Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ophelia
The rose scent of the candle I’d lit brightened the early afternoon and my spirit with it.
Propping open my second book of the day, I nestled into a chair in my office.
The table was strewn with stacks of books on the Angels and what lore we were allowed to study of the other six clans.
From the Mindshapers’ meditative therapy to the Seawatchers’ Isla Trysva—their version of our Undertaking—I was determined to absorb as much information as possible in order to figure out what I was meant to unite.
Empty dishes dotted the space between my notes, remnants of the past two days. Aside from training and war councils, I’d barely left the room.
I thumbed through the opening pages of Legacies of Deities, settling into the introduction.
It spoke of the Angels in life and theorized where they may have come from given they were the first warriors.
By the time it summarized their ascension to the heavens, the candle was burning low, afternoon fading toward dusk.
They were power solidified within the body, blood threaded with pure ether and bones riddled with bits of magic.
The seven former warriors became something other, never before seen, and were gifted beyond imagination.
When they ascended, the Angels left pieces of themselves behind, tendrils to be found within their descendants and fossilized—
Glass shattered somewhere outside.
“What in the Spirits?”
I tore from the room.
Voices rose from the second-floor landing, and with a rocketing heart rate, I recognized two of them.
When I rounded the corner, it took me a moment to figure out what I was seeing.
Malakai threw himself at Tolek, who caught him, slamming back into the wall. Frames rattled, and a bust of some warrior—I didn’t know who—crashed from its pedestal to the ground.
Tol brought his fist into Malakai’s side. It looked like more of an effort to ward him off than to injure him.
“Tell me the truth!” Malakai shouted. He swung a fist into Tolek’s jaw, a spray of blood flying from Tol’s mouth. The droplets arched through the air, landing at my feet, tainting the white marble.
Through the swelling lip, Tol yelled, “I don’t know what the fuck you want me to say!”
Malakai grabbed his shoulders, pulled him forward, then shoved him into the wall. “Tell me what’s been going on with you two!”
You two? Who—what?
The only person I’d seen enrage Malakai to anywhere near this level was Barrett, but there couldn’t be anything going on between Tolek and the prince.
No, I’d know if something worth this was going on. But who could Malakai feel so strongly for that it was worth fighting his oldest friend?
The only possible answer came to me in a crushing wave, drowning out the blows and shouts.
One bout of life-changing shock as I understood.
Cyph ran up the stairs. When he met my gaze, it was clear he already knew what was going on. Maybe he’d known for some time, and I was the only one who had yet to figure it out.
Me. This fight was over me.
Malakai pulled his fist back again, but before he could land the blow, Cyph locked both of his arms behind his back. “Knock it the fuck off, Malakai!”
“You’re supposed to be my friend!” Malakai raged, voice cracking. “But you can’t even tell me the truth.”
“There’s nothing to fucking tell you.” Tolek spat more blood onto the tiles. “Nothing ever happened.”
“I’m not an idiot—”
“That’s enough!” I shouted.
They ceased, chests heaving. Neither had noticed my arrival. Tol’s jaw was crusted with blood, his lip swollen. Malakai’s shirt was torn, an angry bruise blooming across his ribs.
But the injuries didn’t compare to the looks in their eyes.
Malakai’s stare was a rotten mixture of betrayal and fury, pupils blown and crazed.
And Tol…Tol’s face was etched with shattering vulnerability, slow blinks trying to hide the devastation.
It took everything in me to stand still, to not automatically go to him and work away the hopelessness forming.
It was because of those looks that I swallowed my anger and tried to adopt my most level tone. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but you’re both being absolute idiots.” I clearly didn’t do a good job.
In the span of three minutes, my world had been cracked open, the insides swirled about. The truth of why they fought…Spirits, my heart thudded.
Santorina arrived and began wiping the blood from Tol’s face with a damp cloth.
“You.” I pointed at Tolek. “Go with Rina. I’ll speak to you shortly.” I turned to Malakai. “You. Follow me.”
Blood roared in my ears with each step I took back down the hallway and into a room at random, dust coating the empty table and shelves. Mystlight flared over us, but aside from a small fireplace and sitting area, I barely noticed the furnishings.
I was too busy trying to convince myself not to punch Malakai.
I shut the door behind him, gripping the knob until my bones ground against the metal, counting my breaths, trying to speak as calmly as possible. “Are you going to explain what that was?”
Though I was certain of the answer, I wanted him to have to explain his actions.
“Are you?” Malakai snapped from the fireside.
Shock rocked through me. “What?”
“That was over you.” Twisting to face me, he winced and held a hand to his side where the bruise was getting darker. “Are you going to tell me?”
“You’re being an ass, Malakai,” I groaned, rubbing my eyes.
“How long has something been going on with you two?”
“What in the Angel-damned hell do you think is going on?” I roared. “And why do you think it would give you any right to attack him?”
He seethed silently, pacing, feet dragging across the faded rug.
“What do you think is happening?” I repeated calmly, trying to placate the anger simmering off of him.
He worked his jaw back and forth. “What’s between you and Tolek?”
His anger was misplaced—so fucking misplaced because I’d never so much as kissed Tolek Vincienzo in my entire life. And even if I had done so in the weeks since we broke up, who was Malakai to say anything of it?
“Nothing,” I growled. The irony was that until he’d thrown a fit, I didn’t have any hint that anything suspicious was happening.
