Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Thea
Iwas still shaking when the healers came and carried Damon out of the room.
And despite how utterly empty and defeated I felt inside, I was painfully aware of everything all around me.
The birds outside had quieted. A light snow was starting to fall.
The sun had begun to set over the mountains behind the castle.
That damned white cat was pressing its snout against the window.
And inside, everything was still. Everyone in the room focused on me.
Hyrax looked disappointed.
The Monarchs were suspicious.
Caldrius seemed to alternate between the frightening satisfaction he’d earlier shown and the glances of concern he seemed to constantly send my way.
I wondered if their attention was because they were waiting for me to speak again. Did Hyrax want me to return to that chair at his side? Did the Monarchs expect me to make demands of them like my father had?
I couldn’t do any of those things.
I couldn’t do anything but stand here and tremble like a weak little girl.
A powerless girl.
I gathered my skirts in my hands and stood so swiftly that the world spun. I wavered, balance seeming to slip from my grasp, and a hand was suddenly on my elbow.
No.
“You need to calm down,” Caldrius instructed, his eyes imploring me to relax.
If only it were that simple.
The thought of calming my racing heart seemed impossible when I still couldn’t breathe.
Not here.
“I can’t be here.”
This room was cursed.
The blood had been washed away, but I could still see it. It had been everywhere. Kent’s blood. The Dragon’s blood. My own. It had poured from my nose and ears when she’d ripped my magic away from me. I could still feel it sliding down my face even now.
Caldrius’ hand came to cup my cheek, his thumb brushing the skin.
No, the wetness I felt wasn’t blood; it was fresh tears.
I was crying.
“I can’t be here,” I repeated.
Hyrax’s presence was a tangible force. His shadows were everywhere.
“Oh, take her to her room, Caldrius,” Hyrax commanded with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I have no use for her if she insists on being so emotional.”
Caldrius nodded before extending his hand to me. His lips moved, forming the shape of my name, but I couldn’t hear the sound.
And I couldn’t take the hand he offered me.
I lifted my skirts and ran from the room without another word.
Sweat pebbled across the back of my neck and dripped down my spine as I slammed shut the door to my suite. There was an aching pain in my chest from my heart beating too rapidly. Gods, this dress was too tight. The air was too warm. Everything was wrong.
I rushed to the bathing room when a wave of nausea overtook me with blinding fury and quickly emptied the contents of my stomach into the waste bin.
What had I been thinking when I made that deal with Caldrius?
Delusion.
I’d been having delusions of grandeur.
I’d actually believed I was a Goddess, capable of anything. I’d believed I could face Hyrax as an equal.
That was so far from the truth.
Without my powers, I was no one. Nothing.
All that bravery and determination had left me the second my magic had faded from existence, and it had taken with it any chance I’d had of standing against him. I was a prisoner here and I had let them lock me inside.
A violent heave rushed through me, my body erupting into shakes so intense I was sure that my knees would bruise from where I leaned over the cool tub.
“Thea?”
Caldrius.
Of course, he’d followed me here. I couldn’t escape him. I would never escape him, or Hyrax, or this castle. I was going to be trapped in here while Hyrax killed everyone I knew and loved.
He would do it while claiming that all his actions were for me.
It might as well have been my own hand that had summoned those shadows and set them upon Damon.
I had barely been able to stomach watching Hyrax do that to someone who was basically a stranger to me. What if he found Clay or the others? I would rather carve out my own heart than watch him do that to them.
I felt Caldrius’ presence when he entered the bathing chamber without having to turn and look at him. He filled every space he entered. Maybe that was why the servants looked to him as their leader.
Not me.
“Theadora,” he placed a hand on my back, running up and down in a soothing motion. “You need to breathe.”
Breathe. He wanted me to breathe. As if it were just that simple. As if I weren’t desperately gulping down air. Breathing wasn’t the problem. It was that I couldn’t hold on to that air. My body was rejecting air the same way it had rejected my magic.
“I—” I gasped. “I can’t.”
Caldrius wrapped a hand around the nape of my neck and pulled me away from the tub as he sat on the floor next to me. “Yes, you can, Thea. Come on, big breath in.”
Maybe this was death.
