Chapter 28 Livid
Livid
I stand before Mance unshackled, my animals fanning out around me, snarling and snapping. Emulating with every hair on their bodies the all-consuming rage that I feel.
She scrambles to her feet as they advance on her, making a helpless noise and pressing her back against the wall, though there is nothing but a sharp fall and a set of murder-bent Primes behind her. She glances back, as though remembering this, and then returns to the scene in front of her.
Face pale, she takes in the sharp claws and bared fangs, possibly remembering what it was like to grapple with these beasts in the arena.
Slowly, deliberately, I sink into a fighting stance, the same one that we took in each and every one of those battles right before going in for the kill, and I can see from the widening of her eyes that she recognizes it.
“All right,” I say. “I think it’s time you and I settle this thing.”
“Now?” she screeches, casting another glance at the advancing armies. “You could not possibly have picked a worse time.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, is it not convenient?” I clench my fists.
“You’ve had months to talk to me, Mance.
You never tried to. So you don’t get to pick an opportune moment anymore.
We do this on my terms.” I hold up a wrist, displaying the painted black bracelet I got from Mara’s room on the way here.
Making it clear that she can’t call me back into her, and I can’t call my animals back into me.
She’s gonna have to deal with all of us, right here and now.
She bites her lip, her head whipping from side to side as she braces for one of the predators to attack, flinching at every movement. “This is ludicrous,” she hisses. “If you kill me, you’ll kill yourself, too. I . . . think.”
I open my mouth to answer, but before I can get a word out she takes advantage of an opening between the shifting creatures and makes a dash toward the stairwell.
But just as she reaches it, Silver steps in her way.
She crashes into him and he catches her around the waist, but she startles like she ran into my grizzly bear instead.
“Silver!” she gasps, as though she’d only just remembered he was there.
Her head whips toward me, frantic, and then she starts tugging against him, fighting his grip.
“You have to run, Silver. We have to run. Don’t you see now?
Why I didn’t want you to meet her? I mean look at her!
” She slams her palms against his chest, half to underscore her statement and half in a genuine attempt to get him to move. My lip curls in a snarl.
He gently catches her wrists with one hand. “I see her, Mance. Do you?” She stops struggling, confused, so he continues softly. “This isn’t the first time that she and I have met.”
Mance’s shoulders slump at his words. “It’s not?” she asks, voice small. “Then it really is over between us.”
I wish it didn’t, but that stings.
“Actually,” I snarl. “Silver isn’t as horrified by me as you seem to be.”
He gives her a tight grimace but then meets my gaze, his eyes burning. “Quite the opposite, actually. Livid is the one who first made me think of you as something more than a mark. I met her in the glass gardens. Remember?”
I do. Me, fighting a wisteria. Him, shattering my worldview and a glass bonsai besides. Us, making whispered promises in the moonlight.
Mance shakes her head, disbelieving, her back still to me.
Silver places a hand under her chin, raising her eyes to his.
“Do you know what I think?” he asks. “I think you’re not afraid of me seeing her at all.
I think you’re afraid of seeing her yourself.
But you need to, Mance. If there’s anyone who can help you now, it’s her.
And she’s a part of you, just like any other. ”
“The worst part of me,” she snaps, and I flinch.
Silver looks over her shoulder and then spins her, holding her against his chest. “Look,” he says. “Really look.”
Slowly, her brows draw together in confusion.
At first I don’t know why. But then I realize that the animals around me are no longer snarling. They’re hunched like I am, cowering away from the harshness of Mance’s words.
As soon as I realize it, I’m embarrassed, and embarrassment turns right back into fury. My beasts rise up again, growling. But it’s too late. She’s seen what the fury is hiding.
“I didn’t know you could be hurt,” Mance says. “You’re always so . . . so angry!” Her words are underscored by the sounds of crashing and shattering glass, getting closer. She starts to look, but I move in front of her.
“Of course I’m angry!” I explode. “I should be! Have you been paying attention? Our father was cruel to us! He made us kill animals, over and over. He made Mother into a shell of herself. He stabbed Mara in the stomach and then told her not to tell anyone about it. He slaughtered nations, started senseless wars, turned us into a weapon—”
“Yes!” Mance cuts in. “He did all that. And you just can’t get over it.
