Chapter Forty-Four
I throw the doors to the greenhouse open and scramble inside.
I’m greeted by a flurry of smells—mint, a perfume-like floral aroma, spicy notes that carry a rich, earthy undertone. It is all achingly familiar.
I walk through the aisles, past the cascading vines descending from the high glass ceilings, thick with purple, pink, and silver blossoms. I ignore the softly-glowing lanterns strung across the rafter beams and columns, and the beds of soil hosting a spectrum of colors.
I don’t even marvel at the crystal-like windows enclosing the entire structure, the fading sunlight filtering through like a soft prism.
No—I just find a spot in the very back and drop to my knees, clutching at my chest.
My attempts to draw in a steady breath are pathetic—are as weak and shaky as my trembling body.
It should have been me.
My fault.
How can it all be happening again, so similar yet so different?
Pain wails in my chest, beating against my sternum, demanding I let it out. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to feel it.
Pain makes things real.
And gods I don’t want this to be real.
My breathing comes out shallow and uneven—strained. So painfully strained, despite my attempts to control it. My fingers grip at the ice necklace still resting at the base of my throat.
A mistake.
Did Thestis see? Did he have to watch Delroy’s body swinging limply, suspended in air by a condemning noose?
What if he did, and it ruins him? That would be my fault, too…
“Lyra?”
The sound of Draven’s voice has me jerking upright. I whip around and swallow, trying even harder now to master my erratic breaths. But those angry words continue screaming at me in a place only I can hear, tearing through me like a blade.
My fault. My fault. My fault.
It should have been me.
“Draven?” I ask, my voice trembling. “Why are you here?”
He watches me with tender eyes, but keeps his distance. “Because I know it hurts,” he murmurs.
The words threaten to shatter me. But I do not let my stitches tear apart—do not give the hammer rapping at my chest the momentum to cleave me open.
I shake my head, pressing my teeth into my bottom lip. “No, it’s okay. I’ll be okay.”
“What happened is not okay, Lyra. And you have the right to feel upset over it.”
I inhale a trembling breath. “It’s okay.”
He shakes his head gently, taking one step forward. “It’s not,” he murmurs.
“No, really. It’s fine. I’m fine,” I repeat, lifting my chin and setting my features. “I am. I’m okay.”
“You’re not.” Draven takes another step toward me.
“Yes, I am. I’m okay.”
Another step. “You’re not.” His voice is gentle.
My bottom lip starts to quiver as the ache that has been wailing quietly inside my chest for so long swells, eager to finally be heard.
“I’m okay,” I repeat, my voice breaking.
The sound is like the first cracks of splintering ice.
“Really.” I try to fake a smile, and somehow, the lie in the action surfaces more pain.
He shakes his head, keeping his eyes glued to me, dropping his voice another soft octave. “No, you’re not. And you don’t have to be. Not right now.”
I swish my lips side-to-side as something hot claws at my chest, screaming— demanding —I let it out.
“I’m okay.” I say it more to myself now than him.
“I have to be okay. Because if I’m not okay, then that means they’ve all won—that they hurt me.
And if I let them hurt me, then everything is real, and I have lost, and see…
I can’t accept that.” I drop my voice into a harsh whisper. “I can’t .”
Draven’s gaze holds onto me steadily, refusing to let go.
“Feeling what’s hurt you is not letting them win, but refusing yourself the opportunity to heal because of them is.
” He takes another step. “Pretending to be whole does not mean you are, just as pretending the pain does not exist won’t make it go away. ”
My lips shake, and I feel suffocated—constricted by all the pressure building in my chest. It’s like I’m being buried alive brick by brick, encased in a grave of serrated what-ifs and treacherous numbness that masked the rot needing to be pruned from my body long ago.
Denial is a degenerative disease that robs you of all your senses. Every last one of them.
My lungs stutter. My throat constricts. My heart is squeezed by invisible, rough hands.
“You don’t understand,” I murmur, the sound encased in a jar of broken hearts and stolen dreams. “I have to be okay. I have to .” My voice rattles, strained at its attempts to keep the sob at bay.
“No,” he counters, his voice achingly tender. “You don’t.” He stands directly in front of me now, and he reaches his hand out, lightly cupping my face and swiping his thumb along my cheek.
