Chapter 41
Forty-One
Classes aren’t mandatory since it’s study week before exams begin on Monday.
So I have been in this bed since sometime early Tuesday morning.
Whatever time it was after I left the library.
Three days I’ve laid in the same position on my side, my eyes never leaving the small horizontal crack in the white paint on the wall.
I told Jullia she’ll need to stay with Asher. She came back to the room with me to collect a bag of clothes since we also don’t have to wear our uniforms this week and she hasn’t been back. It’s better, especially because I’m free bleeding all over my sheets and have been since Tuesday night.
What a coward. You are a coward, Mavyllora Sanivin Tsukkenai!
I told them.
I SAID SO.
I said they will regret it. They should have let my body die back in Novam. Hell, they should have let me die back in Septmust. Broken and bloodied and done on that field. There was a reason that fate I wrote killed me too.
Uncontrollable.
I didn’t make that death blow just to kill those rebels. I wasn’t solely speaking to that bone witch when I told her I’d show her what true burning was. Stars burn and burn and burn and then they die. A supernova. The death of a star.
I was writing my own death blow.
Everything hurts. My body, my mind, my soul. And the only person I can blame is myself. The whole reason I’m in this mess. How easy it would have been if I had just died back then. How easy it would have been if I had stopped my own heart instead of that devil’s.
I concentrate on it. The flow of my blood in my veins, pumping through my body. Entering my heart, holding, exiting the organ. It would be so easy.
I bring my wish up to the surface. Consuming more aura than it should and a shutter going through my body at the strain now that it’s closer to devouring me.
But it’s right there. I could make my wish to sever the bond between me and Varian.
He’d feel it, but I’d stop my heart right here and now and then it would be finished.
So easy.
That’s always been the problem. It’s all always so easy. Killing and harming and pain.
Coward.
Yes. Even killing myself right now would be cowardly. Taking the easy way out. Except when has my life ever been easy? From the moment I was born I was cursed.
I shove the wish away, back to the deepest parts of me to stay dormant. I owe it to him. Forgotten God of Blood Moons. I do not get to kill myself now until I’ve made him remembered. Until I can give him peace.
The door and walls shake with the force as Thorne bangs on it. He screams for me. His fury so tangible I can feel it down our line even though our fate isn’t cemented. I was waiting for him. I was waiting for a lot more than just him considering Callahan tried killing himself thirty minutes ago.
I had felt it. I had felt it and I knew it was my fault and instead of ripping through this school to try and get to him I had bluntly told Varian he needed to tell someone and then sealed up the open connection between us.
The only movement I had made was to blink and breathe. Even now, as Thorne continues yelling at me. Screaming and raging. I do nothing.
Coward.
I can feel Varian trying everything in his power to break through my seal. To rip through my shields and walls. Thorne is doing the same on the other side of the door. Neither will get through. I have runic shields covering both this room and my mind in addition to all the others.
Numbness creeps into the recesses of my mind. It would also be so easy to hide within my mind and let my body die. It’s always so quiet where I hide. An empty darkness where nothing can touch or hurt me. Another coward’s way out.
Time glitches. . . or maybe I do. Darian is banging on my door now. He’s not as manic as Thorne was, but I can feel his rage too. His frustration. Castiel comes next, and I can feel Percius with him. Trying to coax me out before realizing they can’t and then they let their anger win.
Jullia and Asher are next. My friend tries making an excuse that she needs something for school. Then Thorne comes back to beg. I hate that he does it. Castiel after and Darian doesn’t come back.
The hours bleed.
Friday becomes Saturday, and then Saturday becomes Sunday. Sunday morning becomes Sunday night. Then midnight rings from the old clock tower and still, I haven’t moved an inch.
My room stinks of rotten fruit and decaying flowers as the sun begins rising.
Monday, the twenty-second of March, five thousand twenty-three of the world, Miy.
Five thousand and twenty-two years, four months, and one day since the creation of the Willow of Lore.
Six months and three weeks since the death of the Willow of Lore.
I have my first exam today. Two hours to go. The presentation of the War of Gods.
They can present without you.
