40. Chapter 40
Chapter 40
Mace
A s soon as the words leave my mouth, I want to bring them back, swallow them down, and tell her it was all a mistake.
The look on her face is as if I slapped her.
She looks different with the cold, white hair that cascades down her shoulders in wavy strands, like a blanket of snow that fell in the wake of her trauma. But her face is the same.
She is still Viola Mistflow.
But one glance at her blackened fingers, the little sunfire that peeks out of the delicate 'v' shape of her shirt, shows me she is not.
Not in the way she was when I first met her. She is Viola Mistflow, but she is also something more.
Even now, being so close to her, I can feel the raw power that rolls off of her. I know she has no idea how to harness or use any of it, but she is still the most powerful person on the land right now outside of Himureal.
It's happening so fast that we've not had the time to talk through anything we have needed to work through. The conversation we avoided on the boat, the words she hurled at me in Pran, watching her all but butcher those two men last night.
And then she tells me she's known that Stone murdered my parents, and she's kept it from me?
I'm here, eating myself alive with guilt for knowing what Stone did to her parents, but I tell her, I answer any question she has, I prostrate myself before her to beg for forgiveness for the role I played. All the while, she sits there, holding onto this knowledge, and just decides she doesn't need to tell me.
We're very different people, that is for sure.
And her meeting up with Himureal, not telling anyone the danger she's put us all in? What in the world is that about? Despite what she may think, she is not immune to manipulation, and she's walking right into the arms of the person we're fighting so hard to stop.
Even now, as upset as she is at the impact of my words, I do not see a flash of guilt in her face. She may have gotten some of Avidor's calm and temperance, but that doesn't change the fact that even before all this magic entered her, she was cold and calculating. It is a survival instinct, but it has still soaked into her bones, and now it can't be cut out.
Standing slowly and stepping towards her, I'm not surprised when she flinches back. The movement seems to have ripped her out of a kind of trance, and I watch as she builds that cool mask of indifference into her features once more.
"Fine."
That one word, dripping with disdain, is all I need to hear to know that I made the right choice. If she can't even begin to see my side of things, how could we even begin to survive all of the trials that are sure to befall us?
She won't fight for whatever we could be. She won't even be honest with me about how she's feeling even now. How can we expect anything to grow between us if there is no honesty?
I push past her and head to the cave, my head spinning and my chest aching. She stays behind, and try as I might to not look over my shoulder at her, I do when I see a bolt of lightning arc across the sky. Her body is vibrating with energy, and if I squint, I can see small gold flecks of magic swirling around her. But that's the only look I allow myself before I move to duck into the cave.
Morrow sees me coming and doesn't let me enter. He grabs my arm and pulls me past the entrance, further away from Viola.
"Out with it, Nightroot. Your face is loud, but I need to hear it from your mouth."
"Fuck, Morrow," I whisper, leaning against a rock and burying my face in my hands. "She's known that Stone killed my parents since the ritual. She kept it from me." The desire to tell him about her clandestine meetings with Himureal teeters on the tip of my tongue, but for some reason, I don't want to reveal that to anyone else. I'm not sure if it's that I like having a secret with her or I'm afraid of our companion's reactions. If I tell them, she may never get left alone, and the idea of caging her to us like an animal doesn't sit right with me.
Morrow's dark eyes are soft despite the tick in his jaw and the tight cross of his arms. "That's brutal, Mace. But is that really what has you so fucked up?"
"I told her there couldn't be anything between us any longer."
He whistles lowly, shaking his head. "You mean that? We all see how you look at her. You love her."
"I don't. I can't. Not until she's honest with me. I don't know who she is. She's full of secrets and half-truths hidden behind a pretty face."
"You're right, you don't know who she is." Morrow leans against the rock beside me. "But she doesn't know who she is." I glance at him from the corner of my eye. "Let's look at it holistically, yeah? She was a human running a Race for a chance at a normal, comfortable life. During the Race, she gets attacked by a man she slept with, finds out her parents are murderers, and then becomes one herself."
I wince at the idea of him calling her a murderer. Yes, she killed Amio, but that asshole deserved it.
He ignores my flinching and continues. "Then she was attacked by a Wendigo and harnessed magic for the first time, and oh yeah, her best friend died. She finally gets to Ytopie and finds out the parents she was looking for are dead. And that boyfriend everyone told her was dead but that she thought could potentially be alive? Well, he made it to Ytopie, but yep, he's dead now too."
My chest aches with the stark reminder of the trauma I've caused her burning me up inside. "I get it, Morrow."
He holds out a hand to stop my words. "I don't think you actually do. Where was I?" He taps his hand on his temple. "Oh yes. Hey, by the way, Viola, now that you're here, did you know you have magic that has been extinct, so no one really knows how to handle it? Oh, and we need you to potentially die to save magic and, subsequently, the world. And also, did I mention I'm attracted to you, and so is my brother?"