It is the final stone to shatter the glass foundation I’ve been built upon.
The hammer finally crashes through, cleaving me apart piece by crumbling piece. My chest rips open, and I drown beneath the raging sea.
Draven shifts into a distorted image, going fuzzy and blurry as something wet and hot swells in my eyes, clouding my vision.
A cold chill sweeps down the length of my body, and the hairs on my arms rise as my knees buckle, no longer able to withstand the immense pressure that has been begging to be released—to be felt—for so many years.
But I do not wish to feel. It terrifies me.
Because what is a person if not their feelings, and then what am I if all my feelings are outlined by sadness?
By guilt and regret. By Pain. So much pain.
Ignorance is bliss, and I’ve been willing to turn a blind eye because it allows me to live under the illusion that I’m okay. But…
I’m not okay.
And I haven’t been for quite some time.
“Oh, gods,” I breathe, crumbling into myself and dropping to my knees, squeezing at my chest. “It…hurts.” Hiccups expand behind my ribcage. “Why does it hurt so much?”
It all hits me. Violent. Angry. Merciless. All the things I’ve been running from. All the pain I’ve suppressed. All the sadness, the hurt, the anger. It surfaces like driftwood washing to a forgotten shore.
How what happened with my mother left me shattered—riddled with sorrow, regret, and so many questions about the ways of this life.
How humiliated and repulsed I’ve been made to feel with myself by what King Alastair has made me do.
How upset with myself I am that I never truly mourned.
How infuriated I am to realize I’ve spent years running from her memory instead of celebrating who she was. Instead of talking about her.
And I feel guilty. I feel so gods-damn guilty.
It lingers in the hollow spaces where happiness once resided.
A happiness stolen along with my mother; with the pieces of a girl who never truly got to learn who she could be.
I am guilty because I’ve allowed her memory to be forgotten.
Because I am responsible for her death. Am the reason she burned.
I am the reason Meiji suffered such a cruel end. The reason Nuha sleeps in a cold bed with no warm body to roll into, just needing to feel her lover’s touch.
I am the reason a noose snapped the air from living lungs, eroding a good person into a lifeless shell. Someone who was only ever warm and kind to others. The only mistake Delroy ever made was having a soft spot for me—I was his damnation.
I am everyone’s damnation.
A dull yet entirely sharp ache pounds against my chest, and I squeeze at the skin wrapped over my breastbone, desperate to grab what aches beneath the surface and rip it out.
But I can’t.
Because even though they have more impact on the world than arguably anything else, feelings don’t exist in any tangible sense.
So I sit scratching at an invisible ache that throbs in my chest while hot tears pour down my cheeks like a busted spout, helpless to the overwhelming weight forcefully pushing against my sternum.
“Please,” I whisper through my cries. “Make it stop.”
Draven kneels down before me.
Trembling, I lift my swollen eyes from my blurry knees and look up at him.
“I…I…the king, he…” I trip on a breath caught between sobs.
“And Delroy…and my mom…” The sobs tear through me, violent and unrelenting, and my body crumples.
I drop my head back into my knees and pull my legs even tighter against my chest, folding myself inward like a collapsing star.
He brushes strands of stray hair behind my ear and watches me patiently with quiet eyes.
I try again. “I…gave him…and it’s…it’s my fault. All of it. My mother. Delroy. Meiji.” My body quakes with grief—so unfamiliar with feeling the heaviness of it. “And it hurts. I’d forgotten. I…I…” I grasp for more words through hiccuped breaths.
But I don’t feel like I can breathe anymore.
“Shh,” Draven soothes as he positions himself behind me, leaning his back against the glass window. “It’s okay. You don’t need to explain.” He pauses. “Is it alright if I touch you?”
My chest stutters, and breathing is so hard . My throat feels constricted, like it's closing in on itself just as I am. Still, I nod.
He wraps his arms around me and pulls me into his chest, squeezing just enough to put pressure against my sternum.
He does not let go of me. “ You’re having a panic attack,” he murmurs, his voice like a cradle woven in warmth, meant to hold rather than break.
“I’m going to put some pressure on your chest. It should help calm your heart rate, but I need you to help me by attempting to take slow, steady breaths.
Okay? Breathe in slowly through your nose, out slowly through your mouth. Think you can do that?”
Through ragged breaths, I again nod my head.