Chapter 18 #2
They began a dance of push and pull. On and on they went, until she finally managed to stop him before he could so much as step toward her.
His body trembling as he struggled to break free from her invisible hold, stumbling forward when she released him.
It was exhilarating, being able to finally have some semblance of control where before she had close to none.
As much as she loathed to admit it, his tactics—however brash they may have been—had served to help her relearn all that she had lost. Never even had the opportunity to obtain in the first place.
By the time he called for a reprieve from his vigorous lessons, Anelize’s body felt exhausted.
The dull ache in the back of her head fully pounding now.
The more she conjured, the more she realized these headaches had started happening.
She’d hoped the pain would subside once she built her endurance. She’d been mistaken.
A thought came to her then and she asked Adan, “What is your curse?”
If she hadn’t been watching him, she wouldn’t have noticed the way Adan paused before he looked at her.
“I can’t pinpoint it to one thing,” he answered, looking to his brother and Aeric as they goaded each other.
A solemn look taking over his face. “Sometimes it feels like my veins are turning to ice. Other times I’m so cold there’s no amount of fire that can warm me.
It’s a kind of pain that lingers long after it ceases.
No amount of healing or remedies can make it stop, unless I stop conjuring. ”
“And Idris?”
“My brother’s is different than mine. As yours is from ours or Aeric’s. It’s the price we pay for power, the Weaver made sure of that.”
“If we stopped conjuring then, would the curse stop?” It was a genuine question; one she found herself asking more and more every day.
His gaze hardened as he looked back at her.
His answer definitive, leaving no room for argument.
“I would never stop. Not until every Watchman was dead and we can all walk these streets freely. And doing so would mean I was willingly denying who I am, what I am, and I’ve never once been ashamed of being a Vedran.
No one can take that away from me. Not even if the fucking Weaver were haunting me from the afterlife. ”
Behind him, Aeric and Idris had ceased in their sparring, taking to conversing in hushed tones.
When Aeric laughed, the sound carried its way over to her.
She realized she’d never heard him laugh before, and wondered how she could capture it, the rich sound that reminded her of honey being poured over a wound to soothe.
“How do you feel knowing you can at the very least try to survive?” Adan asked her as she took a seat on a small stool.
“Would it be such a grand effort to say ‘good job’?” she remarked. “Or were you simply never taught such words?”
“You’ll be praised once you can effectively conjure.” He then challenged her. “Unless you wish to slow my heart and put me unconscious.”
Anelize dropped her gaze, looking to her hands.
“I already told you, I don’t think I can.”
“Fine. Let us say you don’t do it. Then what?
Without me or Aeric by your side, how will you defend yourself when you’re in the tunnels?
When it will come down to your survival or an enemy’s, which will you choose?
” Adan’s words to her surprise weren’t laced in anger or frustration as he came to lean against the wooden post beside her.
Propping one leg up against it, he crossed his arms and watched as Aeric and Idris resumed their sparring once more.
“It isn’t as though I don’t recognize that. I do. I just…taking a life isn’t simple. Not for me, at least. I made a promise.” Anelize’s voice was so low she wondered if he was able to hear her at all.
He had heard her, for he said, “What promise was that?”
“Do you remember the first time you took a life with your own hands?” she asked him, her voice quiet.
Adan was silent for a moment before he said, “I do. It was the man who killed my mother.”
His answer made her eyes snap up to look at him.
“For a long time, that face haunted me. I was left starving and without a home, barely capable of truly knowing which street to wander next before Henry finally found us. And yet, that satisfied sneer on that Watchman’s face after he thrust his sword through my mother’s chest had remained an ever-present memory.
Branded itself into my mind. I swore to Idris that one day I’d find him.
In part, when Aeric made the offer to have us join the ranks, I did so with the hope of finding that man.
Years passed, and the second time I saw him, he was practically an old man.
Should have been a shell of the tormentor he’d been, weathered by age and regrets.
Instead, he was laughing with a tankard of ale in his hand amongst his friends.
As if slaughtering hundreds that night had become a mere afterthought to him.
Idris held me back before I did something truly stupid in the heart of the Watchmen’s compound.
Ruined all of our chances all for the sake of my revenge.
There was more at stake than a score to settle. And so, I waited. I…befriended him.”
There was no scowl to be found on Adan’s face as he stared ahead even as he said the last words with disgust. His gaze distant as she watched him.
“When we went on patrol, I waited until we ventured to the ruins. You see, there had been Vedrans sighted.” Adan glanced down at her with a cruel smile that did not reach his eyes.
“We led him to the pit where Idris ran his sword through his stomach. He bled out on the snow, gasping for air, begging for mercy. Then I conjured and made every last breath of his miserable existence be filled with nothing but suffering. Slowly killing him until there was nothing left.”
Anelize swallowed, feeling his grief and rage in the air like smoke.
“Did you feel relief once it was over?”
“At first, yes. Then I realized it solved nothing. In the end, we’d still lost our home. Our family. And our people were still dying. But I had one single thing. That he would never raise his sword against another man, woman, or child again, and for that I have no regrets.”
“You exacted your revenge. But can any other reason be so easily justified?” She ran her thumb over one of the faint cuts that had remained upon her hand.
Adan turned to face her, giving her a knowing look. “Whose life did you take?”
Her instinct had been to deny it. Panic roared inside her, screaming at her to not let anyone know of her greatest shame.
At the same time, she wished to unburden herself, if only for a few moments.
She knew now that if anyone would listen to her without trying to soothe the pain of her past with thinly laced words of lament, it would be Adan.
“My father…” Her voice was thick, fighting a knot in her throat.
“He’d been caught by the Watchmen. All I remember was running as fast as I could to get to him after Henry had told me the news.
I still hear the screams from that day. I always hear them.
Though none as much as my father’s. It was in my desperation to not see him suffer—hear him as the flames consumed him—that I conjured.
I stopped his heart before the fire had the chance to kill him. ”
It had been both the easiest and most painful thing she had ever done. And that had been why, for so long, she’d wondered if she was indeed a monster. For what sort of kindhearted being could be capable of such a thing?
When she was left with nothing but the ashes and the realization of what she had used her power for.
The disgust that flooded her after that made it nearly impossible for her to live with herself.
If not for needing to look after Enid, she wasn’t sure if she would have been able to continue with the guilt.
It would have been so easy to end it all, surrounded by so many plants and remedies that could have easily been turned to poison.
Killing her father was done in mercy, but had it been? Had it not simply been because she’d been a child, barely eleven name days, who wanted nothing more than to hide from the nightmares unfolding before her? A selfish need to put an end to it all.
“My father always feared me. He knew what I was capable of, and I sense he wished for nothing more than to change me. Mold me into someone who was more deserving. Kind and gentle, not capable of taking life but preserving it as Zara could. He was afraid I would be the one to bring ruination onto our family, and I fear he was right. I am ruination,” she admitted.
“We are all wicked and deceitful creatures who must be brought to the pyre for the flames to consume our souls,” Adan murmured.
“Funny how, even when we know the truth, the king’s laws still manage to make us question our existence.
Even the children left behind in the aftermath of his destruction.
Forced to make decisions they should never make.
” He pushed off the pillar, their short rest finally having come to an end.
As she rose from the stool, she stepped up to him. Finding surprising comfort in knowing that she would, once again, feel the rush of power coursing through her, and in the man before her—though she still found him utterly disagreeable, it was less so now than it had been before.
Her words were spoken softly as she said, “I’m sorry, for all that you and your brother lost.”
Adan watched her for a moment. Those dark eyes holding more than she ever could have realized. “So am I.”