Chapter Forty-Nine
Asher
Y et another wedding loomed.
There was something truly unsettling about waiting for the day to come. While the first marriage had been thrust upon me, this one was an honor. No one forced me to hang the dress in mine and Bellamy’s bathing room, just as I had the hideous golden one back in the palace in The Capital. No one made me organize all of the vials Noe had brought in a similar fashion to how Maybel had a year ago. But I did those things anyway.
I was not sure why, just that I felt like I had to.
When I finally got into bed after pacing for what felt like a lifetime, I twirled the ring on my finger, traced my new tattoo, breathed in a deep pull of air, and closed my eyes. Bellamy would not come tonight. In Eoforhild, it was tradition to spend the night before your wedding without one another. So stupid. But it was fine.
I would be fine.
***
I awoke in a puddle of sweat, screaming as I jolted upwards.
Mia’s shouts of fury. Xavier’s swinging fist. Sterling’s tight grip. They were coming for me. I knew it. I felt it. I saw it. I lived it.
They were coming.
I kicked off the quilt, feeling around in the dark as I tried to find the doors to my chambers.
But everything was different. Off, somehow. This was not my gilded prison.
I took heaving gasps of the hot air, crawling until I felt my head hit a wall.
Think, Asher. Just think.
My left thumb reached for my ring finger, feeling the cold metal there. I needed light. I needed proof.
This was real. I knew what was real.
Letting my fingers trace up my arm, I slowly named off my scars and where I got them, wishing more than anything that they were still there to remind me of who I was and where I have been. Because I was in Pike. I knew it, even if my heart still raced at the recollection of the haunting nightmares.
I soothed myself with memories of the last couple of weeks. Of the time spent in love and safety. I recalled the way Theon’s blood had spilled into my mouth as I ripped out his throat. I thought of watching Bellamy dig out Xavier’s heart. They were dead. Gone. Left to rot or burned to dust.
Mia was still out there, but she could not take anything from me again. I had Bellamy. Our friends. Adbeel. I was alive. My happy ending was within my grasp, if only I could just remember. Could break free of the haunting memories of pain and blood.
Bellamy could help me. But if I went to him, would he think me too unstable for the wedding? Could I scare him too much? This was his time too, and I feared stealing that from him like it was being stolen from me.
My hand stilled on the spot of my arm where there was once a jagged and raised reminder of what happened after Haven. My hopelessness etched into my skin.
My scars. I needed my scars.
I knew I should have called for help. Anyone would have been glad to talk me through the panic that flooded my veins and weighed my body down like lead. But I did not want to run through castles nearly naked and cry in front of strangers. I wanted to do this on my own.
Pushing myself to a standing position, I relaxed my shoulders and walked through the dark room to the bedside table. Cool wood chilled my scalding feet, anchoring me as I felt for the brass handle. This one was on my side, which meant if I opened up the drawer—yes, there was the soft leather of my sheath.
I was going to be okay. I was going to fix myself. I was going to walk down that aisle whole.
Alive and well and safe. That was what I was. All I needed was a reminder. An anchor to this reality.
My free hand reached in and grabbed a set of matches, a slight shake to them as I sparked the fire to life and lit the candle. There, I could see. And the first thing my eyes looked at were the words inked on my skin.
Sterling and I had both been struggling, though we were loathe to admit that to anyone other than each other. I had spent much of my free time with him or in his head, the two of us talking one another back to reality. He had come back from Maliha more haunted than before, his family wanting everything to be as it was and Sterling knowing he was forever changed. So when Shah had come back with him and Genevieve, we had decided there was an opportunity there.
Shah was not as skilled as a mortal trained to etch the tattoos, but she knew how to do what we asked. And, luckily for us, her script was immaculate.
Now, as I read the words, I thought of Sterling. Maybe I could go to him. But, if I were being honest, no one other than Bellamy would help right now. And even then, I would still fall apart later. I needed to fix this permanently.
Why worry Bellamy when I could handle it?
Yes, I could do this.
My eyes scanned the words on my wrist one last time.
This is real.
And then I unsheathed the blade and began the steady work of earning back my scars. After months of tracing their ghosts, it was easy to begin reviving them.
Blood poured out, the deep red staining my white night dress and pouring onto the ground, but that was okay. Stains and messes would not stop me from repairing myself. Even the bite of the blade was not enough to deter me.