“Truly? Because I’ve seen the way you look at each other. Even before we broke up, there was always something different about the way you two interacted.”
“What are you saying?”
He shoved his hands through his hair with a groan. “You two were—are—like planets. Always rotating in each other’s orbits, like it’s a natural instinct you can’t avoid. It got worse, too, since I was gone. You always turn to him, and you expect me to believe you didn’t notice? I’m not stupid.”
“Well, you could have fooled me right now.”
Tolek and I had always existed like two parts of a whole. Explanations unnecessary, reckless abandon indulged without question, tears shed without embarrassment.
But nothing had ever happened. We had never acted on the charged chemistry thrumming between us, causing an inherent form of communication. I didn’t even know if Tolek felt it, too, or if I had made it up.
“Tol and I are close. We understand each other on a deeper level, as you and I have.” Had.
His entire frame drooped, and I realized too late the implication of that comparison. “What happened when I was gone, Phel?”
“What happened?” Every minute of those two years rushed through me at once, every slice of longing, every shard of heartbreak.
And with it my control snapped. “I broke—that’s what happened.
You were the brightest star in my life for eighteen years, the point around which my world revolved, but that’s unhealthy for anyone.
Because when you lose your polestar, you have nothing left. ”
“So, it’s my fault? Because I signed the treaty and gave myself over, it gives you the right to be with my best friend?”
The fire cast shadows on him, and I briefly wondered if that was how it felt to be in his head. All dark past and dimmed hope.
I tempered my anger a little.
“It’s no one’s fault.” I ran my hands through my hair, calming myself further. Malakai was angry and healing. That’s why he lashed out. “I’m not with him, but even if I was—like you said, you left. Had you expected me to live out the rest of my days alone?”
Instinctually, I wrapped my fingers around the Bind, almost willing it to kick back to life to assure me that we had had something special when we received it. That passion hadn’t just been a figment.
Malakai averted his gaze, toying with the cuff of his sleeve, and that avoidance broke my resolve.
“This is simply how things are, Malakai. For so long, I was blinded by the light you brought into my life, but when you left me—with this tattoo on my arm that couldn’t find its home—I was plunged into darkness. It took every good part of me with it. You took those parts.”
Did he still not comprehend? After how many times I had tried to explain it to him? It seemed like he was purposely ignoring me. And maybe he was; that was his right, but he didn’t get to throw it back at me without even attempting to understand.
Angels, matters of the heart were messy.
“What we had was all blinding starlight, then? Nothing real?” He turned away from me, falling onto the couch with a contemptuous huff. The dismissal landed like a blow to my cheek. Were there truly no good pieces left of the man I’d loved?
“No.” Not wanting to get too close, I perched on the arm of the couch. “Do not put words in my mouth. We were beautiful. We were perfect and innocent and maybe too much so for this world, but every single moment between us was real.”
Despite the silence in my tattoo, I knew it was true. I found that strength in myself to not darken our past with sordid beliefs.
“You were the only thing I ever considered for my life, but maybe that was the problem. We were complacent, taking the obvious future as destiny. But look at everything that’s happened. Everything we’ve been through. The easy path is not always what we’re given.”
I had never seen myself as Revered and yet it was now the title thrumming through my blood. The strings of fate had a way of redirecting us, and I was learning that relinquishing control was okay. Becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable was freeing.
I took a deep breath, exhaling the venom charging through my blood. “When you were gone, I grew. We both did. And this new version of me isn’t suited for that new version of you.”
“And are you suited for him?” He hunched, elbows against his knees.
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t just sparing his feelings. I had always known something deeper lay between me and Tol, but I had never stopped to pick it apart, decide what I wanted from it. Or ask Tolek what he wanted.
When I admitted I was as lost as he was, a piece of Malakai visibly crumpled, head into his hands, heart bleeding out on his sleeve. Like thinking I was holding it together was somehow holding his world together, too.
“I don’t know what to do,” he whispered, rubbing the heel of his palm against his chest as if it seized and flopping back against the cushions. He didn’t only mean this situation—he meant the rubble his life had become. If I had to bet, I’d say this entire fight had only been fueled by that mess.
“Me neither.”
Two and a half years ago, a part of my heart had been ripped from my chest, repeatedly trampled with each injustice I experienced, up until the day we both stopped pretending we would work.
Then, I’d shifted my focus from catering to the delicate scraps of his heart to piecing my own back together.
Despite how broken he looked before me, I couldn’t let him take that progress.
The part of me he had owned may have been warped, but it was finding its way back into place.
I was healing. I would always hold some allegiance to Malakai, but my heart no longer belonged to him—it belonged to me.
Malakai’s frame shook with a sigh. The stature was one I was very intimate with: When the world was too much and that last scrap falling onto your shoulders turned you to dust.
“I think you at least know where to begin.” Malakai grimaced, but the weight on him dulled his edge into resignation.
I nodded, pushing to my feet. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what I was apologizing for.
“Don’t be. I—”
“I’ll always care about you, Malakai.” Maybe he needed to hear those words, because a soft smile cracked his hard exterior. And maybe—judging by the warmth blossoming in my chest—I needed to say them.
“Me too. I don’t blame you.”
“I blame fate,” I said.
Pieces of Malakai’s good still existed within him, I knew it. Maybe he’d find those pieces. He’d collect them, nurture them as they demanded, and one day someone deserving would help him put them back together.