Chapter Nine
Camilla
Ijolted at the sudden knock on the door and cursed silently to myself. It was getting pathetic how easily startled I was these days.
Silently, I pushed across the tiny bedroom that had become my chamber and workspace. Bracing myself, I opened the door, prepared to find another weeping injury.
“Pardon me, Miss.” My gaze fell down to the small, curly-haired child grinning up at me. “My mother has a headache, and someone said you might be able to help?”
I’d never been a fan of children. They were altogether too small and too easily injured. Not to mention loud, whiny, and far too needy. My first experience with a child had been my cousin, and she had, for lack of a better term, been a complete brat.
Although this one was cute enough, I supposed, with sandy hair and a splattering of freckles. She smiled widely at me, trust seeping out of her expression.
Eventually, she would learn not to give that away so easily.
I certainly had done nothing to earn her trust.
“I’ll make something for it.”
The girl nodded diligently, not seeming to recognize the dismissal in my voice as I turned away.
“You can go now,” I said over my shoulder, not bothering to hide the bite in my voice. “It’ll be ready in an hour.”
The girl said a word of thanks and turned on her heels, skipping away down the hall. She skipped.
That innocence would leave the girl soon enough, too.
Gods know I lost mine ages ago.
“Does that happen often?” Kent asked from the table, still rubbing at his pectoral muscles.
I hummed a vague affirmation and returned to my table. The stone mortar and pestle were warm to the touch from how hard I’d been gripping them, and I kept my eyes downward as I continued grinding the herbs and forming them into a forest green paste.
Kent stared at me, both of us now uncomfortable with that simple interaction. We had been working so hard to ignore each other before that girl stopped by.
“Why don’t they just see a healer?” He asked.
I heard the question hidden under his words: Why do they come to you?
I scooped the paste into a small glass vial and held it out towards him. “Witchcraft isn’t too different from healing.”
Not to mention, we didn’t have enough healers.
Only a few with the power to heal wounds had fled the castle.
So, Elaina and I were determined to do what we could to help with the skill sets we had.
He stared at the glass in my hands, suspicion clear in his narrowed eyes.
I tried to ignore the way my skin heated at his expression.
He wasn’t the only person to look at me like that—to stare at me as if I were a monster.
I certainly had done enough to deserve that kind of distrust. Still, it hurt to see it in the eyes of my friend.
Or at least in someone who had once been my friend.
Kent clearly wasn’t someone I could consider to be my friend now.
“You used your magic on it?”
I almost laughed.
I hadn’t dared to touch my magic since the second I was freed of Pasnia’s influence.
When I first broke away from black magic, the pull had been indescribable.
I suffered without the shadows. My body had ached, my head throbbed, even my thoughts had been slow and confused.
I supposed it got a little bit easier to manage as the days went on, but I doubted that deep hunger would ever leave me.
Since the battle at the palace, I’ve felt my magic tugging at me, stirring inside of my gut stronger than ever before. I could only assume that all the stress of the past few days was reigniting my need for the shadows.
So, no. I was not using my magic.
I’d rather die than fall victim to that kind of darkness before.
“Elaina taught me how to make natural remedies,” I explained, avoiding his weighty stare. “I can help with pain tonics, fertility suppressants, simple things like that.”
His attention snapped to his right as if he had heard something, but he gave a dismissive shake of his head and shifted his weight in his seat, still refusing to take the vial.
“I can even make creams to ease muscle pain.” I extended it to him one last time. “They’re pretty good for a soldier who recently suffered a severe injury and now has to build up muscle strength again.”
Kent just blinked down at the vial.
I thrust it toward him once more, wanting to hiss in frustration and knowing it would get me nowhere. As Elaina liked to remind me, I would never regain my friends if I continued relying on anger to hide my hurt.
“Trust me, please.”
His gaze darkened, communicating everything he didn’t need to say aloud. Kent had no reason to trust me.
He had every reason to throw that vial, abandon the house that Elaina and I had created as our base of operations, return to Clay and Iris, and insist they burn me at the stake for my crimes.
