Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
GRAY
Gray Nightenjoy approaches the arched bedchamber door. He releases a clipped breath, bracing himself for his new routine.
Balancing the tray of food in one hand, he knocks with the other. It’s difficult, but he hears a small grunting noise from the other side of the wood. He takes that as his permission to enter, and he creaks the door open, the hinges squeaking as they move.
The room feels stuffy—heavy and shrouded in an invisible weight hard to explain with words.
Sadness is a ghost, and it is haunting this room, coating the air in a film of grief.
Still, Gray rolls his shoulders back, determined to be there for Marcella just as Lyra would want him to be.
Simply because he wants to be. He has had his time to cry in his room already, sorting through his own devastation.
His own anger and sadness, brought upon by so many different reasons.
Because of so many failures to Lyra on his part.
Yet he can’t dwell on that right now, allowing the weight of his own grief to accidentally slip onto tired shoulders. No. Right now, he needs to leave his own wreckage at the door so that he may be there for another, just as he decided to be.
He approaches the shell of a beautiful girl who sits frozen on a chair, overlooking the sun-coated hills.
He sets the tray down on the wooden table beside her, and just like all the times before, he sits down on her bed, perching himself up against her headboard.
Then, he pulls a book from his satchel—this one specifically on the rise and fall of Arellian trade—and he reads.
He does not attempt to speak. He does not attempt to pry.
He just attempts to offer the only thing he can think of—a steady presence.
A silent reminder that she isn’t alone. For he learned long ago, as he watched the bearer of half his soul battle a grief far larger than anything Gray could ever comprehend, one cannot rationalize sadness.
One can not fight it with logic nor can one wish it away.
All a person can do is ride the storm, navigating the violent twists and turns of it.
Gray isn’t sure how much time has passed, exactly, when he watches those cobalt eyes flick down toward the tray of food.
All he knows is when he sees Marcella tear a small piece of bread from the loaf and dunk it into the stew, nibbling on it absently as she returns her hollow eyes to the window, his heart skips with a glimmer of hope.
The next day when Gray knocks on Marcella’s door, he has more than a tray of food in his hands.
He hears a tiny come in from the other side of the wood, and a creeping curve forms at the corner of his mouth. Though he quickly smooths his lips into a neutral line as he opens the door. He knows she would hate for him to suddenly change his demeanor from the small advancement.
Like usual, Marcella is sitting in the same chair, her knee pressed against her chest as she stares out over the verdant hills and glittering waterfalls.
Her copper hair is still a mess of curls, yet there is a sleekness to them that hasn’t been there lately.
She spares him a glance as he enters the room, and he nearly stills from finally seeing her look at him.
Look at anything other than the view outside the window.
And though it may only last a brief heartbeat before her eyes turn to gaze through the glass once more, it still fills Gray with hope that perhaps him silently being here is doing something for her, after all.
He steps forward and sets the tray of food down on the table beside her, this time paired with a book detailing the latest advancements in the ongoing study of static versus non-static wielder’s marks.
He still remembers how her eyes glittered when she explained it to Lyra, whether either of them realized it or not.
Then, as he has done for the past two months, he props himself up against her headboard and pulls out his own book. Only, as he cracks open the spine, this time, he finds his eyes cannot focus on the words filling the page. Instead, they keep roving to Marcella. To the small advancements he sees.
He decides perhaps now is the right moment to see if she’ll finally talk about it.
“Marcella,” he says, voice carefully neutral. “How are you feeling?”
She does not respond.
“Marcella?” he pushes.
Nothing.
Gray sighs, his chest tightening. “Please, Marcella. Talk to me.”
She whips her eyes to him at those words, as if coming into herself temporarily.
As if his provocation unleashed a creature that’s been silently caged within her ribs all this time.
“What do you want me to say, Gray? That I am hurting because I held Griff in my arms as he died by a sword’s blade meant for me?
Do you want to me say I’m angry because some fucking monster stole Lyra away from us?
That despite all of Draven’s searching, despite the aid both you and Kiran offer him, I’m frustrated because we still can’t find any trace of her?
Or would you like me to tell you about how it feels to be at this academy without a title or a famous surname?
About how the only person who could possibly understand what it feels like to walk these corridors is gone?
” Her jaw sets, and she wields the full weight of her emotion like a weapon.
“What would you like me to say? To tell you?”
“I just wanted you to say something, and what you have just said is a great start.” He pauses, eyes softening. “I want you to be angry. Or sad. I want you to cry if that’s what you need. Or yell.”
She scoffs, upper lip peeling back. “Cry,” she admonishes. “Because crying is going to change things, right? Crying is going to bring Griff back from the grave and return Lyra home. Is going to change the whispers I hear outside my door as students pass by.”
“No. It won’t.” He reaches for both her hands. He squeezes. “But you do not always have to be productive in your grief. Sometimes just letting it out is enough.”
She tears her eyes away from him, returning them to the window, lips set in a thin, hard line.
She does not speak to Gray again that night.
The next time Gray is standing outside Marcella’s door, he isn’t quite sure what to expect.
He knocks. There is no soft voice telling him to come in. No glances spared his way when he opens the door anyway. Just a girl whose undereyes are pronounced by an extra smudge of purple and whose hair has tangled once more.
Gray sets the food down, noting the unmoved book.
