45. Chapter 45
Chapter 45
Viola
R eluctantly, I allow Mace to follow me away from the others.
I summon Shadow back, and he wraps around my neck possessively, face resting between my breasts on the sunfire symbol, his favorite spot. He's something that's made me feel safe and in control since the first time he joined me, a mere shadow there to support me during a battle with a Wendigo. Now he's a pet, a familiar, a living, breathing thing that is still somehow made from the shadows around me.
Mace and I walk in silence for a few minutes, giving us space from the others to have the conversation that has been brewing within the both of us since we stepped into my home in Dalery.
We've done our best to push it down, to ignore the conflicting feelings we both have. Shit, we almost managed to completely avoid it all on the boat when we fucked roughly, and he took utter control of me.
Almost like we were trying to fuck each other out of our systems.
He grabs my arm, and I flinch, hand automatically going to my knife .
"Shit, I'm sorry Viola, I didn't consider…" he trails off.
I do my best to wave it away, tapping my fingers together in an attempt to calm my racing heart.
There are a lot of things about Mace I have done my best to wave away. I have convinced myself that he doesn't hold culpability in the deaths of my parents and Link, but he does. He really, truly does.
When I crushed Ryler's pelvis in Pran and when I killed Angry and Predator in Colris, I was doing what I needed to do.
Just as Mace was doing what he needed to do with the Race.
The justification doesn't make either of us any less of a monster.
"Viola, I…" he starts again, trailing off into silence again.
I don't help him.
He wanted this conversation, and as petty as it is, I'm not going to make it easier on him, even if his use of my first name feels like a slap.
Since I absorbed Avidor's magic, I see things a lot more clearly. Although Blood magic can discern the facts and motivations, Avidor's Influence allows people the freedom to learn their truths without having to take ownership of them.
I've heard Mace say that Influence can't force someone to do anything, it can only enhance feelings they already have, to guide them in a direction they've already considered going. If that's the case, this magic flowing through my veins is guiding me and showing me truths of my own that I have considered long forgotten.
Despite how much I try to hide it and the lies I tell myself, I am starting to care for people again.
Tulip I have reluctantly cared for since the morning after she stumbled upon me. I can see what life would have been like for me if only my parents weren't so single-minded and were more like hers. I want to encourage and protect that part of Tulip that sees the world through forgiving eyes, the exact opposite of how I've been trained to see things.
Plume grew on me slowly, like a creeping vine, and wrapped around me with her lack of judgment and quiet grace. I have never worried that she thinks less of me for the choices I've had to make. On the contrary, she looks beneath the surface of those decisions and sees that my motivations were just, at least in my mind.
Morrow was a surprise. He was a stranger thrown into the mix through no fault of his own but who took it all in stride. He latched himself onto Tulip with no desire but to protect her from everything that this journey was throwing our way. How could I not care for someone who would do anything to protect someone who means the world to me?
And then there is Mace. Mace fucking Nightroot.
The man who I dreamed of killing for years, whose face is etched in my memories as the cause of so much pain.
Mace, who made me a dress with steel woven into it so I could feel beautiful and protected.
Mace, who made sure that every piece of clothing he gave me in Ytopie would hold my blades .
Who sought me out after being beaten, not for comfort, but to warn me of a threat and to keep me safe.
He's always held space for me.
He's always known what I needed. He didn't push me not to go through with the ritual even though it was on the tip of his tongue. He was willing to let decades of hard work go by the wayside to keep me safe.
He has repeatedly flagellated himself over the mistakes he made to get us here. But he has supported me wholeheartedly, believing beyond a shadow of a doubt that I can be the savior Krillium so desperately needs me to be.
Even when I haven't believed it myself.
And sure, there have been secrets and half-truths between us that do not necessarily speak to a good start to a relationship, but that feels so perfectly us. The first time we saw each other in person, he was lying to me, trying to get on my good side to manipulate me.
So what's a little lie between lovers?
The moon is out, shining orange and full and bright overhead. It casts parts of the landscape in shadows, making some of the trees look like sinister fingers reaching out towards me.
But in the middle of it all is Mace.
His black trousers are low-slung on his slender hips, and his feet are bare. Shirtless, his bare chest is delicately corded with muscles that do not scream brutality but instead whisper strength. His hair has been growing, and it's flicking into his bright green eyes with every movement of his head. Shadows are cast on the angles of his face, highlighting the severe and sinister beauty I cannot seem to get out of my mind. And he stares at me with the intensity of a thousand suns, his eyes burning with the words he wants to say and all of them he cannot.
I have never seen anything more beautiful.
I've asked myself hundreds of times if I could ever feel anything like what I felt for Link again.
If I was even worthy of it.
And the question still remains on the latter, but the former is becoming abundantly clear to me.
I can feel that way again.
And maybe I already do.
