Chapter 21 – — Veilguard Memoir, Unsigned
Chapter Twenty-One
“The students who survive are not the ones who feel nothing. They are the ones who feel everything and keep walking anyway.”
— Veilguard Memoir, Unsigned
I can’t go back to my room.
If I go back there, I’ll have to think. I’ll have to feel.
I can’t believe I let Malric put his mouth on me.
I can’t believe how close I came to letting it go further.
Jace walked in and saw exactly what Malric wanted him to see, and I don’t know if he’ll believe me when I tell him I stopped it. It doesn’t matter.
My feet carry me down instead of up.
Past the fifth floor. Past the fourth. Down and down and down until I reach the basement level where the descent party happened, where the blood and breath year students keep their bar.
It’s not official or anything, a forgotten room that someone cleared out years ago, furnished with stolen chairs and a collection of bottles that grows every semester.
It’s empty when I get there, because it’s the middle of the night and everyone else is asleep or studying or living lives that haven’t fallen apart.
I don’t bother with a glass. I grab the first bottle I see and drink straight from it. The burn hits my throat and spreads through my chest. It’s not nearly enough to take away my pain and disgust with myself.
I drink more.
I sit on the cold stone floor with my back against the wall, and I drink until my hands stop shaking, until the image of Nella’s eyes going empty starts to blur. Until I can’t feel Malric’s hands on my skin anymore. Can’t see the look on Jace’s face.
The bottle is half empty when I hear footsteps.
I don’t look up and don’t care.
The footsteps stop.
“Of all the places to find you.”
That voice. Cold and sharp and familiar, I hate that I know it without looking.
I lift my head.
Draven stands in the doorway, arms crossed, golden eyes scrutinizing me. The bottle in my hand. My tangled hair. The blood still crusted on my collar.
“Go away.” My voice comes out slurred. Good. That means it’s working.
“No.”
“I said go away, Alucard.”
“And I said no.” He crosses the room and crouches in front of me, close enough that I can count the flecks of gold in his eyes. “How much have you had?”
“Not enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
He takes the bottle from my hand. Fighting him would require me to care, and I’ve decided I’m done with caring tonight. His eyes move over my face. Then lower.
He goes completely still.
I forgot to cover the bite.
Draven’s eyes are fixed on my throat and his brows furrow.
“Who?” It sounds like he’s holding something back by a thread.
“Does it matter?”
His hand shoots out and catches my chin and tilts my head to the side, exposing the wound. His fingers are cold against my jaw. I should shove him off, but I don’t have the energy.
He stares at the bite. Two puncture wounds ringed in bruises by now. His thumb drifts along the edge of it, feather-light.
“Who, Rose?”
“Malric.”
His hand drops from my face like I’ve scalded him. He stands abruptly, turns away, and I watch his shoulders lock. His hands are shaking at his sides, trembling with the effort of not driving his fist through the stone.
I must be drunker than I thought, because Draven Alucard does not come undone. Draven does not get emotional for me.
“Draven—”
“Did he force you?” He still won’t look at me.
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying.” My voice cracks straight down the middle. “I asked for it. The bite. Nothing else. I needed to feel anything other than what I was feeling, and he was there. That’s the truth of it.”
When he turns back, his face is carved from stone. But his eyes look like they’re burning.
No, I’m drunk. I’m inventing things.
“Of all the people in this school, you let Malric touch you.”
Cruelty is a language I speak fluently tonight.
“I let him bite me. Right after I let Nella die. What a night.” I want him to hate me. I want everyone to hate me because I hate myself right now.
A muscle ticks in his jaw.
“Did he drink from you?”
“That’s generally what the bite mark implies.”
“How much.”
“I don’t know. A lot. I didn’t time him.”
“Did he do anything else.”
“He tried.”
Draven goes very still.
“I stopped him.”
“Tell me you stopped him.”
“I stopped him, Draven.”
Whatever was rising in him goes back down by a few degrees. He exhales.
“Good. You could have died if he’d taken too much.”
“Would that have been so bad?”
He winces, hurt, then the stone slides back into place.
He crouches in front of me again, and one arm slides under my knees, the other behind my back, and he’s lifting me against his chest like I weigh nothing at all.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
“I can walk.”
“You can barely sit. Try again.”
“I hate you.”
“Noted. Shut up.”
My head falls against his shoulder without my permission, and gods he’s warm. How is he warm? Everything about him reads like frost. His hands in the practice hall are always cold. His voice is always cold. But here with my cheek pressed to the hollow of his throat, he burns like a forge.
I can feel his heart through his shirt. It’s going too fast.
He’s not as calm as he’s pretending to be.
“You’re mad at me,” I mumble.
“Yes.”
“Because I let Malric bite me?”
His arms tighten.
“Because you let a predator put his teeth on your throat when you were in pieces. You could have come to… Because you made a stupid choice, and now I’m the one walking you back to your room at three in the morning. Lucky me.”
“You don’t have to. You don’t owe me anything.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
I don’t know what that means. I’m too drunk to figure it out, and he doesn’t offer to translate.
The walk is a blur. Stairs. Corridors. The torches in the halls, guttering low. I turn my face into his neck without thinking and breathe him in. Winter air. Crushed pine. Something that might be leather.
“You smell good,” I mumble into his collar.
“Go to sleep, Rose.”
“I’m being carried. That’s not sleeping.”
“It’s close enough. Stop talking.”
“Make me.”
I feel his breath against my hair and realize how gently he’s holding me.
I don’t have a smile in me tonight, but things feel a little less badly than they did before.
