Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
HAUNTED
Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think!
—Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 1
E mbry's eyes haunt me. I wake, roll out of bed and cross the room, stepping out onto my balcony.
Sometime as I slept the storm unleashed.
Rain lashes my face, instantly soaking my nightshirt and washing away the sweat from the nightmare.
The wind howls and I still, my skin tingling with atavistic recognition.
I grip the balcony, hunching over. It sounds like the anguished, wild grief of a thunder god, not like weather, and I yearn to take to the skies but I'm no winged creature, I will never fly.
God of my father, the grief. The rage. The denial.
I’ve felt it all.
Go back inside, Aerinne, Darkan says. Don’t make this storm be for you. Do not draw his eye.
Do any of us use that pronoun in conversation without everyone knowing there is only one male in this city who doesn’t require anything but a simple pronoun?
My enemy would-be lover can use even the weather against me, and I probably should have known.
The son of Assariel Stormthrone.
I go inside and towel off in the bathroom then crawl back into bed, the balcony windows rattling. My eyes won’t close again tonight.
“I’m having trouble sleeping again.” I stop, laugh, and it’s cold, grating. “Not again. Always.”
The redecorated room suits my mood better—navy paneling instead of dove gray walls.
Forest green leather couches instead of the cheery yellow I’ve been whining about for months.
Heavy black bookcases stocked with tomes and knickknacks so worn, I think this must be Ward’s real space.
It makes we wonder if the first aesthetic was a failed experiment she’s abandoning.
The tint of her glasses is a few shades darker today despite the dim room. “You’re speaking of Embriel.”
As usual, there’s nothing on her face except pleasant neutrality, though I note the familial inflection when she says his name. Years of our sessions, and he’s become as familiar to her as he is to me.
I stare at hands I sometimes don't recognize.
A dishwasher's hands, when Tata Fatma ropes me into kitchen duty.
A diplomat daughter's hands when my father asks me to read through and notate his papers—he doesn't need me, he's stealthily educating me. The hands of a friend who enables Juliette’s drinking the way she enables mine.
The hands of a cold, premeditated killer.
All of these hands are mine, and none of them.
“He’s the first, and the only life I regret taking. . .personally,” I add. “I don’t precisely enjoy the others, we’re at war.” I push to my feet, but there’s nowhere to run in this square room. “He shouldn’t have been there. He didn’t deserve to die. But I do.”
The irony, the agony, that Embriel’s father had me in near the same position, on my back, on my knees, but used his hand to lift me up instead of strike me down, isn't lost in the storm. It's amplified. Lightning. . .would be a quick way to go.
Maybe I should walk back into that storm, draw the eye of its Lord.
And maybe I'm a fool to hope for one moment that when he does have me on my back, on my knees? —
“. . .he will seduce you ? —”
—it's a sword he’ll shove in me. What vengeance is death to an Old One? None.
My head hurts, and my nose is bleeding again. Resigned, I blot it with the hem of my sleep shirt.
“Aerinne, can you tell me more about what it means to you that he 'didn't deserve to die' while you feel that you do?”
I stand and give her my back. My voice is ragged but I don’t have to expose my face.“What it means. . .I want to die too. There are nights I’m so close to ? —”
“Stop.” Her voice cuts through my words. “Aerinne. Look at me.”
I turn, startled by the sudden sharpness in her tone, and study her. Ward never breaks her therapist persona. Whoever she is in her real life, I don’t know. But here, she’s been nothing but calm, neutral, a blank slate for me to throw my thoughts on like blood spatter.
She speaks as if my death will impact her. At this moment, I don’t think she’s my therapist. I think she’s an interested third party. For the first time I wonder what her political ties are. How my death would affect them.
And why .
“I need you to hear me very clearly, Aerinne. If you’re experiencing suicidal ideation, it's imperative we address that immediately.” She leans forward slightly, her professional mask slipping to show genuine concern.
“You must summon me whenever this happens.
It doesn't matter what day, or the time. These thoughts require immediate, direct intervention.”
I shake my head. “They’re thoughts, Dr. Ward. I don’t think I would ? —”
Of course I can’t finish the intended sentence.
“I know you favor directness—are you considering ending your life? Can you give me a ‘No’ response?”