"I acted rashly," he says quietly, breaking the silence. His hands are in his pockets, thumbs sticking out, a posture I can read as a way of hiding how nervous he feels.
He's not alone. My fingers tap out a soothing rhythm against my collarbones. "About what?" My voice is scratchy with the pressure of restrained emotions.
"I don't want whatever is between us to be over, Viola. I… my numen, you are so important to me." His eyes lock on mine. "I will take whatever you can offer me, and I won't push for more."
His words wash over me like a cool breeze in the sticky night, and my fingers still. Before I can respond, he holds up his hand.
"Let me continue, please. If you speak, I may lose my nerve."
He runs his hands through his hair, doing his best to push it off his forehead. It falls back down immediately. "You've shown me who you truly are from the moment I laid eyes on you. I've known what is within you. You don 't hide it well." I chuckle quietly. "You have always been a brutal force to be reckoned with. A gorgeous nightmare to those who cross you."
"A nightmare?" I can't help but interrupt.
"Without a doubt. You haunt dreams, and people fear you. As they should. You do not allow people to get away with wrongs the way others would. And that includes me." He takes a step closer to me, and I don't back up, allowing him into my air. "Forgiveness was never explicitly offered from you. You offered understanding. And I was too blinded by my guilt to accept that forgiveness wasn't necessary because it could never be achieved. I know now that my refusal to accept that offered understanding hurt you and hurt us. It made you want to keep me out of the loop in Pran. I know you trust me, but you didn't trust me with that darkness within you."
He's right. I wasn't sure how he would react to seeing me at my worst. At seeing the ruthless part of me that doesn't shy away from a fight to get what she wants.
"I was so scared when you went missing, numen. I thought about all the things left unsaid between us, the way we left things in Pran. And then the next morning, I… I fucked up."
The conversation we had where I came clean about my meetings with Himureal and what I saw in Stone's blood, after which he pushed me away and said he was done with me, hasn't left the forefront of my mind since it happened.
"I was about to tell you everything," I say, my voice barely above a whisper .
"What do you mean?" Another step towards me.
"I was going to tell you that I am flawed and broken. That I am growing but may never fully be who you need me to be." It's my turn to step towards him now, our bodies not touching but achingly close. "That I feel my walls cracking around you. How grateful I am that you've only ever seen the good in me and never made me feel like a tool only to be used for the greater good."
His hand finds my hip, and he closes the remaining distance between us, my chest tightly against his. "Even if I couldn't admit it to myself, I could never see you as such." His breath is warm across my face, and his head barely has to tilt down to look at me.
"I wanted to tell you that I am ready to try for you and that I think, in my own way, I could love you."
The words hang between us, heavy with meaning and vulnerability. I feel his breath hitch, his chest stop moving as the words settle themselves around his shoulders, sinking into him like they're trying to reach his soul.
His mouth descends on mine, desperate and full of longing. His hand moves to the base of my neck and grasps those newly white strands, pulling me ever closer to him.
When he breaks from my mouth, his chest heaving from the effort, I notice in the glow of the moon a shining in the corner of his eyes. His face is so expressive, and I can read every feeling he has under his skin. But still, he gives those feelings a voice.
"I love you, Viola. I think I have loved you from the moment you picked yourself back up after your parents left you in the Race. I told myself I was fascinated with your potential, but that's not it at all because I tried to believe that when you first came off that elevator. You have changed me, down to my very core, written yourself into everything that makes me me, and I will never be able to extract you. Every breath you take gives me air in a world determined to take it from me."
I feel it then, that creeping emotion that was threatening to break through the ground I buried it in, bursting through the surface like vines, blossoming and wrapping around me. I can see it in his eyes, hear it in his words, feel it in the way his fingertips press into me.
"My numen, everything I am, everything I could be, is yours. We were not written in the stars. We were written in fear and trauma and blood, and we found each other anyways."
This time, I close the gap between our lips, I pull him closer, and I press myself against him so tightly there is no air between us. I kiss him hungrily, my lips parting immediately on instinct, my tongue pushing into his mouth to tangle with his. My arms are around his neck, his hands now both firmly on my hips, and it doesn't feel like enough anymore.
His words call to a long-forgotten part of me that can love with my whole being.
He loves me.
He loves me even though he's seen me torture a man and murder others.
He loves me even though I am stubborn and angry, and I hide from my feelings.
He loves me despite, or maybe even because, I will forever be planning for what can go wrong next.
"You don't have to say it back," he mumbles against my lips, pulling barely a breath away from our kiss.
The gentle forgiveness if I don't in his voice buoys my heart. "I know I don't." He leans to close the distance between our lips again, and I stop him, opening my mouth to speak as soon as his lips are on mine. "I know I don't have to. But I will. I love you, Mace Nightroot. And it may never be obvious or consuming or loud, but it's there. It will always be there."
And as we kiss again, no lightning cracks in the distance and that blissful silence is everything.