He reads in silence.
This time Gray is ready to enter Marcella’s room with a new strategy.
He tossed and turned all night debating how to help her.
He still wants to do something productive, but he also doesn’t want to push her too far.
Make her feel as though she must have a timeline on her grief or put her in a situation she isn’t ready for yet.
He still isn’t sure if his previous attempt was or was not the right thing to do.
In his pondering, his brain snagged on a memory.
One where they sat around a bonfire in preparation for their coming task during the second test of the entrance exam.
She made a request, and he remembers the light in her eyes when he fulfilled it.
Truthfully, Gray isn’t sure why he’s only just now thought about trying this.
He knows more than anyone how powerful it can be.
He knocks.
“Enter.”
He does.
This time when he sets the food down and positions himself on the bed, he does not reach for his book.
Instead, he reaches for his double-flute and wets his lips in preparation.
He brings the wooden tips to his mouth and begins to play, going through all the different Anatolian folk songs he has since learned after Marcella mentioned her hometown was filled with their tunes.
He does not try to force a happy song on her. Instead, he plays the saddest songs of all the ones he memorized. The ones whose melodies are slow and notes languid. The ones whose cries pierce the heart with something deeper than words ever can.
When it comes to climbing the mountain built on one’s chest, Gray understands that sometimes a melancholy song is what’s needed, if only to give reason to the sadness. To give it an exit to walk through, now having the sudden permission it didn’t have before.
He wishes he had done this more for Lyra. Perhaps it would have helped her sooner.
Gray continues to play, shutting his eyes and losing himself to the music.
When he finishes his third song—a haunting ballad with swelling notes—Gray lowers the double-flute from his lips and opens his eyes.
His plan was to merely take a sip of water before resuming his playing once more.
Yet the sight of Marcella turned in her chair—glassy eyes latched onto him while silent tears streak down her cheeks—has him rethinking his next actions.
He sets his instrument to the side and leans forward, reaching out for her hands and positioning them between his own. “Tell me about it, Marcella.”
Her bottom lip trembles, and she shakes her head. “I can’t,” she rasps. “I don’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because it hurts.”
He squeezes her hands. “Then share your pain with me and allow me to help you bear the weight of it.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “No, I deserve to carry it alone. Deserve to hurt.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because that blade was meant for me. I saw it right as Griff pushed me out of the way. And he—he still barely even knew me then. So why was it him who had to die when it should have been my heart ripped to shreds?” She pinches her teeth into her bottom lip, shaking her head.
“And then Lyra… I should have never left her side. I can’t help but to think things might have been different if I hadn’t. ”
“You blame yourself?”
“I guess in a way, yeah, I do. For Griff. For Lyra. If I had just stayed with her, Griff probably wouldn’t have died.
Lyra may not have ever lost control. May not have been captured because of it.
I said I would stay by her side, and then I didn’t.
” The silent tears continue rolling down her reddened cheeks.
Gray can’t help but notice he sees little sadness in them, instead noticing other emotions like shame and regret.
“Do you know how hard it is to realize someone died because of you? The guilt…” She trails off.
“It should have been me. It really should have.”
Gray’s chest piles with an emotion so profound, he fears his sternum might burst. He can’t bear hearing those words again.
Can’t watch as another light dims permanently behind eyes so beautiful and bright.
He let Lyra suffer silently for far too long.
Did nothing to help ease the ache of guilt wailing silently in her chest for over a decade.
He had never felt like as much of a failure as he did when he watched Lyra battle her fears in the Feargate.
As he saw her suffering, learned the truth of what happened to her mother, only then did he realize how deeply he had failed her all these years.
He vowed to himself, then, to never again fail someone he cares for.
He just…won’t.
Gray shifts forward and pulls Marcella into his chest, wrapping his arms around her and holding her with the conviction of a dying man. “Listen to me,” he whispers against the top of her head. “You cannot torture yourself with the what-ifs. It is an endless path only leading you somewhere dark.”
Gray does not say, And had you stayed with Lyra, you most likely would have been the one to die. Though, he does think it, feeling a tremor in his hand as he does.
“Griff made his choice,” he continues. “And I know even in the afterlife he stands by it. Because though you say it should have been you, the reason Griff pushed you out of the way is because he knew it was the exact opposite—it shouldn’t have been.
And if you ever need to be reminded of that, I am here to wrench you free from any darkness, any trench.
I will stand by you, reminding you again and again how deserving you are of the air residing in your lungs. ”
“There is so much darkness,” she confesses into his shoulder, her hands squeezing at his tunic. “I feel it reaching for me, trying to swallow me whole.”
He tightens his hold on her. “Then allow me to act as your light until the sun shines in your own horizon again.”
She pulls away from him, wiping her eyes. “You’ve always been a light, Gray Nightenjoy.” She chokes out a weak laugh. “You’re practically the pure, beaming rays of a sunrise.”
“Then you are the bleeding beauty of a sunset, Marcella Lynderful.”
“Because the light is fading?” she asks, dry, self-depreciation punctuating the question.
“No,” Gray answers. “Because it doesn’t hide its proximity to the darkness. Because it is warm and brilliant and wild and soft. Because it knows its time to shine will come again.” He holds her in his gaze. “Your sun will shine again, Marcella. Just hold on to let it happen.”