Ash
Chapter twenty-six
Fallyn said she wanted to go for a walk alone, claiming she needed to clear her head and get some space.
It was adorably naive of her to think I wouldn’t follow along unseen.
For protection, I reminded myself. She strode through the trees, veering off the path.
Suspicion growing, I concealed myself amidst the darkness and slunk behind her.
The glade she found herself in was small and serene with grass up to her knees.
She glanced behind her, then to each side looking for an intruder. Me.
I bit down on my chuckle, knowing if I made too much noise, I’d give myself away. The bough I’d poised myself in was sturdy enough, though I’d rather not chance it by laughing too much.
Fallyn knelt in the shaded, grassy grove with her green magic floating in shimmering tendrils around her, perfectly accenting the green in her eyes, the serenity on her face unlike anything I’d seen her wear before.
She was lit up from within. Her dark hair cascaded like a dark waterfall over the soft slope of her shoulders.
Not for the first time did I wonder how someone so slight could have the capacity for such viciousness when she wanted.
The memory of her glare back at my long-abandoned estate when she first woke up made my lips turn upwards almost fondly.
“You can’t keep me here.” Her snarl betrayed no lie, the way her eyes casually had hunted for a weapon to use against me. “I won’t be kept like a pet. And you should know, I bite.”
Damn me to the depths of Tartarus if she sank her teeth into me.
Damn me for knowing I would relish her brand of violence.
She was a fierce thing when she wanted to be, I knew. The image of her straddling me, that dagger at my throat came to mind, forcing me to shift position and banish the thought, at least until later. It was almost hard to reconcile that girl with the gentle calm of this one.
She was the darker side of sweetness.
Concealed comfortably from my veil of shadows in the trees, I watched, enraptured, as she placed her hands in the dirt and pushed with her magic. The ground pulsed, the vibration palpable even from up here. Flowers leaned toward her, as if they couldn’t get enough. Then she made the flowers bloom.
Roses, gardenias, and a dozen other flowers I had no knowledge of sprouted tentatively at first, but with her hands in the soft earth and another pulse of magic, they grew strong.
Petals curled outwards as if to greet her, until the ground was alive with splashes of vivid color.
She smiled at them in turn, not boastful, not triumphant.
It was gentle, the way she lovingly tended to each of her creations.
As though she coaxed life up from the dirt not because it made her proud to do so, but because she thought it deserved to be alive.
I blinked. Not only at her magic that she’d been holding out on me, but the spark of quiet contentment, something I doubted I’d see with her if she knew I was there.
A pang rattled me, starting in my chest before reaching to my core—sharp and foreign.
I’d seen power used to wound, to instill fear.
My own shadows did so at my will. I commanded my magic to inflict, to injure, and to terrify.
My magic had but one purpose: to destroy anyone that came between me and revenge.
But her magic—this was creation, life without demand. Without stipulations. Gods above, it was—I searched for the right word a long moment before settling on the one that fit most — haunting.
This moment would haunt me in the most beautiful, still way until the moment I ceased to exist. And possibly after that.
As she brushed a stray wave from her face, I watched the gentle magic that had no rage, no force, no command, and yet anchored me to my spot the very same.
It was my opposite in every way. Where she was life in human form, I was death incarnate.
Even my own shadows rustled within me, like reeds in a gentle breeze.
My chest tightened, a sickening reminder that I could feel.
That there were times when sometimes I wanted to feel.
It was in that tranquil, quiet, terrible moment I felt the first crack in the fortress that made up my chest. More flowers followed, a cascade of blue, green, and yellow.
She smiled softly, so utterly unaware of me.
Without any idea how utterly shaken I was.
I gritted my teeth, shoving hard at those thoughts, banishing them with a low snarl.
She’d never know.
I’d never admit it.
Even as I turned to leave, my feet refused to unplant themselves. I was stuck in a moment of ruin I couldn’t escape.
Her face changed. I stilled, waiting to be caught.
But she didn’t.
Her face fell from joyous to surprised, and then to a look I knew far too well—a bone-deep sadness.
I didn’t know when her tears started. I watched, a silent sentinel as her mood dipped. Her hands were buried in the soft earth that caught her tears as the fell. What was it that had occurred to her? One tower of floral vines grew tall, then another. One by one, the petals opened and grew.
“One for you, Father. Blue, for your favorite color.” Her whispered words almost didn’t reach me, but the breeze was determined to share her secrets.
Blue flowers the color of the deep ocean wound higher, challenging the lower boughs of the trees.
“I’ll never forget. I’ll keep running. I love you.
” The blow hit me hard, her devastation leeching into me, burrowing under my skin against my will.
Every flower, every bloom a testament to her father’s memory.
I recoiled, seeing the other floral structure she’d erected.
Thaddeus’s.
“Did you know I always loved how golden your eyes were?” She wiped her face before coaxing the petals to full bloom.
She whispered their names into the wind where they may be carried forever.
“I’ll never forget you. What you did. You shouldn’t have done it, Thaddeus.
I would have gladly died with you if it meant you weren’t alone.
” Perhaps she did love him. The thought was rancid and slick and coated my throat like bile.
“Father. Thaddeus.” She choked on a hiccuping sob. “Goodbye.”
I hated myself for the dark possessiveness that had me in its thrall, begging me to rip Thaddeus from her mind, from her heart.
The hatred when she’d looked at me after he’d perished.
My hands dug painfully into the bark of the trees, both to anchor myself there, and to help shove my thoughts, every feeling drenched in darkness to the back of my mind where they could do little to harm me, let alone her.
Her words were soft yet had the weight to stir the grove itself. My hand twitched, aching to reassure her. To hold her. Wipe her tears. But even I wouldn’t dare intrude on the delicate spell of solitude she’d crafted so beautifully. I wouldn’t take that from her, nor could I bear to.
She couldn’t burn them in the pyres, but she could mourn them in her magic. In this grove. In this moment.
Reality barreled into me with the force of all the realms, a cosmic collision of realization—that protecting her might never be enough.
Because seeing her courage, her quiet devotion, the softer side of the girl who bared her teeth at me, I was unravelling—coming undone.
It would never be enough simply to break the curse with Fallyn.
To protect her. I wanted her to want me.
Need me. I wanted to haunt her every thought and notion until she was empty of everything that wasn’t me.
I would lurk in every dark corner of her mind, a twisted obsession, an obscurity she started to need every bit as much as she needed to breathe.
If she needed a monster to stand between her and the world, I would happily take up the charge.
I needed her to be mine.
Just as badly, I realized as my heart quickened in my chest, I wanted to be hers too.
Fallyn was an enigma crafted from tenderness and strength.
She was everything I’d never be worthy of.
She was the softness of a flower petal at times, everything golden and brought up in the light.
Her fierceness was a practice in lethality and beauty, the perfect duality edged in a sharpness that would be my undoing.
Perhaps that was what I deserved.