Chapter 16
Weeks passed in a blur of foul-smelling pastes and hands fussing over me.
The court physician pronounced me “healed” at last. My left arm could bend without pain and the deep bruises from being thrown from Storm had faded and disappeared.
But most of my hair was still gone and there were still scars that ran ragged and red all over the left side of my face.
The court physician assured me they would fade over time, but I didn’t believe him.
I knew his words were shallow, full of false hope for the fools who believed such lies.
I knew what I looked like.
I was hideous.
Mother and Comfort would give me their painful smiles and tell me they could barely even see the difference, but if it bothered me, they would buy me a whole stock of cosmetics, and that looks didn’t matter anyway. It is easy for someone pretty to say that.
I shunned mirrors. I never looked at myself.
I couldn’t. When I did, accidentally glimpsing myself in a windowpane or polished cup, my stomach would instantly churn until I thought I’d be sick, and I would immediately be assaulted by painful, vivid flashbacks to that horrible day in the woods.
It was like I could still hear the man with the scarred face shouting, “Who wants to have some fun boys?” as the mob closed in.
Storm was gone, too. “Either killed or stolen,” Comfort had told me with that careful, measured tone people use when they don’t want you to cry.
I could still perfectly recall the sensation of the bowstring biting my fingers and the jolt in my shoulder each time an arrow had flown toward my attackers. I remembered the faces of the men I struck—too well. I wondered if their children now sat in rooms, fatherless, just like me.
Anytime I thought about Father, I heard the pain in Comfort’s voice as she whispered, “His funeral was yesterday.”
I hadn’t even seen him. I never got to say goodbye.
Father. He had always been the one to cheer me up and encourage me.
He was the one who loved his family fiercely, adored his wife, and was protective of his daughters.
If he had lived, surely he would have saved me.
I couldn’t imagine life without him. I wanted him to tell me that everything would be alright and I wanted to feel the security of knowing he was there to give me guidance and reassurance, one last time.
Now, frequent panic attacks came and went without warning.
One moment, I’d be calm, but the next, I’d be huddled in the corner, rocking on my heels, breath sawing in and out too fast as the world spun and tears poured, hot and stinging, from both eyes.
The tears would fall normally down my unmarked cheek, but would trickle, slow and uneven, down the tightened, pinched skin of my burned cheek.
My breath would come in short, panicked bursts that deprived my brain of oxygen and left me even more inconsolable than at first. I’d clutch my knees and pray for air, waiting for the episode to pass quickly.
Father was dead.
My career was over; I never wanted to set foot in Avivia ever again.
And I was ugly; I knew it.
I knew I must be revolting to look at, whatever Mother and Comfort pretended, and I refused all visitors, including Curtis. I didn’t want anyone to see me this way.
He came to call several times, but I never allowed him in. Comfort would come back to my room and say that Curtis was here to see me. Every time, she would hand me the flowers, or notes, or whatever he had brought to try and make me feel better, but every time, I had her send him away.
Why couldn’t they understand that I wanted to be alone in my darkened room, avoiding all contact with the outside world?
I refused to read Curtis’s letters. I was already having a hard enough time with Father’s death and grieving the loss of my future.
No matter what he said, I knew nothing would make me feel better, and I didn’t want him to see me this way.
So I let the gifts and notes pile up on my bedside table, completely untouched.
I know Mother would have tried to cheer me up if she could, but she barely left her bed for days at a time, crying uncontrollably, grieving the loss of her beloved spouse.
She hardly ate, rarely slept, and looked like she had aged a decade in just a few short weeks.
Shadows constantly hovered under her eyes, and her eyes became deadened as she grew paler and bonier.
She had always been thin, but now became skeletal.
Comfort was the only functioning member of our family now.
As Mother and I withdrew from the world, Comfort was the one bringing us meals and reading us fantasy novels aloud to try and take our minds off our suffering.
She was the one taking on the whole burden of nursing a damaged sister and grief-stricken mother back to health. The task seemed to harden her.
I never saw Comfort cry, at least not where I could see.
She seemed determined to be strong enough for all of us.
Her voice became brighter, sharper-edged with determination.
She filled the silence with talk of the weather Mother and I refused to look outside at, gossip about the cook’s granddaughter’s scandalous engagement, and a report about one of Hubert’s speeches that supposedly bored the king to sleep.
It seemed impossible to me that life was still moving on for people outside our shuttered rooms. How was it that people still woke to the sun, still laughed, and were unaware or unconcerned that Father was gone?
For Mother and me, nothing mattered anymore.
For us, the world had ended.