Iris would happily scream her agreement and do a damn happy dance.
Anger may not win me any friends, but neither did trying to be nice either. What I’d broken between us couldn’t be repaired.
“Oh, good!” Elaina’s voice was as chipper as ever as she strolled into the room and glanced over the standoff between us. “I was actually going to recommend you use a relaxation cream! It will take time for your muscles to regain their strength, and the process will not be painless by any means.”
With a frustrated huff, like a child who had just been disciplined, he snatched the vial from my hand and stood. “I’m perfectly capable of working through a few aches and pains.”
Elaina grinned, walking towards him and patting him on the chest. He didn’t flinch at her touch, not necessarily, but his lips pressed together enough to know that she had proven her point about the seriousness of his recovery.
“Of course you can,” she agreed, looking up at him through her lashes. “But why make the process more difficult than it needs to be?”
He exhaled, nodded, and left without a second glance back at me. I watched him go, a biting sadness burning in my chest as I wiped my hands on the apron across my waist. I swallowed it down.
Fine. If he didn’t want to be my friend, then he didn’t have to be. I didn’t need him or any of them.
“He’ll come around,” Elaina promised, running her hands through her long hair and beginning to twist it back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. The motion sharpened her already refined cheekbones and jawline.
She was a good distraction.
I had always relied on clothing and elaborate styling of my hair and face to feel beautiful, but Elaina had no need for that.
It always seemed to take me by surprise how effortlessly pretty she was.
Even like this, with her face clean, her hair haphazardly thrown back, and wearing nothing more than riding trousers and a wrinkled tan tunic that was a size too large for her, she was stunning.
I wasn’t sure if it was jealousy or appreciation that surged in me when I looked at her, but either way it was the most pleasant feeling I’d experienced in hours.
“He won’t come around,” I disagreed, moving to prepare the tonic to help with headaches.
“I’ve already accepted that. Despite being so level-headed when it comes to battle strategies, Kent has always been the biggest grudge holder I know.
Once, he didn’t talk to Rankor for six months because he dented his favorite shield. ”
Elaina chuckled. “It’s always the quiet ones you have to look out for.”
I titled my head in acknowledgement, reaching for the jar of tarragon leaves. “It’s because he’s an empath.”
Elaina frowned her confusion and I shrugged, avoiding her gaze as memories poked at my soul.
“He told me once that there was a girl that he loved who had broken his heart. He knew that she loved him in return because he could feel her emotions, but she still married someone else, and he was devastated. All this time later, and he still hasn’t gotten over it.
Now, he hates his powers. He hates the burden of having to feel and manage everyone else’s emotions.
He hates the expectation of being the emotionally grounded one just because of what he is. ”
Elaina came to my side, looking down over the worktable. “That sounds hard.”
I nodded, peeling off basil leaves from the stem. “That’s all to say that he will not forgive me. Kent doesn’t believe in using your emotions as an excuse for misdeeds because he has to manage thousands of emotions and still manages to always be the responsible one amongst us.”
Elaina sighed, apparently knowing that continuing this conversation would eventually lead to an impossible argument. She’d gotten to know me well enough to know when my stubbornness refused to be negotiated with.
And in that moment, I was very stubborn in my insistence that I didn’t deserve forgiveness.
“Can I help clean?” She asked.
Only Elaina would offer to help clean after spending hours and hours on her feet helping the healers. I waved her off. “You should rest.”
She grinned, tapping a finger against my nose. “You’re too kind.”
“No one has ever accused me of that.”
Elaina fell onto the edge of the small bed and extended her legs in front of her. She lifted her arms high above her head and stretched from side to side, releasing a slight whimper of happiness as she did.
I kept my attention on the task in front of me.
Elaina was quiet for a moment. “Camilla, you know there’s no one correct way to grieve. It’s more than okay for you to be as understanding of your own feelings as you are of others.”
A loud slam sounded as I brought my hand down on the mint leaves in front of me with a heavy slap, releasing their aroma with a bit more force than needed. I didn’t want to be having this conversation.