“Nella’s dead,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“I killed her.”
“No, the necrosis killed her.”
“I could have—”
“You couldn’t have.” His voice isn’t harsh, but it isn’t gentle either. “I spoke to Theo. I spoke to the healer who came in after. The corruption was at her heart before you made it into the room, Rose. There was no cut you could have made that would have saved her. The alert went out too late.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
I don’t believe him, but something in my chest loosens by a thread.
We reach my door. He shoulders it open and carries me inside, and for a moment I brace for some mockery, some final barb. Sleep it off, Rose, and try to do less damage tomorrow. But he doesn’t say anything like that.
He lays me on the bed and pulls the blanket up over me. His hands linger, and then he steps back.
He crosses the room, pours water from the pitcher, and sets the glass on the bedside table with a soft click.
“Drink it before you sleep. You’ll thank me tomorrow.”
“Why are you being nice to me?”
“I’m not. I’m keeping you from choking on your own vomit.”
“That still counts.”
“It’s the bare minimum for not being a monster. Don’t get sentimental.”
He stands there a moment longer, looking down at me, then reaches into his jacket and pulls something out.
A small leather journal. Worn at the corners. “Nella” is etched into the cover in faded gold.
My breath stops.
“What—”
“They were boxing her things and sending everything to her family.” He sets the journal on the bed beside my hand, not quite touching me. “I didn’t think she’d want them to have this one.”
Nella’s journal. Her fears. Her dreams of flying again. Every small, ugly, honest thing she never said out loud, now here because Draven walked into a dead girl’s room and took it before someone else could.
For me.
I pick it up, and my hands are shaking and the tears come before I can stop them.
“Why?” I gasp. “Why would you do this?”
He doesn’t answer, watching me cry.
“Draven.”
“Get some sleep.”
“Thank you.”
He stops. His hand grips the door frame. I can see the tension in his back, the war he’s fighting with himself.
“Don’t thank me.” He doesn’t turn around. “And don’t mistake this for something it isn’t.”
“What is it then?”
“You lost a patient. That happens here. But what you did after…” He turns enough for me to see his profile. The hard line of his jaw. The muscle jumping in his cheek. His hair, half tied up in a bun. “The drinking. Malric, destroying whatever you had with that boy who actually loved you.”
I flinch at the past tense.
“That’s not grief, Rose. That’s self destruction, and I’ve seen where that road ends.”
“Maybe I don’t care where it ends.”
“You should.” He faces me fully now. His amber eyes are blazing, but his voice stays steady. “Nella is dead. That won’t change. Drowning yourself in alcohol and letting Malric use you won’t bring her back. Won’t fix what you broke.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you knew it and did it anyway. That’s what worries me. Tomorrow, get up, go to class, and keep moving. The world doesn’t stop turning just because you’re in pain. And neither do you.”
“What if I can’t?”
He looks at me, and something passes between us. Recognition maybe. The kind that only comes from knowing the same kind of darkness.
“You can.” He rubs at his forehead. “I know you’re better than what I saw tonight, so prove it.”
“How do you know what I’m capable of? You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough.” He finally opens the door. “And Rose?”
“What?”
“If Malric touches you again, I’ll kill him.”
He says it like a promise. Then he’s gone.
I lie in the dark, Nella’s journal clutched to my chest, his voice echoing in my mind.
He meant it.
I don’t care if he does kill him.
I have no feelings for Malric other than disgust. I was saving myself for Jace or someone special, for when I knew it was serious. And I almost gave that up to a man I despise because I couldn’t bear the sound of my own grief.
I should have brought the damn bottle of liquor with me, but I wasn’t thinking straight. Not with Draven showing up like that. Why is he always showing up late at night when no one else is around?
I sit up and reach for the journal. My head spins a bit as I blink back tears and wipe my face. Poppy appears and pushes my arm up until she can snuggle underneath it and stare at the journal with me like she wants to read it too.
I open it.
Nella’s handwriting is messy and uneven, like she was always writing in a hurry. I have to blink several more times to focus enough to read. I think it’s a mix of the poor penmanship and the booze.
The first several entries are from when she arrived. Complaints about the food and the menders who treated her like a child. How much she missed her brother. How scared she was but wouldn’t admit it out loud.
I flip forward past the early days until I see my name.
My breath catches.
Maelis came by after her shift today, and I was having a bad night. I couldn’t stop shaking from the pain, and she climbed onto the bed next to me and started reading out loud from that ridiculous romance novel Draven brought me about a vampire and a shifter.
Draven brought her books? I knew she had other books that I didn’t bring her but I never thought Draven visited her too?
I keep reading.
She did voices for all the characters, even the terrible ones, and I laughed so hard I forgot about my wing for a while.
But the strange thing was the whole time she was there pressed against my side reading, the pain wasn’t that bad.
I think it actually dulled, like something warm was spreading from her.
I didn’t tell her because she would have said I was imagining things, but I don’t think so.
I’ve been in this bed for weeks, and nothing has made the pain ease like that.
Not the tonics or treatments. Just her. I don’t know what that means, but I think there might be something more to Maelis.
I wonder if she’s hiding it or maybe doesn’t realize it at all.
My tears start to fall, and I close the journal, tucking it under my pillow.
I want to tell her she’s wrong. That there’s nothing special about me. I want to tell her that I didn’t ease her pain. I couldn’t save her even when it mattered.
But she’s not here to argue with me anymore.
She’s never going to be here again.
Poppy burrows closer. She’s the only thing that feels real right now.