84. Rosalina
Rosalina
What do you tell someone when you only have one moment left with them?
Do you try to recall your happiest memories, spinning images into words of a life well-lived?
Do you take the last opportunity to curse them out for all the pain they wrought upon you? To remind them of all the ways they hurt you?
Do you lament the lack of a future together? Cast your wishes into their well so they might carry them, wherever they’re going?
Or do you simply tell them the truth: I loved you. I love you. And I always will.
These are the questions that assail my thoughts as I fling myself down to the side of my father.
The arrow juts out of his heart. Brilliant red blood sputters from his mouth and paints the front of his white shirt. For the first time in my life, my father looks afraid.
I wish I could burn the image from my mind.
A strangled roar tears out of my mother’s throat as she charges the window, shoving the goblin with all her might. He tumbles backward with a screech.
Then she’s next to me screaming. Screaming like a woman undone from the inside out. Wrenley’s collapsed on his other side, shaking him and wailing over and over: “Why did you do that? Why did you do that?”
I want to cover my ears and shut my eyes and curl up in a ball, but I can’t.
Because my father is dying, and I have one moment left.
I grab Papa’s hand, but it’s too limp to squeeze mine back. His gaze is faraway, out the window. It’s almost like he’s searching the sky.
My useless body is completely devoid of magic. There’s not even an inkling of healing energy left within me. So what do I do? What do I do?
This…wasn’t supposed to happen. My mother bargained away our freedom to make sure time would never claim him. To learn how to bind his life to something eternal. But there’s no way to bargain with the crack in his ribs, with the blood gushing from his heart.
There are more things I need to say to my father than there are stars in the sky. Hurts I want to scream, apologies I want to utter, and memories I’m desperate to make. It’s as if I can see them sputtering out around me, like candles in a rainstorm.
Papa gives a gasp, and he squeezes my hand once, tight.
There’s no coming back from this. I know it not because of the slowing of his heart but because the world tilts and nothing feels safe anymore.
My mother shrieks, Wrenley lets out a keening sob, but there’s only silence in my head.
“Why? Why?” Wrenley shrieks again.
Papa’s eyes blink wildly, but somehow, they find hers. His voice is barely a breath. “Because you’re my girl.” His fading gaze trembles over Mom before resting on me. “My girls.”
I need to say something before there’s nothing left. Say something. Say anything!
But Papa’s heart beats once, twice, and then stops.
It is as if Castletree can’t bear to be in this world without him.
Everything collapses.
The ground shakes. The walls crumble. Branches and stonework rain upon us.
And I don’t think any of George’s three girls would have moved if it weren’t for the army of underfae barreling up the staircase.
Faustrius leads the charge. Unconsciously, I slip the bundle of roses into my shirt before I’m yanked out of the collapsing tower and, along with Wrenley and my mother, clamped in chains.
One moment. I thought I had one moment. A breath, a second, I would take any of it…
But I didn’t get to yell, to tell him I forgive him. To tell him I love him and what a beautiful adventure he set me upon.
Now, there are no feelings in me as Faustrius and his soldiers pull us out of Castletree, over the bridge, and into the Briar. It’s as if my nerves have gone dead, my mind a vacant hum.
I might as well be one of the flecks of dust billowing around me.
Let me waste away in this nothingness. Let it swallow and consume me. I’m so sick of the pain…
But I guess the world thinks I can handle more, because when I cast a final look back, I see my home crumble to root and ash, taking my father’s body with it.