Chapter 22
Anelize found herself standing in a vast field of blooming yarrows.
The sound of echoing laughter trickled around her as two little girls ran past her, coming to join hands as they hurried through the fields in bare feet.
Their skirts muddied and flying wildly in their joy.
One of them wore a dark purple dress and had long flowing dark hair, while the other girl had a braided crown atop her head, her soft golden hair rich in curls that bounced around her shoulders.
Anelize stood and watched as they hurried toward a luscious, vibrant forest with evergreen leaves. Beyond the trees, she saw dozens of people standing within the tree line. People who waited for them to come home with warm smiles and open arms.
The fluttering rays of the sun shone down upon her, warming her as she watched the girls run up to a man and woman who held them in their arms as if they were precious treasures.
The man and girl with the golden hair turned and wandered into the forest. But it was the faceless woman and the girl with vibrant blue eyes who looked back at Anelize.
“We’re waiting for you,” the girl said, waving a hand as if beckoning her to follow them too.
When she made no move to follow, they disappeared into the forest. The winds blew her hair across her face and the clouds slowly inched over the sun, dimming its warmth.
That was when the screams started, and the shadows poured out of the forest in one great big wave, killing the fields and flowers around her.
Draining them of all life. Ashes falling from the sky.
Anelize awoke with a start, the dream and its shadows fading away as she stared into the slowly dying fire in the fireplace. She hadn’t realized she’d fallen asleep. Sitting up, she ran a hand over her face before looking to Aeric, hearing his steady breathing as he continued sleeping.
Rising from the chair, she walked over to the fireplace and tossed a few logs in. Stirring the ashes until she found a flame and it started burning once more.
She wandered over to the window, noticing it was still dark out, which meant she had only been asleep an hour or two at most. Crossing her arms, she waited for the familiar glow of torches to dance along the streets.
Only to find there were none. In fact, there was no sign of Watchmen for once in the streets below.
With any luck, they decided they’d done enough terrorizing for the time being and wouldn’t start again tomorrow. One could only hope.
“Brooding again, are we?” a voice drawled thickly behind her.
Anelize turned to find that Aeric was awake, if looking five seconds away from slipping into another deep sleep.
Her heart stumbled over itself pathetically as Aeric smiled at her, his voice a deep rasp of exhaustion and amusement. “Temperance.”
“How are you feeling?” She approached his side of the bed. His complexion looked somewhat better, still she fought the instinct to reach for him to check his temperature. Touch him. “Do you need anything? Want me to get Zara?”
He shook his head as he struggled to sit up. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Only a few hours. Rest. It’s still late,” she said as she gently urged him to lay back down.
He obeyed, settling back into the pillows with a deep sigh.
She watched as he slowly raised a hand up to his chest, running it over the jagged scar where the arrow had pierced his heart. When he looked back up at her, he watched her closely.
“What?”
“I heard you.” At her perplexed expression, he explained, “I heard you after the arrow, after the…darkness that came over me. It was faint, but I heard it all the same. I heard you calling my name.” Anelize didn’t breathe didn’t so much as move as his eyes held hers. “You saved me.”
Looking down, she said, “I nearly got you killed. If it hadn’t been for me, you never would have let that Watchman—”
“Don’t do that,” he said, interrupting the guilt that had consumed her ever since he’d been wounded. “It doesn’t matter how it came to be. I’m here now, and I have no doubt it’s because of you.”
“I don’t…” She stopped herself, feeling her eyes sting at the sight of his gratitude aimed toward her.
The way he had yet to tear his gaze away from her face, roving over it as if it were a precious jewel to be coveted.
Instead, she said, “It’s late. You should rest. I’ll come check on you in a bit. ”
Turning on her heel, she strode for the door as quickly as she could. Her hand barely grazed the brass handle when he spoke again, his voice soft, pleading. “Stay.”
That one request made her still. Stealing a glance over her shoulder, she found him still lying in bed, his head angled toward her.
