58. Henry
HENRY
I have died many times, but I’ve never felt pain like I do now.
When Holly passed, I felt responsible, but I can’t imagine carrying this burden as Harlow does. I cannot fathom her grief, even as I can feel it swirling around her. I sweep her into my arms and walk back to sit on the bench.
With this one heartbreaking confession, every single thing about Harlow suddenly makes sense—the brutal, unforgiving violence toward abusers, the single-minded rage focused on Rafe Mattingly, and the barely veiled contempt for her parents.
I’ve lived my life on the edge of boiling over, but this kind of wrath feels cleansing, holy. I want to bathe the world in Rafe Mattingly’s blood—present Harlow his head like some macabre centerpiece.
When Kellan showed me Aidia’s grave last night, I was so angry at Harlow for using my own heartbreak against me. I felt like a fool, and I was stunned by her cruelty. But this is unimaginable.
I blame myself for Holly’s death in a relational way, but Harlow is so traumatized by her forced responsibility that she made herself forget it even happened.
I think of her in her rain-soaked nightgown, sleepwalking on the balcony railing, and it all makes so much sense now.
When I saw her scar and then again when I raised my hand in the boarding house and she flinched, I knew there was more to her. I wanted to know then, but I knew better than to outright ask another survivor where their fear came from.
She is more than a knife. More than a pawn to be played in someone else’s scheme for vengeance. Beneath the prickly exterior, Harlow is wounded in the most horrifying, humanizing way.
She blinks away the tears and meets my gaze, and her fear hits me in a wave. “Am I mad?”
Her voice is so small. This version of her is so incongruent with the woman who has been trying to find a creative way to kill me for weeks.
I shake my head, sliding my hands up to cup her face. “Love is a kind of madness, but you’re no more mad than the rest of us. You’re just heartbroken. Losing a sister is like being cut in two. If you can’t heal the fracture, it stays with you and it messes with your mind.”
I try to settle her by stroking her jaw with my thumbs, but she’s too agitated to sit still.
In all the times I’ve spent with her, there have been so few moments where I could use my influence on her, and now her impenetrable defense makes so much more sense.
The more emotionally closed off a person is, the less malleable they are to Polm’s blessing.
Now she’s full of hooks and frayed ends.
I could easily soothe her, but I think that she’s been soothing herself too long.
Everything is too pent up, and it needs to come out.
“Grief is a strange thing,” I say. “I can’t tell you how many times I thought I saw Holly in a crowd.”
She shakes her head, her eyes manic. “But have you had full conversations with her? Have you sworn you could feel her hand in your hair? Have you been certain? Or did you immediately remember that she was gone?”
“You’re not mad,” I assure her.
“The well is making my father mad,” she says. “It’s not just not healing and revitalizing. It’s making him more volatile. I have been in those waters. What if I’m mad too?”
It was obvious that there was something she wasn’t saying before, but I’m thrown by this admission.
“Do you think he wants the Mountain Well?”
She throws her hands up and paces across the white stone. “I can’t begin to know his motivations, Henry. He’s going mad. I have only survived this long by knowing how to read him in the moment.”
I stand and grip her shoulders to steady her, and she blinks up at me with tear-stained cheeks. “Let’s worry about one thing at a time. Let’s get you out of here and we can skip dinner?—”
“What happened when you died?”
Her question knocks the wind out of me. Last time, I’d assumed it was meant to throw me, but now I can see it’s a question born of fear and grief.
I want to find Rafe Mattingly and kill him in the slowest, most painful way possible.
I’m suddenly glad I’m well-versed in dying.
It’s given me a great inventory to pull from.
“That night when I fell in with the Breeder, I wasn’t asking you that to annoy you,” she says softly. “I think some subconscious part of me was asking because I wonder where I sent her. I think maybe part of me died that day, too.”
I’ve spent the last ten years trying to forget everything about my many deaths, just for the sake of my sanity. For the first time, I wish I could remember something that might bring her comfort.
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember. It was just pain, darkness, then pain and light and I was back.” I take a deep breath and shake my head. “I’m so sorry that he did that to you. He’ll never do it again.”