Maybe I should have died when Pasnia drained my magic, and it was just now coming back for me. Perhaps that wasn’t the worst thing, though. Surely dying now would be better than watching my friends suffer and knowing it was all my fault.
“You’re having a panic attack,” he explained with a detached sense of clinical assessment, and he pulled me forward until I was basically in his lap. “You need to slow down. Close your eyes.”
His fingertips brushed over my eyelids, drawing them closed.
“Breathe in for a count of four. Good. Now hold it.”
He counted to six before instructing me to exhale, then he leaned away from me and the sound of running water filled the room.
“In for four again.” Caldrius once again wrapped a hand around the back of my neck, only now his fingers were wet with cold water. I jerked slightly at first, but stilled as he wetted his fingers in the bathwater again and then pressed them to my forehead.
“Now exhale.”
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
Breathe in.
Hold.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Hold.
Breathe out.
“Feel better?” he asked when I blinked my eyes open.
He sat on his knees, leaning over me, so close that I could smell the smoky leather scent of his. It overpowered all the other oils and soaps in the bathing room. His hands still lingered on me, one on my shoulder with his thumb pressed into the hollow of my throat, the other around my waist.
“Get away from me!” I shoved him back with a desperate cry.
“Thea.”
“No!” I lifted an accusatory finger, leveling it at him. “You held me in that seat!”
My tears may have dried, and my breathing steadied, but the despair still lingered. The memory clung to me like an oily sheen I couldn’t wipe away from my skin.
“I was trying to protect you.”
“Were you? Or did it make you feel powerful to watch others suffer? Did it make you feel like you were better than them?”
Caldrius' upper lip curled back against his teeth in a snarl. “He’s a God, Thea. I haven’t survived a millennium at his side by openly defying him.”
“Hyrax was killing him!”
Disgusted, I scrambled backward along the floor, needing to put space between us.
My boot snagged on the skirt of my dress, though, and there was a sharp snap of tearing fabric.
Caldrius eyed it warily before standing and offering me a hand.
I stared at it as if it were a poisoned blade pointed directly at me.
It might as well have been.
He was nothing but poison to me.
“You would think that by now I would be used to the feeling of you betraying me,” I mused, not looking away from that hand as I hauled myself to my feet without his help.
Caldrius’ jaw clenched, his eyes darkening in anger. “How many times do I have to beg you to forgive me? How many times do I need to prove that everything I do is for you?”
A scream bubbled in my throat, and I had the sudden urge to lash out. I wanted to force him backwards or send the palace quaking beneath my feet. I wanted to feel that connection to the other souls around me. I wanted to open a portal to somewhere, anywhere other than here.
I wanted my magic more than I wanted my next breath.
Clay had once told me that power stripping—severing a Descendant's connection to their ancestor and removing their powers—was a fate worse than death. I now understood why that was.
“I’m doing everything in my power to convince Hyrax to give you space and time,” Caldrius continued, anger coating his words. “It’s only because of me that he believes you will one day happily accept your role as his heir.”
How many other people in this castle believed that?
How many others believed I had abandoned my principles and my friends? How many believed that I was as vengeful a God as Hyrax was?
My hair snagged as I ran my hands over the crown on my head. My scalp protested unhappily as I ripped at it, tearing it free from the pins that had locked it onto me. “Am I supposed to thank you?”
“Actually?” His brows lifted. “A thank you would be nice!”
I moved without thinking, grasping onto the tiny decorative vase on the counter next to me and launching it at his head. He caught it without flinching.
“Burn in the Underworld!” I screamed, storming out of the room.
“I already have, darling. I’m not inclined to return anytime soon.”
“Stop calling me that!”
I stormed into the parlor, poured myself a glass of whiskey and downed it. The liquor scorched the back of my throat, and I savored that tiny bite of pain.
“You could start by thanking me for saving your friends,” Caldrius hissed, venom leaking into his words as he turned the corner to join me in the parlor.
“Then you could thank me for ensuring Nessira was returned to you. A thank you could be in order for convincing the guards to leave you be. And yes, I certainly deserve a thank you for making sure your recklessness didn’t expose the fact that Hyrax should lock you in a cell and not let you roam around his castle like the enemy to him you are!
Any of those would be more than welcome. ”
I slammed the glass down on the drink cart, spinning to face him with narrowed eyes. “If I had my powers—”