Anelize turned and pressed her back against the door. “You need your rest. Unless you’re in pain, you don’t truly need me.”
“Actually, I’m in so much pain I think it just may very well consume me,” he said with a sigh, sinking further into the pillows. She rolled her eyes, a small smile fighting to make its way onto her lips. Then he said sincerely, “I’ll get enough rest with you here.”
Aeric’s fingers played a soundless tune over the covers of his bed as he waited for her to decide. Her gaze went down to his hand, noting the habit he had. Was he nervous? Or worried about what her answer might be? To watch her go or to have her refuse his request.
She had saved him, yes. But she had also been the reason he’d nearly lost his life in the first place. Despite knowing that, he still wanted her here. It was difficult to understand why that was. Not without undoing the ties of restraint that kept her calm, rational thoughts firmly in place.
For so long, she had been so careful. Only ever allowing herself to truly care for Enid and no one else, not truly.
The cost of doing so was always too high, her father had been enough proof of that.
Could she risk caring for this man before her now without being hurt by it if she somehow managed to lose him again?
If she lost him before ever truly having him?
As if he could sense her turmoil, his eyes searched hers and she suddenly caught a hint of mischief in them, making his next words hardly come as a surprise. “You wouldn’t deny the request of a man who nearly died saving your life, would you? For the second time, might I add.”
“Why am I not surprised by those words?” Sighing, she pushed away from the door as she walked back to his bedside.
Sinking into the chair, she looked to his scarred chest, still remembering all the blood.
The wound that Zara had stitched back together without a needle and thread.
Just her power. A true gift that so many in this city would condemn her for.
Curse her for all for being a Vedran. A monster.
It was wrong.
All of this had been wrong from the start.
After living in hiding for so many years, she had forgotten what it felt like to be truly proud of the power she possessed.
The natural instinct to use it freely without restraining it, caging it like an animal within herself until it gradually came to hate her.
Waiting for the day to consume her entirely.
“Was it the king who ordered them—the raids?” she asked.
When she looked at him, his expression was indiscernible.
“That is my suspicion. I hardly had time to wonder with all those people being hunted, slaughtered. If I had been there as captain and not as a rebel, then I would have been able to put a stop to it. To all of this.”
“You couldn’t have done anything to change this,” she insisted, hating that she could see the guilt shining through the haze in his eyes.
“I have been trying to do what’s right for so long and with so little to show for it, that I wonder if everything has been for naught.
Perhaps I was a fool for thinking I would be able to change the world around us.
Spark that change within the others. Now the few sympathizers we have willing to stand against the king and his tyranny are also being hunted.
I wonder if there will ever come an end to all of this bloodshed and hatred.
” His words were spoken so calmly, softly, as if admitting all that he felt would somehow come to bring the end of them all.
Zara had been right that day when she told her about Aeric’s suffering.
It would never end, for he refused to let it be so.
Not when he took on the responsibility for the sake of others.
Until the day the king was finally overruled and Castian was sitting upon that throne, and they would all then know peace.
It was a fool’s dream.
But it was his, she realized. Somehow, through all of this, it had become hers as well. The same as it had been Enid’s, too.
“When my father died, when I killed him.” Anelize bit her lip, looking away when she felt his weighty stare shift to her.
“I thought the only answer to solving all of my problems and worries was to hide. So that I could still preserve what little I still had—my sister. I think…I think I was wrong to have done so for so long. In allowing myself to become weak, I did the one thing the king wanted all of us to do. Fade into the shadows, cease to exist. But it is not a possibility, when, in reality, it was the greed of men, the greed for power, that sent us all down this path. I do not want to live in fear for who I am not by choice but by blood. I refuse to feel any more shame for it.”
Aeric didn’t say anything, allowing her to give voice to what she felt.
The same way he had. She also wanted him to understand what this has all meant to her.
Despite not truly knowing if she belonged amongst the rest of the Vedrans in the beginning.
She knew it now and she held onto it like a thread leading her forward. Only ever forward now.