She looks over her shoulder, like Rafe might be waiting there for her. “You don’t understand—he could control you. He could make you do the same thing. You have no idea how it feels.” Fresh tears stream down her cheeks. I hate seeing this brave woman scared out of her mind.
“Harlow, I’ll be damned if I let him control me, and he can’t kill me.”
She searches my face. “Because of?—”
“Yes, because of what I am. Because my parents have thought of the many ways that people could use their Divine blessings to harm me. Because, despite what Carter said to you that night in the holding cells, he compelled me to kill myself. Unlike other methods of death, it seems when I meet one magical end, that magic can’t be used on me again. ”
Harlow trembles—a mixture of fear and sorrow coming off of her in waves. “I’m so sorry.”
I squeeze her shoulder. “The difference was consent, Harlow. I asked him to do that as a favor to my parents, who were sick with grief. Rafe took something from you. ”
She wipes her eyes and extricates herself from my grip. “I need to move. I can’t think clearly here.”
The wind stirs her hair as she glances at the memorial and turns back toward the patio.
There are so many more questions pressing at my mind, but I’m afraid to ask.
I rush to catch up with her, afraid to say anything else until we’re out of her parents’ domain.
They’re out all day at various gatherings at the high houses, but they will be back in a few hours and they’re expecting us to have dinner with them.
All I want to do is get her as far from here as possible.
We emerge from the garden, and Harlow walks across the patio and rips the back door open. It slams against the wall with a loud bang, but she just storms inside.
I can barely keep up with her as she turns down hallways until we finally end up in what looks like a study.
There’s a large, ornately carved fireplace with a roaring fire and a painting of Harrick and Liza hanging above it.
On the far side of the room, the faint glow of sunstones on the side patio casts shadows over a large wooden desk topped with crystal water glasses, a glass lantern, a stack of ledgers, and several unopened letters.
Beside the deck is what looks like a three-dimensional model of the city.
The gates are all marked, as are the fallback points for each quadrant.
Harlow paces back and forth. “I just needed one room that didn’t make me think of her. We never spent any time in here. It’s my father’s study.”
I stare at the painting of her parents. “Why didn’t your parents stop Rafe?”
I don’t mean to say it, but it slips out. I’m not even trying to drive a wedge between her and her family anymore. This is already above and beyond just some power struggle between our families.
“They weren’t home,” she says absently.
I frown. “They didn’t have guards who were tasked to protect you? Gaven?”
She pauses and cocks her head to the side, like she’s trying to remember. Slowly, the concentration on her face gives way to shock.
“Could he have compelled them and the guards?” I ask.
I have my suspicions, but I want Harlow to get there on her own. She’s already been through so much in these few short minutes, and I’m worried more hard truths will shatter the woman I thought unbreakable.
Harlow rubs the back of her neck. “I don’t think so.
Rafe is powerful, but that would be a lot of people to overcome very quickly, and even so, Gaven was chosen because he had an immunity to Divine magic—” She blinks up at me with wild eyes as the revelation hits her.
“He would have been immune to the compulsion.”
“Is he ever so far from you that he wouldn’t have realized Rafe was in the house?”
She shakes her head. “I think he was worried I would kill Rafe and start a war between our families, so he was always very aware of our interactions.” She presses a hand to her chest. “Gaven knew. He let it happen.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Does anything happen in this house your parents don’t allow? I have to imagine violence against one or both of their daughters could only happen if?—”
I fall silent at the recognition in her eyes.
“If they allowed it,” she whispers.
Her face morphs from wide-eyed shock to confusion, then is drawn down by grief, until it finally settles on anger. “How could they? Why would they? Aidia gave them access to Rafe—a way to keep tabs. Why would they give it up?” She rubs her temples. “Why would they let him hurt both of us?”
Her whole body is trembling, breaking under the weight of her rage.
“Tell me where it hurts. Tell me and I’ll take it away,” I say.
She tears across the study and shoves me so hard I hit the wall behind me. She glares up at me, her palms pressed to my scarred chest, her face a mix of fury and grief.
I know this feeling—the powerlessness, the anger clawing its way out. This is what I want from her. I need her to know this—that I am a safe place to be angry.
“You can’t,” she gasps.
“I have to try.”