“My life is my own. I know it’s selfish, but every warrior has a right to ? —”
“This isn't just about you, Aerinne.” Her voice is sharpened steel, the edge of an ancient blade now slipping its sheathe.
“You know this. Your House, your family, all of Everenne depends on your survival. If something happens to you, especially now Renaud is awake, the consequences would be catastrophic. Knowing that, do you really believe you have a ‘right’?”
She pauses, letting that sink in.
“The guilt you're carrying over one death—imagine carrying the guilt of hundreds. Thousands. Is that really what you want? To add that weight to what you're already bearing?”
I stare at her a long moment, knowing she’s wielding words to manipulate me—but that’s her job isn’t it?—then say, softly, “I want to sleep.”
I don't want to go back to sleep and see his face under my lids, but I need the rest.
Darkan?
You need sleep, Aerinne. You are already in debt to your demons.
Why is Embry the one who haunts me? I killed others before him, and after, and slept just fine.
It's a rhetorical question. After a long pause, silence fey with tension, he answers anyway. You know he didn't deserve his death.
High Lord Embriel was a scholar, Baba and Danon’s colleague, a Dean who also taught University classes open to even the few humans who live in Everenne. He'd been well liked, and something more curious.
Apolitical.
Though he hadn't seemed apolitical when he'd taken my brother.
“Wait, Danon!”
Pinpricks.
I'd wanted revenge.
Revenge for my mother, revenge for Danon.
How does revenge feel? Darkan asks, voice a caress. He delights in holding a mirror of my shortcomings up to my face. Teaching moments, he calls them. Lessons.
Like rusted razors in my gut.
So now you understand the true value of vengeance. Now you understand the price of murdering innocents.
That stings.
Or do you? Do you kill without thought, without remorse? What lost sleep or tears shed over the blood on your hands?
Until Embriel? Maybe I am a sociopath, but Ward assures me true sociopaths don't worry about that.
I should tell the Prince, I say, testing the words. Accept punishment.
To what purpose?
I can't carry a secret like this forever. Every time I'm with him, I’ll wonder if his sword will finally lop off my head. Maybe my death isn’t his goal now, but after knowing about his son? There is no agenda above a father’s. Every second with him will be mental torture.
Then you are being punished, is the cruel reply. His voice plucks a wing from my back, tosses it aside. And there is no better. Death is peace. Living is agony.
I swallow. Do you—do you think he knows? And that's why he says nothing? To torment me?
It doesn't matter. You will endure because you must. This burden is the least you will be required to shoulder in your life. If you cannot carry even this small weight, what hope is there for you to rule?
I don't want to rule.
Understand the value of what you want versus what is inevitable. Another wing ripped away. Merciless. Unavoidable. Final.
How can you even talk like this knowing about the Vow?
The Vow does not concern me. Vows are not insurmountable .
What an about face. I’m speechless. What?
His impatience beats at the inside of my head. I will not repeat myself. We will deal with the issue of the Vow in time. It was poorly worded and barely worth my attention.
Jaw loosening, I let myself digest that extraordinary sentence, unsure if my subconscious is trying to delude me or comfort me. I force myself to ignore the “poorly worded and barely worth my attention” and focus on what's important.
Can you please give me more detail, Darkan? Is it too much to ask of you.
More detail you can use to get yourself in better trouble next time? That kind of detail?
Icepicks in my temples again. “ There are things, that if you knew, would begin a chain of events you aren’t ready for.”
I shut my eyes, massaging my head where it hurts. Right, I say slowly, and go back to the subject of Embry. Do you think he knows?
How can he not?
Indeed.
Will you submit? he asks.
When Renaud learns who killed his son and demands recompense, will I submit to his judgment? Allow the executioner's blade to bite into my neck if required to maintain the fragile new peace?
I don't think it was ever my fate to die quietly in my bed, I say.
Will you submit?
It takes me some time to answer. I will. I deserve whatever comes.
But, Darkan, I will make him earn my death.
After all, I Vowed to kill him first .
Darkan laughs, a soft impression of sound that would be chilling if it wasn’t so damn condescending.
Oh, my na?ve halfling. Why would he kill you? Physical death is simple—though not always easy—and for your particular caste, never final. He pauses. He can, however, make you beg for it. That is what you should fear, and defend against.
Evidently it's my own mind I should defend against.