You dwell there, stewing, reliving it all over and over again in your mind, working yourself up.
But I don’t want to do that! I want to move on; I want to move forward!
I don’t want to be like Reltas, devoting my life to revenge and spreading more and more hurt just because I can’t get past the hurts that were done to me! ”
“So you’d rather just forget?”
“Yes!”
“You’d rather shove it down, shove me down where you can’t see me anymore, just so you don’t have to think about it?”
“If that’s what it takes to keep myself from turning into a monster, then yes, I would!”
“A monster,” I repeat. Around me, my beasts are not growling anymore, but their hackles are raised, their heads are lowered to the ground, and their eyes are latched onto Mance, ready to strike. “Do you know . . . what was often the worst part of dealing with our father? For me?”
She doesn’t respond, her gaze on the beasts, and her hand clutching Silver’s. Over her shoulder, his eyes encourage me to keep going, even as shouts echo up from below.
I pace closer. “It was that he would do all these awful things, but he would never say they were awful. He would talk in this calm and measured voice about how necessary they all were. How justifiable. He made me feel unhinged and irrational for the feelings that I had, as if they were the problem and not the things that he was doing to cause them. He never listened. No one listened.”
“I know,” Mance says. “But now—”
“Now you’re doing the same thing,” I tell her. “You’re not listening either. You’re acting like I’m just as irrational and overly emotional as he did.”
Mance’s mouth drops open. “N-no! It’s different! I’m just trying to—”
“I don’t care what you’re trying to do. The result is the same.
If you recall, it didn’t work out well for him.
Because of me. Because it didn’t matter that no one else fought for me; I fought for myself.
I carved something out for us that was safe.
So if you push me down, too, then you’d better understand that I won’t go quietly.
If you lock me up, I will break out. And I’ll come for you with a vengeance! ”
My animals roar around me, echoing and underscoring the rage that laces every word.
Mance goes pale, but her fists tighten, and I can see that her convictions about me haven’t wavered. She’s probably thinking of better cages, better magic, more locks to keep me away from her. And for a second I consider taking her on. Having the fight I’m promising, right here and now.
It would feel good.
“But there’s another way,” I say, speaking just as much to myself as I am to her.
“What’s that?” she asks through gritted teeth.
“Maybe if you did listen, maybe if you let me in again, then we could do something with all this anger. Something better than unleashing it in a blind rage. We could hone it. We could apply it. Asset could help me use it effectively, Heart would help me to use it kindly. Poise will keep me from screaming and spitting in people’s faces.
I’m . . .” It pains me to admit it, but I press on.
“I’m not meant to act alone. You say you want to move forward?
I do, too! But I don’t think something like forgiveness comes from just pretending the pain doesn’t exist. It comes from working through it.
Help me do that. And in exchange”—I stand taller—“let me help you fight. You were about to give up a minute ago. I am the part that won’t let you.
Take me back, and let’s fight together. Aren’t you tired of only fighting yourself? ”
When I finish speaking, the silence is thick. Not even my predators are making a noise, and the commotion at the gates seems far away.
Mance still looks unsure.
But sometimes fighting means surrender.
So I make the first move.
I unclasp the bracelet on my wrist and let it clatter to the stone between us. Her eyes flick down to it and then back to mine.
She can call me back in now. And she may still decide to lock me up. Perhaps nothing that I’ve said matters.
But before she does, she’ll have to live my memories. She’ll have to experience all the things I’ve been through. And maybe, just maybe, she’ll understand and she’ll make a different decision.
Silver unwinds his arm from her waist, giving her the freedom to run, the freedom to choose, even as his shoulders tense.
But she doesn’t flee.
She takes a step toward me, hesitates, but then takes one step more and lays a hand on my shoulder. The moment stretches long. My animals barely seem to be breathing, and the fighting below has dulled to only a background hum.
Then, finally, after months apart, she pulls me back in.
And it feels like going home.