Chapter 34
Theo
“It should begin working immediately,” Pricilla said, her jaw quivering. “Come on, Amaris.”
Theo turned to Pricilla, and Alan had his arms wrapped around her as tears fell from her eyes.
He focused his attention back to Amaris and gave her another breath. He leaned back on his heels, praying to Kedes and Kata to spare her. He asked for nothing else. He wouldn’t cheat death anymore. He’d gladly accept his death when it came, only if the gods would spare her.
Amaris’s chest heaved. He collapsed back on the floor, leaning on his elbows. He tried to release his own breath as he threw his head back, but his chest tightened. A slithering crept behind the stitch in his mind.
“It’s working.” Pricilla stepped over him and settled beside Amaris, grasping her hand.
With Amaris out of immediate danger, Theo bolted from the floor. He grasped his dagger and brandished it over Alan’s neck, slamming him into the wall.
“You did this!” he shouted, his teeth clenching as spit flung from his mouth.
Alan gripped his wrist around the dagger.
As if he could ever withstand my strength. The stitch in his mind parted, unraveling the thread he’d desperately thrown together.
“You told the duke she tried to escape and poisoned her fucking drink!” Theo barked.
Alan’s head tipped back to give him as much space as possible as Theo’s dagger pressed to the lump below his skin. He released his hands, raising them in defeat.
“Theo, put the knife down,” Pricilla said.
“You tried to kill her!” Theo screamed, his breaths coming in short, panicked bursts.
“I knew someone was in the stables,” Alan began, “but I didn’t know it was you two. I wasn’t the one who told the duke. You should be holding that dagger to whomever else was on sentry duty that night.”
“Liar!” Theo shouted.
His hands trembled, and his dagger slipped from his fingers. He tried to massage the aching muscles but could barely move his other hand. He tousled his hair, fighting against the constriction around his chest. He fell to his knees, choking on his breath.
“Theo, what’s wrong?” Pricilla asked.
“Esaias,” he muttered, his hand shaking as he grabbed the collar of his shirt. He couldn’t breathe.
“I think he’s with Onika,” someone said with a muffled voice.
A ringing swarmed in his ears as the room cascaded itself in a red hue. Theo clawed at whatever was constricting around his throat, threatening to suffocate him. He dropped his head to the ground, trying to force a bit of air into his lungs.
“Esaias.” He released a single agonizing breath.
“I’ll find him.”
Theo couldn’t tell who said it, but the tower door slammed shut. His vision grew spotty as his breaths increased. Someone kneeled beside him. A hand bracing against his back caused him to jolt and nearly smack them.
“It’s all right.”
Nothing’s all right! Amaris had almost died and had poison running through her veins. Someone had tried to kill her. His father wanted her dead or sent to Elric—he couldn’t even remember which, and his collar was too damn tight!
He tugged and pulled, trying to rid himself of the strangling garment. A pair of hands pulled off his coat and whatever was strangling him. His hand ripped at his chest, trying to take in a breath. His vision darkened, and his hands grew completely numb.
He gasped. His eyes pinched together, and his body trembled. He forced a breath, holding the air in his lungs. A weight pressed on him, threatening to stop his heart.
This is all my fault. He’d stepped away from her for too long. Anyone could’ve laced her drink. Where was Esaias? Where is he now? Theo was going to kill him for leaving her. He clenched his hands, searching his waist for his sword. Where is it?
“What happened?” a voice asked.
“Something’s wrong with Theo.” A hand grasped his, but he could barely make out the edges of their face.
He couldn’t focus. It was all his fault. Amaris is… Fuck, I can’t breathe. She’s…She’s fine. No…breathe. She was poisoned. It’s my fault.
“Is Amaris alright?”
“She is now.”
“It’s…fault.” Theo choked.
“Theo, it’s me. Take a deep breath for me.”
He sucked in a breath, attempting to hold the air again.
“That’s it. Now let it out.”
He released his breath, but his chest still felt as though a rope were tied around it, and his head thrummed with every possible thought.
He’d ruined everything. She wouldn’t be escaping tonight in her state, but did she even want to?
She’d said she wanted to stay, and she’d kissed him.
Was it only an illusion from the poison and alcohol?
“Breathe, Theo.”
He couldn’t breathe.
“Maybe…”
Theo shook his head, his hand trying to reach for his nonexistent sword as the swarm of voices filled the room.
“Everyone out, now!” a voice demanded. “Come on, Theo. Take another breath.”
Theo battled against every fiber in his body to breathe, but the ever-swarming emotions within him held their grip.
A hand circled his back. “Amaris is fine. You’re fine. Take a deep breath.”
He sucked in, holding it and pursing his lips.
He followed several more cycles, the voice coaching him through each one.
Swirls of color flourished in his vision, pulling him from the darkened tunnel.
The feeling swept back into his fingertips.
He scrunched them, dragging his nails across the firm hand that held his in its grasp.
He blinked, willing his world to come back into focus and for his breaths to slow. Esaias was there.
“Inhale, exhale.”
Theo breathed again, but the sight of Amaris on the bed was too much. His breaths were ragged, increasing in a faster cadence. “Amaris was poisoned.”
“By the gods,” Esaias muttered.
“Who did she talk to?” he shouted. “Where did she get her drink?”
“It was the one she picked up off the table.” Esaias sat back on his heels.
Theo hung his head and wrapped his arms around it, curling himself into a ball and gripping his hair at the roots.