Tears poured down my face, not because I was hurting, but because I was healing. Every dip of the dagger and rip of my skin was a second chance at the story I nearly lost. I was not breaking my body, I was mending it.
To my great disappointment, someone was always there to muck things up.
My door burst open, the wood swinging and cracking from where it connected with the rock wall. I shouted at the surprise, my magic not catching the four minds until they arrived.
Faster, I had to move faster. Maybe just one shoulder. The afriktor’s talons were a mark of great change. Of realization. I needed that one.
There was a hand and a voice and maybe even sobs somewhere in the haze around me. Suddenly I was being wrestled to the ground, my knees giving out as a dark hand lit fire to my body. I shouted in pain and fury and loss. They stole my reality. My truth. I was so fucking close.
But no. I was still broken.
“Asher, you have to stop!” A deep voice, not soothing or soft like I knew it to be.
“No, Ranbir, let Sterling talk! Shah, get ready!” My sweet, beautiful best friend. Oh how I hated her right then.
“Okay, fine. Asher, Sterling is here. I have to heal these. You have to let me or I will force you.” Ranbir again. Of course he would—
Wait, heal me?
No!
“No, stop! Do not touch me!” I screamed, shoving at them. Cool hands grabbed my face, and suddenly my eyes were open and staring into a set of lovely brown ones speckled with green.
“I am here. I have you,” Sterling said. His smile was full of heartbreak, his eyes shining with tears.
“They are trying to take my scars, Sterling. Please do not let them do this,” I sobbed the words out, begging the boy in front of me to help. The only one who could possibly understand what it was like to not know what was real and what was fake. But I saw the slackening of his face that signaled he would not stop them, and I knew that I was alone in this.
“Nicola is going to help you, I promise,” he said, his fingers still cold on my face. My body seemed to deflate at his words, Ranbir’s power burning its way through me until I was disgustingly bare once more.
Sterling pulled me into him, hugging me close, his deep accent coming out stronger as he sang softly in my ear. The words were foreign to me, Maliha’s tongue one I did not know. Still, I felt the truly tragic meaning as he continued to sing. My heart slowed, my mind settling as Sterling’s song came to a close.
Shah’s face came into view, the sorrow there twin to my own. To all of ours. We had each suffered more than we cared to admit.
“Hey, almost queen, how are you feeling?” she asked. I nearly chuckled at her words, the odd nickname ironic but true. It seemed like forever ago that I claimed myself a queen in her castle. Tomorrow, I would become one in truth.
“Ash,” Nicola cut in, kneeling down next to Shah. “I know you are in pain. If I could take that away I would. But I do have a plan to help.”
A plan? What could possibly help other than my scars? They did not understand. Of course not. How could they? It was nearly impossible to explain how much it hurt to not know what was real and what was false—to describe the agony of torture and manipulation.
“You are fully healed, so I am going to go. I think you deserve as much privacy as possible right now.” Ranbir squeezed my shoulder once before nodding and standing to leave. I did not speak to him, not wanting to take my anger out on the Healer who was just doing what he thought was best.
“I made him come, Ash,” Nicola whispered. “Do not blame him.”
I faced her, seeing the truth of her words on her face as she looked at me with sad eyes. The pity there was unbearable. I did not want to be this disastrous version of myself. More than anything, I just wanted to be whole again. I thought of who I had been during my birthday party, those few hours having been some of the best of my life. Why could we not turn back time? Live in those moments for a bit longer so I might recall what it was to be better?
Shah began moving, her hands grabbing and arranging items I could not make out in the faint candlelight.
“How about this: you tell Shah where each of your scars were and what they looked like, and she will tattoo them back on.” I whipped my head back towards Nicola, my hair hitting Sterling in the face and causing him to begin hacking heinously.
“Gods above, Ash. Your hair is attacking me!” The sound of him spitting out pieces of my hair was quickly followed by Shah’s laughter.
“You can leave, I think we have this. Go find Bellamy. Might as well tell him, I imagine he will want to sit outside of the door and make sure she is okay,” Shah said, her tone one of exasperation. She was probably quite tired of my antics by now. That, or she truly understood and felt the same exhaustion I did.
“I will see you tomorrow,” Sterling said against my hair, likely having lost the battle to it and willing to suffer longer to tell me goodbye. Then, after he hugged me tighter and hummed for a few more moments, Sterling got up and left too.
