the steps of the dance.
“In Itkalin, the equivalent of five human years had passed. More bombs had devastated our lands. Dozens of Ul’amoon had broken free.
Kilorn had seen the itka open the doorway to whisk me away and so they spent all this time researching old lore, trying to find a way to bring me back.
In one of those research trips, they got caught in another bombing.
The Ul’amoon that you call the Darkgriffin broke free.
Kilorn was among its many victims. I came back after a year of lazing about in your warm, sunny world to find mine in ruins. ”
“But none of that was your fault—”
“You must understand. It was a choice. When I returned, I didn’t know how long I had been gone or what kind of devastation had come to pass.
In my excitement, I told my mother everything, every little detail of my time in your world, every moment of wonder and love.
She asked me when I had realized that I could just step into the Dark if I wanted to return to Itkalin.
I told her the truth. That I knew all along.
That every day for a year, I made the choice to abandon my family and my people to stay in your colorful world with your strange stories and your sugared food.
I chose you, humans, and my mother will never forgive me for it. ”
Guilt crawls out from deep inside Sascia’s chest, a jagged, sharp-edged thing. Like Aunt Rania in their restaurant’s kitchen, listing every bad decision Sascia had ever made, making it abundantly clear that her decisions too will never be forgiven.
“It is not fair.” The protest shoots out of Sascia, furious and childish.
Nugau’s cheek shifts as though she’s trying to look at Sascia. “What is not fair, little gnat?”
“I’m sorry. You made me think about my own unforgivable choices.”
“Tell me.”
“No, this isn’t about me—”
“But it is. In the last few weeks, with you, I have felt myself stepping toward another unforgivable choice.”
With you: heat sears Sascia’s insides.
Unforgivable: her chest clenches like a sucker punch.
“I would like to hear your story,” Nugau goes on, “if you want to share it.”
Sascia takes deep, steadying breaths. “I told you about Danny. About our garden and our moths. But I didn’t tell you about the accident.
” She has never spoken this story out loud, never needed to, because everyone she had met since already knew.
Like a mark, she has carried it, branded deep into her skin.
“Two years ago, we found a new sewer to explore. I was careless. There was an accident. Danny fractured his spine in three places. He can no longer move his legs.” Her eyes have closed.
Her breathing is hard. She feels that pressure in her nose again, the gathering of sobs.
But she has to go on. She has to see the story to the end, even if it damns her.
“I made a mistake, I know that, a mistake that changed my cousin’s life.
Danny has forgiven me. I don’t think he ever even blamed me.
And I’ve tried…I got into the Umbra to be by his side.
I’m trying to get into college to stay by his side.
But the choice I made that day—I can never forgive myself. ”
It is a blessing that the tarant forbids them from looking at each other. Sascia can’t bear what she might see in Nugau’s eyes right now. The disappointment. The blame. The affirmation of what Sascia really is: a screw-up.
“But it was a choice.” Nugau’s voice vibrates through their pressed chests. “It was one choice among the many we have made and will make in the future. Doesn’t it count for something? The new, better choices we made after?”
“I chose to jump into the Maw, to make the Heart Claim,” Sascia whispers into their shoulder.
“These are still dangerous, reckless choices, aren’t they?
And you just said yourself that these last few weeks seem like another unforgivable choice.
You still call yourself a coward. I still call myself a screw-up. How is that any different?”
“It feels different,” Nugau says, heatedly.
“It feels as though they were the choices of curious children that were only labeled bad by people who never tried to understand. But now, perhaps, someone does understand. Someone who refuses to call me a coward and who I refuse to call a screw-up in turn.”
Against Sascia’s, the princess’s chest rises and falls in furious breaths.
Their bodies meet through leather and organza, the touch made more intimate still by this confession.
And because Sascia is curious and fearless, almost to a fault, she pitches her voice low and husky, challenging and teasing, and she asks, “What should we call each other, then?”
Nugau’s breath catches. Her body goes still. Sascia can almost feel that icy mask slide back down, tenderness giving way to embarrassment, but instead Nugau whispers, “Do you care about the rules of this dance? Because I would like to look at you.”
“Look at me, then.”
The princess’s gaze, when it lands on her, is a heavy thing, building a pressure of all the things unsaid. The sole point of Nugau’s focus is the bow of Sascia’s lips. “When I met you in that future,” she says. “Did I want to kiss you?”
Sascia is an ocean of rolling waves; Nugau’s question is a dam torn down. Yearning torrents out of her, a great saltstorm of desire. “Yes.”
“And did I?”
Sascia is strung taut, an exposed nerve of want. “Not as you should.”
An eyebrow climbs up. Then Nugau smirks. “Good. I would like our first kiss to be as it should, and far, far more.”
Sascia is a blazing fire, from her curled toes to the slicked-back waves of her hair. She wants and wants and wants, and in that moment, there is no shame in it, no control. Nugau doesn’t need to beg any longer; Sascia is more than willing to do the begging herself.
Nugau’s fingers tighten on Sascia’s waist. “Little gnat—”
Darkness erupts. In the foliage of blooms overhead, around the dancers’ ankles and their clasped palms, the black swells and gorges and explodes.
Tendrils coalesce into streams, then into torrents.
The Dark snakes around Sascia’s feet, creeping up her body.
Nugau breathes a hiss and pulls Sascia behind her, but it’s already done.
Walls solidify around them, splitting the aesin into small groups. The dais looms above them all, where the Queen leans back in her throne.
She’s dropped them all into the Labyrinth, allies and enemies alike.
The true Heart Trial has begun.