“What are we going to do? My father still wants Amaris sent to Elric, and there’s no way we can get her out now.
” He lifted his head, but even Amaris’s even breaths couldn’t pull him from the panic wrapping tightly around his lungs.
Nothing could aid him in the rapid pounding of his heart.
“First, you need to try to calm down.”
“I can’t!” Theo shouted.
“I can’t have an unconscious Amaris and you doped on cudweed. Try and breathe,” Esaias demanded.
No. Theo wouldn’t allow him to jab him with a needle like they’d done in the infirmary. Amaris needed him. He scrambled back. “Don’t!”
Esaias gripped his shoulder. “Then, for Amaris’s sake, pull yourself together.”
“Not again,” Theo muttered. “Not again.” He dropped his head in his hands.
“What do you mean not again?”
“It’s all…Amaris…not again,” he muttered.
“Theo, what’s going on with you? You’re panicking. You haven’t done this since…”
He couldn’t do it. He knew if he told Esaias the truth, it’d rip an entire hole in his chest. But his body defied him. His hand trembled as he found his dagger and dragged it over the wooden floor. His thumb found its comforting place along the crest.
“Is this really about Amaris or—”
“Esaias,” Theo cried, too ashamed to even look at him. He forced his eyes to stare at a loose nail pried from the floorboard as a tear leaked from the corner of his eye. “I can’t let anyone else die. Not on my watch, not because I failed.”
“Theo, it wasn’t your fault.”
“You don’t know that,” Theo snapped. “You weren’t there.”
“No, but I read the reports, and I was on the team that extracted you.” Esaias sighed, and Theo met his solemn expression.
“I saw you hanging there, nearly dead. My best friend, my brother.” It was Esaias now who fought tears.
“I was forced to guard the door while Sephardi and Gris cut you down and dragged you through the chamber. I could barely watch my post when all I saw was your blood covering every tool, every crevice, the floor.”
Theo sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. You were the one who was captured. You were tortured, while we were forced to wait. It killed me every day not knowing if you were alive, but I can’t imagine what it was like for you.”
There weren’t words to describe what Theo had experienced. He doubted the cracks in the realm had torture like what Mosfelkov was capable of.
“They gutted Nate in front of me,” Theo began, hiccuping between his panting breaths. “They strung him up, and I was bound and forced to watch as they cut him open, bit by bit, bleeding him.” A wave of nausea rippled through him as the words slipped from his tongue. “Our friend…Nate was mutilated.”
“Theo—”
“Nate is dead because of me. They killed him, not me,” Theo cried.
“When Nate couldn’t take it anymore, they beat me and made me feel so much pain I wanted to die.
I wish I’d died that night in Oystein Castle or in Rongstad Prison, because I don’t deserve to live.
They’re all gone, because I failed as a leader. I failed to bring them home.”
“You didn’t fail. You were betrayed.”
“I should’ve seen it, been smarter. We were ambushed from the start,” Theo yelled, grasping his dagger and attempting to bring himself back to reality, to wash away the tint of red.
“You may not believe it now, but you did what you had to. You didn’t give in, and Nate knew that too. Nate didn’t die in vain. You both didn’t break,” Esaias said.
“They did break me! They didn’t want information. They wanted me to suffer. Nate is dead, and now someone tried to kill Amaris.” His body shook with his lament.
“No one else is going to die.” Esaias let out an agonizing exhale as he placed a hand on Theo’s shoulder.
Everything welling within Theo was overflowing, and he couldn’t stop it. Amaris had told him to feel, not to bottle it up, but he couldn’t contain it, no matter what he did. Why had he opened himself up to it, to feel the burden and agony of the loss of his friend?
“Nothing we do will bring them back or make ourselves forget, but we can honor them and remember them. You can honor Nate by fighting for Amaris,” Esaias said. “What you went through made you a stronger leader.”
“It made me a monster.” The stitch in his mind frayed, the slithering creature of who he became seeping into his bones.
“You survived. Don’t be ashamed of becoming the person you needed to be.”
“But I am ashamed,” Theo breathed.
“You have to forgive yourself.”
Forgive myself? Theo had survived while every member of his squad had been slaughtered. “How can I? I still breathe, unable to make it a few days without a nightmare or a moment of panic.”
“You have to learn. Remind yourself it wasn’t your fault. No matter who led your squad, their fates would’ve been the same.”
Esaias was right, but it didn’t stop the wave after wave of emotion as it hit him harder.
But as the sobs filled the tower and all of him was exposed for Esaias to see, Theo found himself not wanting to stop it.
For once, he didn’t want to push it away or restitch his mind.
He wanted the pain to seep through his blood.
Could he learn to forgive himself? To ask the question was a weight lifted from his shoulders.
A burden so heavy he’d allowed it to crush him.
The rope around his chest loosened, and a natural cadence of breaths resumed.
He could breathe, truly breathe. His back rippled as another wave of tears streaked his face.
Esaias stood and reached out his hand. Theo gazed up at him, the man who’d always been by his side.
In the infirmary, Esaias had sat by his side each day, getting leave until Theo was healed. But even after his body had mended, he couldn’t get himself out of bed. Esaias had reached a hand into the darkness and stayed by Theo’s side until he’d been ready to grasp it.
When Theo had been in the darkest part of his life, flashing back each second into that torture chamber, Esaias had been there to pull him back. To remind him what waited back home, that Adelaide and Jeremiah waited for him.
Theo reached out and grasped his hand.
“To the end,” he whispered.
“To the end.” Esaias smiled.