Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Draven wandered the streets leading back to Tylderon with mindless feet, a bottle clutched loosely between his fingers.
He had no destination. No expectations.
No sense of himself.
He was nothing more than vapor in the wind. A wraith haunting the streets. Only, these streets haunted him, and the only wraith he could truly see were the flickering images of his mother. Of Atlas and Suzumi. Of their lifeless bodies savagely pinned to a wall.
The brand below his collarbone turned scorching, as if searing into his flesh for the first time again.
For the past nine years, Draven had carefully shed the skin of the boy he once was.
For Rhea, he became something entirely different.
The weapon his father had always wanted him to be.
Until, it was no longer just for Rhea—he had grown content withering inside himself and masking his heart from the world.
Truthfully, it was a scary thought the old woman had forced into his mind—how unrecognizable Draven truly would be to his family if they stood before him now.
How sad he would make his mother if she saw him like this.
He became everything she despised.
He had learned to bottle his emotions and cast them somewhere deep into the abyss of his existence.
Had allowed himself to be forged into a ruthless, savage machine.
He had killed. Had beaten men. He had done everything his father had ever asked of him without question. Became formidable. Feared. Powerful.
And though he did it all to protect Rhea—to keep her safe and attempt to give her back even a fraction of the life his father stole from her—Draven had still lost himself entirely in his mission to preserve Rhea’s safety.
Perhaps that was what truly bothered him about the day’s turn of events.
It was not that what the old lady said heightened his grief.
It was not that Rhea’s confrontation made him feel more sorrow or regret for everything he lost—there was always a quiet part of him that was well aware.
It was the way it forced a mirror to his face, reminding him he no longer recognized the person staring back.
It was the way it shoved a map into his hands, showing him just how far he had strayed from the course.
He was lost. Turned around. Wandering down a southern path when he should have really been traveling north.
And the compass meant to guide him back had shattered in his rough palms long, long ago.
Draven looked up, snapping his attention away from his wandering thoughts, shocked to finally realize where his vacuous feet had taken him.
It was the alcove.
Gods… he hadn’t been here since…since he was fourteen. Since he, Finlay, and Kiran sat inside and Draven told them about how his heart and family had expanded.
After what happened to them—after Kiran and Draven stopped speaking with Finlay for breaking the blood oaths they swore to each other, sealed right here in these very walls—he couldn’t come back.
It felt wrong. It felt dirty. Now here he was, face-to-face with what he believed at fourteen to be the intersection of what was supposed to be his past and his future.
What games were the gods playing with him today?
Still…he went inside.
It was smaller than he remembered, yet no less grand.
To a stranger, the alcove would look carelessly strewn about with random rugs and canopy tapestries and junk.
Draven saw treasure. Saw the purposeful overlapping of stolen pillows and forgotten rugs that Tylderon was going to throw away.
He saw parchment papers harboring their hearts and a long cylindrical sack of sand holding the force of their anger.
He walked over to that hitting bag—still suspended from the ceiling—and bracketed it with his hands, resting his forehead against the scratchy fabric.
There were bloodstains still pressed into it from when their knuckles would crack.
The blood would have been his or Finlay’s—they were the only two who ever used it.
At the thought of Finlay, anger spiked his blood with venom.
Draven harbored unspeakable scorn for his brother after Kiran told him what happened in Tynan’s study that day.
How Finlay gave him and his family up. Broke the sanctity of their word to each other—hell, the sanctity of the whole principle this place was founded on, even.
Learning the truth was like being hit with lethal blow after lethal blow for Draven.
But perhaps most of all, he was angry by how much he missed his brother.
Draven squeezed his eyes closed.
His mind roared now that his thoughts were finally blinking awake after such a long slumber.
Flashes of screams accompanied the increasing brightness of glowing flames as a bookshop was swallowed whole. He had eyes on Suzumi; then he didn’t. He was awake; then he was unconscious. He did nothing to help protect them—he was useless to his family that day.
They paid the ultimate price for it.
Draven pulled his head back from the bag and brought the bottle to his lips.
He pulled swig after hearty swig. Once he was finished, he rested the bottle on the ground a few steps away from him, a misleading warmth he didn’t actually feel pressing into his skin.
He was finally beginning to catch a buzz.
Then, with shuttering images passing through his mind—burn marks, brands, blood, bodies—Draven set his sights on the hitting bag.
And then he raged.
He pounded his left fist against it, then his right.
He threw his whole weight behind the blows, his knuckles screaming almost immediately.
Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Left. Left.
Right. Draven made thrust after powerful thrust, channeling every ounce of his frustration and anger onto the object in front of him.
Eventually, at some point, he realized he had started screaming, because his vocal cords became raw—felt as though they were bleeding into his throat.
He didn’t stop.
Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Left. Left. Right.
The bag flew from the cord holding it suspended, and sand exploded across the alcove as it soared backward into the wall.
Draven coughed and swatted at the air as particles twirled into his eyes.
He rubbed the grainy texture away using the heels of his palms, and he swiped the remaining sand from his face.
He was panting from all the exertion when something glinted amongst the pile of spilled sand, catching the light from the outdoor sun just so. Curious, Draven knelt down and swiped the beige particles from the object, attempting to get a better look.
The wind was knocked from his chest. Forceful and debilitatingly so.
There, lying at the center of the sandpile, was the sea glass necklace Draven’s mother had gifted him for his fourteenth birthday all those years ago.
He had nearly forgotten about it. Sure, his mind had sporadically wondered what Finlay had done with it after he gave it to him to hide, but he was such a prisoner to the cage of his detachment, he never let himself dwell on it for too long.
Always told himself it was better buried alongside the boy his mother wanted him to be.
Yet now here it was, glinting in stray rays of sunlight in this consecrated alcove on the anniversary of his family’s death.
So this was where Finlay chose to hide it; within stone walls only Kiran, Finlay, or Draven would ever wander into, hidden inside an item only Finlay or Draven would use. He must have slit a small hole in the fabric, hid the necklace within, then stitched it back up again.
Draven reached for the pendant, cradling it like a wounded bird between his cupped palms. He stared and stared at it, as if he was holding the hand of a living ghost within his own.
A complex mix of emotions warred for his attention, and he soon realized he didn’t truly know how to make their words intelligible any longer.
Of all the feelings raging inside him, he could only make sense of two: grief and shame.
I hope when you wear this pendant, you remember that you are my son, and I am so proud of you.
You are my greatest accomplishment.
Draven knew she would not be proud of him any longer.
She would not look at his frozen heart, his apathetic words, nor his dejected disposition and recognize him as hers.
He was no longer the son that made her feel accomplished—she could not look at him now and still feel that swell of pride for the man he was becoming like she once had.
And that perhaps hurt Draven more than anything else; that he allowed himself to lose the best parts of him—the parts so carefully nurtured by a loving mother—in his quest to soothe his pain and follow the path of least resistance with Tynan.
He had failed her memory, in turn failing himself, which left him sorting through no small amount of guilt, shame, and disappointment.
Draven hung his head, wrapped his fingers around the last gift he ever received from his mother, and cried.
It was an ugly sound; a mixture of sobs that bordered on gasps as they peaked at sharp inhalations before plummeting down to low wails.
He allowed himself to shatter completely.
To break apart at his very seams, no longer glued together or holding it all in.
He allowed himself to fully acknowledge all that he lost.
His mother.
The only true father figure he ever had.
His first love, Suzumi.
Himself.