I never even wanted to come to this fucking school. So what if I fail. How much worse could being locked in cell for the rest of my life be? However long my life will be.
There’s a soft knock on my door. My soul pulls first with a sharp tug. Only with him does my soul try its best to get to him.
“Mavyn?” he calls quietly. His voice soft and gentle. Exhausted. “Mavyn, it’s not your fault.”
Lies. It’s always my fault.
“I – I’m sorry.”
I squeeze my eyes shut as pressure builds behind them. I move, for the first time in nearly a week. Rolling onto my stomach as I dig all five of my nails on my right hand over my heart.
“I just want to see you. Please.”
My thighs itch from where my menstrual blood had caked and dried. Pulling at my skin as I shift and my scars rubbings against my clothes for some reason ache worse than they usually do. Stiff muscles burn from not being used for six days and I whimper but I don’t deserve to.
Where’s that sun devil when I finally need him. When I deserve even the torture he gives me.
Girls say they’d never wish rape on even their worst enemy, but I never believed that.
No, because right now if I was watching in another body I would not feel sorry for me.
I would not feel remorse. I deserve every horrible, cruel, awful thing that has happened.
And that sun devil did not hold back when I was taken back to the sun death realm after I had been with Thorne.
“Mavyn.”
He will kill me. I know it. If I open that door right now I will not be hiding and his true form will see my soul and he will know what I am and he will kill me.
No matter what, the universes require balance.
Pushing off the bed, I crawl over to the door and rest my forehead against it. Placing my palm there and wanting so badly to tell him that it is not his fault. That he does not have to apologize for anything. That I should have been gone a long time ago.
“I know you slowed my blood flow to keep me from dying when I should have. I know you told Varian to tell Thorne to get me. Just let me in.”
I can’t.
He stays there for twenty more minutes before leaving. I still wait another hour before getting up to get ready. There’s no one left in the dorm so I don’t bother hiding myself as I go to the showers. I scrub my body until my skin is red and raw and I scratch and pull my hair until my head it numb.
Then I get dressed in casual jeans and a white sweater to make me look professional enough for the presentation. It’s a group project and I’ve done enough in ruining other lives, I don’t need to ruin my classmates grades too.
I slide my feet into flats and then sit and wait until I need to leave. Hunger gnaws at my stomach but starving is another punishment to myself. It’s not like I’ll go into bloodlust anytime in the near future from it.
There’s no one in sight as I leave and start heading for Varian’s classroom.
Only certain groups are presenting today, and all those groups need to meet in his classroom before we figure out who goes first. Then we’ll be doing our presentation in the witch’s observatory near the cafeteria.
Where not only the Mage Board will be present, but any students who don’t have exams and wish to watch.
Thick dark clouds hang overhead and I know they’ll stay for the rest of the week. The spring equinox is next Monday, the beginning of the new year and the first day of our break, but the weather has yet to turn. Even though there’s no longer snow lining the grounds, it’s still cold.
A stiff wind blows right as I enter the main building and start walking towards where the classroom is. Turning the last corner, I can see the door open at the end of the hall.
Numb. That’s how I feel as I walk down the rest of the hallway and enter the classroom.
Percius is sitting at Varian’s desk and he’s glaring with a palpable rage settled around him as I turn and look for my group.
The five of them standing at my and Jullia’s desk.
Including Callahan who looks. . . he looks. . .
I’m going to show him. I’ve decided. I will let his true form balance out the universes. I will let him kill me because then he will be free.
I wish for –
“Ms. Tsukkenai,” the voice of my nightmares says. The voice of a kind devil. “We are all quite excited to hear your group’s presentation on the War of Gods. Apologizes for my rushing, but may I ask that your group goes first?”
I shove that wishing star back into the darkness of me and turn towards Mr. Kyros. To icy blue eyes that are so warm and nurturing.
I can feel pressure starting behind my eyes as needles prick at my nose.
He better not move. I’ll beg because if he comes in and gives me a hug with his comforting aura and nature then I’m going to crumble.
I’m going to fall and ball my eyes out and I do not deserve that.
I do not deserve others to feel bad for me.
He reminds me of my father.
I blink at him and mentally shake that thought. I try my best not to think about my parents.