With just Shah, Nicola, and I left, I was forced to acknowledge what they were offering. Tattoo my scars back on. Would that be the same? Would black versions look right? I thought of Bell’s magic and how the sight of the black lines haunted him. What would he think of my new tattoos? I did not want to be a source of pain for him. Nor did I think that it would be anything but artificial in my eyes.
“They will not be the same,” I said, watching as what I now knew was a bottle of ink was placed on the side table by Shah. Nicola’s face softened, her eyes large and round as they scrutinized me.
“You know, I do not always choose what I see. In fact, the future and past are often thrust upon me without my consent. But when I saw this, I knew there had to be better options. You were bleeding yourself out, Ash. You could have killed yourself.” Sighing at my best friend’s words, I turned away, not wanting to look at either of them while I was called out for my stupidity. “I searched for other futures, and I saw this. The first option was using black ink, but you eventually cut into them again because they did not feel real enough. So I sought out something else, not in the future, but from Shah.”
“Did you know tattoos do not have to be black?” Shah asked, a smirk on her face as she handed me the glass jar. I took it gingerly, my hand shaking slightly from the overwhelming emotions that invaded me. It was not black ink that swirled inside of it. Instead, it was the most lovely shade of tan, the color showing the barest hint of peach—twin to the shade my scars had been.
“Farai told me you called your scars your story,” Nicola murmured, her voice soft and soothing. I felt a single tear roll down my cheek, the truth of what they were about to give me settling into my chest. “Are you ready to rewrite it?”
After a few deep breaths, I nodded.
“Okay then, where do we start?” Shah asked, rubbing her hand up and down my arm.
From there, I slowly and painstakingly described each scar. Shah worked diligently throughout the night, listening to every detail. By the time the sun began to rise, our candles had snuffed out and my body was covered in stunning depictions of my scars—of my life after Bellamy had saved me.
“All done,” Shah whispered. She packed up her things in silence after that, the air coated in an odd sort of tranquility that felt wrong to break. Nicola, too, got up to leave, kissing my forehead before walking to the door with the Queen of Behman.
When they shut the door behind them, I was left to steep in the heaviness of the past and peace of the future. I cleaned myself up before crawling into Bellamy and I’s bed, ready to sleep and feel at ease once more. Then, I heard someone mumble something from the hall. My eyes opened, watching as the door swung open.
There in the dimly lit doorway, stood the love of my life.
His face was grim as he approached, but he did not say anything about what happened. Instead, he got into the bed beside me and pulled the quilt over us.
“I love you, beautiful creature. You are my everything.”
“And you are mine,” I said with a broken voice. “I just wanted to be whole again. To be better for you. For us.”
His large hands grabbed my face, fingers tracing shapes against my skin. As always, he was made of fire and sunshine, a bright spot in the darkness. It was odd how a pair of hands could feel so right. I thought of Sterling’s grasp on me earlier, how impossibly other it had felt in comparison to the perfection of Bellamy’s warm grip.
“You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. You are never anything less than whole in my eyes.” A sigh escaped him just as his forehead touched mine. “Should we call off the wedding?”
“What?” I shouted, rearing back. “Of course not!”
His cool chuckle brushed against my face, quickly turning into hysterical laughter. Bewildered, I stared at him with a slack jaw.
“After all this time of dragging your feet, you choose now to get defensive?” he uttered between gasping laughter. And then, I too broke out into giggles, unable to stop the pure irony from getting to me as it did him.
We sat there, holding each other and laughing, for what felt like hours. And when our humor died out, Bellamy began tracing my new tattoos, the skin still raw from whatever Shah used to slow my healing. He willed ice to his fingertips, cooling the inflamed skin.
“Ranbir can make these hurt less. We can call him in here whenever you are ready,” he muttered, leaning down to kiss the ink on my shoulder. I smiled, feeling at home in his arms.
“We are going to survive this, okay?”
“Weddings are not death sentences, Asher,” he guffawed, flicking me on the nose. Before I could say anything else, he leaned forward and kissed the spot he had hit. As always, his lips soon touched my forehead, my cheeks, my chin, and then my lips.
Our kiss was slow, unhurried and calm. The kiss of forever.
“I meant this war, you ridiculous demon.” Our laughter soon kicked in again, and we remained in one another’s arms until the sun was fully up and Noe burst through the door.
“You,” she said, pointing at Bellamy. “Get out. It is wedding day, bitches.”