“How are you handling it?”
Terribly. Impossibly. Not at all and all at once.
What right did I have to feel any grief?
Lorelai died because of me. I gave the order to kill Thea and anyone who got in the way at that party.
“You and Lorelai were friends too,” Elaina reminded me gently.
As if I needed a reminder. As if I didn’t spend every second of every minute of every hour of every day thinking about the way I killed my best friend.
Lorelai had been the only one who had known the truth about how awful my grandmother had been to me. She had let me spend my summers on her father’s estate when I couldn’t bear to go back to Hypatia Manor. She’d held me when I’d broken down sobbing and admitted what the Dragon had been doing to me.
And now Lorelai was gone.
“I feel the need to remind you that you should not hold yourself responsible for something a Goddess manipulated you into doing.”
Elaina stood and pulled me towards her, running hands up and down my arm in comfort. The gesture sent a slight chill down my spine.
I wish it were as simple for me to see myself as she saw me. I wish I could look at my reflection with the same understanding and compassion that she had shown me every day since I’d met her.
“Thank you,” I whispered, meeting her amber eyes, unable to look away.
Her lips quirked into a smile, and I savored it. She was one of the few reasons I managed to get out of bed in the mornings. She was the only person who had shown me any kindness after what I had done.
Well, her and Thea.
Thea may not have forgiven me, not necessarily, but in the days after Thea had helped me escape the castle prison, she’d seemed to understand a bit of what I had been through.
Maybe that was because Thea was the only other one who could truly understand how different the Gods were from the rest of us.
Thea knew better than anyone how powerful and manipulative they could be. She grasped how their magic could influence you without your having the slightest idea.
She even knew how much they could take from you.
They’d taken my friends and her powers.
“What’s wrong?” Elaina asked, running a hand along my cheek.
I shook my head, stepping aside. “I’m just worried about Thea.”
Elaina laughed. “You make it sound as if that’s a surprise to you.”
It was.
“We weren’t exactly friends,” I quipped. “Even without Pasnia’s influence, Thea and I would never have gotten close.”
Elaina’s lips pressed together as if she were suppressing a smile. “I actually think you two are more similar than you realize.”
My fingers stilled on the herbs in my hand, and I glanced up at her with a lifted brow.
“No, we are not.” I chewed on my lip, dropping the herbs before I nervously started tearing off their leaves. “It’s not just normal worries, though. I’ve been having nightmares about the castle too.”
Elaina frowned, stepping towards me and running a hand up and down my back. She nodded gently, encouraging me to continue.
“They’re fragmented,” I told her, frowning as the scenes played out in my mind’s eye.
“Just flashes here and there, but I’ve been dreaming about her every night.
In my dreams, she’s changed. There are little changes like her clothing and how she styles her hair, but bigger things too.
She’s dining with Hyrax and letting Caldrius undress her. ”
Goosebumps raced down my arms as I thought back to my latest nightmare.
Gods, it had felt so real. He had pulled a pin from her hair, and the blonde waves had toppled down around her.
Then, she'd been on her feet in front of him, and he’d been staring at her with such desire as he undid the laces of her gown.
Elaina pulled my hands into hers and began leading me to the bed. With a reassuring smile, she pushed me to sit and bent to help me unlace my boots.
“You should try to rest, Camilla. You’re worried. We all are. No one is sleeping well.”
I rested back in bed and let Elaina pull the covers over me. Maybe she was right. I was overworked and overwhelmed, and my anxieties were simply getting the best of me.
“And you should check on your patients,” I teased halfheartedly. “Don’t waste time worrying about me. I’ll be just fine.”
She tilted her head to the side and tapped the tip of my nose once more. “You are one of my patients. My first and favorite. And my professional recommendation for you is to relax.”
She gave me one last lingering glance before patting my hand affectionately and rising. When the door swung closed behind her, I forced myself to close my eyes. Forced myself to breathe deeply. Forced myself to count to a hundred.
Over and over and over.