Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
NINE YEARS LATER…
“Wake up.”
Draven jerked awake as a bucket of frigid water was dumped over his head. He shook the water from his face, swiping moisture from his eyes. “Was that really necessary?” he gritted out, finding the culprit with a now empty pail in one hand and a popped hip in her other.
“Probably not,” Rhea said with a shrug. “But it was satisfying.”
A low growl rattled in the back of his throat as he sat upright. He stripped the soaking shirt from his chest and swiveled his heels across the brothel’s bed, planting his feet on the ground and hunching forward, mindlessly gliding fingers through his dripping hair.
Today, reality sat heavy on Draven’s shoulders.
“What time is it?”
“Mid-morning.”
“Why did you wake me?” he muttered, at once pointed and hollow.
“Don’t ask ignorant questions,” Rhea replied through an exasperated tone. “You and I both know what today is.”
“I know it, but I prefer to forget it.” He reached forward, gripping the neck of a wine bottle. He brought it to his lips and drank like a man who had never known repletion, swiping the excess moisture from his lips with the back of his hand after.
Rhea watched him, a directed sharpness to her gaze. “Charming,” she deadpanned.
She was dressed in all black, just as she was every other day.
Though, the propriety of her clothes was vastly different from her usual attire.
Instead of her usual cropped top, cargo pants, and thick combat boots, she wore proper black trousers, sleek black boots, and a quality black sweater that hid both her midriff and tattoos alike.
Her ears were still lined with her usual piercings.
Her distinct blue eyes were still lined in kohl.
But Draven couldn’t help but notice the lines were thinner than they usually were, and her standard piercings were traded out for thin, silver pieces.
She still looked every bit herself, though. Was still very much Rhea—fiercely dressed and wearing her attitude like it was an accessory. She was just a softer version today.
Draven could not say the same about his own appearance.
As if plucking the thought directly from his mind, Rhea folded her arms over her chest and assessed him. “You need a bath. Like…yesterday.”
“What I need,” he countered, again bringing the bottle to his lips and gulping down another hearty swig of wine, “is to get piss drunk and sleep this day away.”
“Draven,” Rhea admonished, half-pleading. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I assure you,” he said, positioning himself flat on the bed once more, tucking his arms beneath his head and resting his eyes, not even deigning to care about his sopping pants or blankets. “I am.”
A heavy beat of silence passed.
“You promised,” she murmured.
Draven squinted an eye open. “Promised what, exactly?”
“You promised me that this year would be different. That this time you wouldn’t get so drunk you practically piss yourself.
That you would stay out of the brothels, and the taverns, and the fighting pits.
” Her voice bloated with rising anger. “You promised that you would finally visit their graves with me; that, for once in the past nine years, I wouldn’t be forced to visit them alone or with Kiran because you are too incapacitated to join me. ”
A pass of silence, and then—
“I don’t recall ever making such a promise.” He shut his cracked eye, done with the conversation. As he heard Rhea’s footsteps stomping off—leaving him to his insufferable misery—he was happy to be left alone.
Until those footsteps returned, and another bucket of ice water fell over him like freezing rain.
“Fuck!” he growled, lurching upright once more. “What is wrong with you?”
“Me?” she gaped. “What the ever-loving fuck is wrong with you!”
“I’m not the one going around dumping buckets of water on people,” he countered through his gritted teeth, swiping water droplets from his arms and chest. Gods damn it—without his shirt, that second dose of glacial water carried a much sharper bite.
“And I’m not the one going around breaking my promises to the people I care about.”
“I didn’t promise you shit,” he muttered. “I would have remembered.”
“Oh, between all your many bouts of sobriety?”
“Rhea,” he snapped. “Please, for the love of the fucking gods, just leave me alone today.” He reached for the wine bottle, took another long swig, then dropped his head in his hands.
He really needed to get out of these soaked pants. The drenched fabric was growing unbearable.
She folded her arms and lifted her chin. “No.”
“No?” he repeated, lifting his head just enough to get a better glimpse of her.
“No,” she said again, slower and more pronounced. “You’re coming with me. Even if I have to drag your brooding, miserable ass myself.”
On any other day, that sentence from her might have brought a twitch of a smile to his lips.
It did not today.
“I’m not going, Rhea.” His deadened voice had grown raspy—borderline hoarse.
It was probably an after-effect of the pipe he had smoked last night.
He had hoped the effects would make him sleep, forcing him to miss both the sunrise and the sunset of this day.
But now that Rhea had personally seen to that not being possible, he brought the bottle to his lips and drank some more. One gulp. Two gulps. Three.
Rhea dropped her arms, shifting on her feet.
He could tell from her body language that she was growing impatient—angry, even.
“Why do you even bother coming back to Tylderon for the anniversary of their deaths? You don’t visit their graves with me.
You never offer them the ceremonial words, nor flowers, nor any other offering.
You just find a bed in this gods-damn brothel and drink yourself into oblivion.
You don’t want to face it? Fine. Then keep your ass at Bathara and drink yourself into oblivion there.
That way, I don’t get my hopes up that maybe you’ll actually be different this time, and I don’t have to watch you ruin yourself.
” She was shaking from something ranging between rage and sadness.
Draven tsked, a bitter scoff pushing through his lips.
“Ruin myself,” he muttered. “What is there left to ruin? I myself am the ruin, Rhea. I know you are privy to all the rumors, even in Tylderon. I know you know what they say about me; all that I’ve done.
To ruin myself would be to imply there is still some substance left to destroy.
” He looked up, meeting Rhea’s narrowed, receding gaze. “I have no such substance.”
“That isn’t true.” Her voice was strained with the weight of hiding her growing emotion. “You can tell everyone in Solaya that. You can tell Tynan that. Hell, you can even tell yourself that. But you can’t tell me that, because you and I both know I don’t buy into your bullshit.”
Draven let the words sit between them for a heartbeat longer. Then, he rose from the bed, snatched his bottle, and strode for the other side of the room.
“I lost them too, you know.”
Draven stopped dead in his tracks.
“Sometimes I think you forget that when this day comes around.” Draven heard her take a step toward him.
Still, he didn’t move. Hell, he was barely breathing.
“For all these years, you’ve done nothing but do right by me.
You have been the best big brother the gods could have ever given me.
” A heavy pause. “But once a year, without question, you fail me every single time.” She took another step.
Then another. Until she could rest a gentle hand on Draven’s shoulder.
“Please,” she murmured. “Don’t fail me this year.
I don’t want to do this alone. Please come with me. ”
His eyes bore into the ground. Truthfully, little surprised him these days, yet he found himself stunned by the realization of how skilled he’d truly become in muffling his emotions.
Because even now—in what felt like such a pivotal moment between him and Rhea—he could not find it within himself to care. To feel something for this day.
He brushed her off and made for the door. “You don’t have to be alone; Kiran came home with me. He’ll accompany you just as he’s done before.”
“I don’t want—”
Draven didn’t hear the rest of her reply as the door swung shut behind him.