I hadn't thought about Zeph in a while, but there it is, more guilt at the way I let him fall from grace. At this rate, the guilt I am collecting will allow no room for any other emotion.
"So she does the ritual, and oh shit, it works; here's the God who's supposed to save us all. Only no, he feels possessive of her and talks about ridding the world of the rest of the Gods, so she runs off with a stranger, the woman who she's clung to during trauma, the best friend of the man who just lost his fucking mind, and the man she slept with once."
"Stop, Morrow, I was there. I don't need you to tell me all of this."
"Actually, I think you fucking do, Mace." His finger pushes into my chest. "She was in a little happy bubble with you despite everything until we get to her home, and then she's a fucking wreck remembering everything awful that has happened to her, and she's thrown back into her raw, unhealed trauma and yet is still trying. She's still buying you a weapon with the same name as you because she wanted you to have something nice, and she loved the stupid joke of it. She painstakingly picked out blades for you. And still, you wanted more from her. You stood up on a boat and announced her as their savior, and she didn't fucking kick your ass. Even though you deserved it."
She slept with me. She pushed the feelings aside but still showed me affection in the only way she could.
"You never gave her a choice of how she presented herself to the world, you just forced her to be the hope of Krillium." Morrow continues, and I'm aware that his voice is getting louder, no doubt calling the attention of Tulip and Plume. Viola is still practicing with lightning, so at least she is spared this mortification of my dressing down. "The only friend she had almost fucking died on that boat and took her with her. And yet she still fought off a fucking minotaur and announced to a crowd of people she was going to work to save them. She accepted the role you thrust upon her and moved towards helping others. She harmed someone in getting the amulet, sure, but she left him alive. She did what she had to do to save Krillium, and once again, that wasn't fucking enough for you. You still picked at her, unwilling to accept what she could give you, and then what? She hurt your feelings? By telling you the truth?"
Morrow is now taking things I've confided in him and throwing them in my face. It's like this has been building forever, simmering beneath the surface of his skin. I had no idea he felt so much dedication to Viola.
"And then we get here, and she almost immediately gets brutalized. You realize that's what that was, right?" He grabs me by my chin and forces me to look him in the eye. "They were trying to rape her, Mace." The image of her, bloody and nearly naked, fills my head .
Who would she have become had they succeeded?
With a soft voice full of worry, Morrow adds, "They cut her fucking hair off, Mace. They tried to ruin her. And she still fought her way through. She didn't kill indiscriminately. She got the information we came here for. And she's still standing." He shakes his head. "Would you be? Would any of us?"
I look up, and Tulip is now standing behind Morrow, tears running down her face. She must have been talking to him more than we've realized because some of this information only could have come from her. I didn't realize how far my head had been up my ass.
He looks at me with disdain, shaking his head so those thick braids move. "So forgive me, Mace, if I don't feel sympathy over the fact she kept your parent's murder from you. Forgive me if I don't give a fuck that you don't think she knows who she is. Would you know who you were? If you went through everything she has, holding the magic of three Gods inside you, could you be balanced? Could you be open and honest with your feelings?"
"No, I don't think I could," I whisper, hanging my head. "I didn't think about it all holistically."
"That's right," Tulip says softly, "you didn't. You've thought about yourself. About how her feelings are too hard to read, her forgiveness too hard to earn. She's tried. She pushed a lot of her blame towards you away, and it's not enough for you." Her tears rain down her cheeks, making tracks in the light layer of dust she gained while sleeping on the ground of the cave.
"She's not enough for you as she is, that's clear. And that's your loss, Mace. But don't you fucking dare put any more pressure on her shoulders. Viola has been tasked with saving us all, and I'll be damned if you task her with managing feelings you're too emotionally immature to handle at fucking seventy years old." Tulip's voice is full of venom now, the normally gentle and sunny expression on her face hardened.
"I get it," I mutter, pushing off the rock. "Shit, I get it. I'm a goddamn monster, and I don't deserve her. I get that's how you all see this. But she doesn't want more with me, and I need more. She's walled herself off to me, and I need to protect myself."
"Do what you need to do, Mace." Tulip is crowding me now, her voice quiet, and I cannot imagine Viola doesn't see us and wonder what is going on. "But don't you dare make her feel bad about what she has to do to survive. I am devastated over what she did to Ryler, but that's on me to process, not her. We gave her a job, and she's doing it. We can't complain about how it gets done."
I look between the two of them sadly, their twin frustrations bleeding from their skin. My shoulders slump, the weight of their disapproval too much to bear. I can't look at them when I speak next.
"I don't hate her. I couldn't hate her. You know that. And I don't even blame her for the things she does." I push out what I had hoped would be a cleansing breath, but all it is is a tearless sob that rattles my chest. "But it doesn't mean I have to put my heart on the line with someone who can' t reciprocate."
And with that, I head into the cave to gather my things for a day of hunting down a journal with people I would prefer not to see at all.