Chapter 11 #3
“Yeah, yeah, all of that,” Cirian interrupted. “Just let us speak with him. Better yet, why don’t you fuck all the way off and crawl back into whatever corner of the Ether you came from?”
The smile only widened across Bastien’s face.
“So be it.”
Around him, the tunnel of shadow pulsed once, then again, ripples of movement spreading along the intangible dark. Cirian and I watched as Bastien’s chin sank to his chest, our lungs still as we waited to see who we would be addressing.
As the darkness stilled, a powerful silence pressing against my ears, Bastien suddenly sucked in a panicked breath, his eyes snapping open, darting wildly before his sights fell on us.
“No,” he breathed, retreating a step. “Take it back. Take it back. Take it back!”
Cirian moved for him, pulling away as he did. I braced myself against the wall, the shadows parting at my touch till my palm met smooth stone. Bastien stepped back again, but Cirian was already there, wrapping his arms around the man.
“You absolute idiot,” Cirian scolded him, even while he held him. “What were you thinking? I was right there. Both of us could have escaped. We could have gotten Sancha out before—”
Cirian stumbled back from Bastien, his steps moving quicker to keep from toppling over. Bastien’s arms stayed outstretched from where he pushed the other man, his chest heaving and his golden eyes wide.
“Stay away,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.
“What the hell?” Cirian spat. “I’ve been searching for you, Bast. Haven’t you felt it?” He covered the spot on his chest where the tether had been.
“I can’t,” Bastien continued, his words as unsteady as his retreating steps. “I can’t bear it.”
“What’s happened to you?” I asked, pushing off the wall to stagger toward the man. “What did this Umbral do?”
Bastien’s crazed gaze turned to me, a flash of recognition sinking beneath the panic. “Azrael.”
“Yes,” I confirmed, holding my hands up with my palms out. “You’re okay, Bastien. No one here is trying to hurt you. Tell us what’s happened.”
“I know you won’t hurt me,” he said, voice a bit stronger. “But you can’t help me, either. No one can. He has to take it back. Take it again.”
“Who?” I pressed, coming within arm’s length of him.
His eyes locked onto me then, lucid for the first time since he’d joined us.
“I couldn’t figure it out. I tried, Azrael. You have to believe me. I tried harder than I’ve ever tried before. Every pathway forward, a dead end. Failure after failure for months.”
Was he talking about Tobias?
“What happened to the Greenes is not your fault, Bastien. You must see that.”
A hand lashed out, gripping my forearm with such strength that it superseded the numbness, aching down to the bone.
Bastien pulled me closer, his breath hot against my face.
“He trusted me. He knew that I would find a way to wake him up. He came to me in my dreams, Azrael. Spoke to me as if I hadn’t failed him over and over again. How could I ever face him?”
“There is no one to blame for Tobias’s actions but himself, Bastien. You must see that. He chose his path, and we’ve all had to live with the consequences.”
He released my arm, running trembling fingers through his locs.
“I couldn’t figure it out.”
My heart ached to see him in such a state. I reached out to steady him, but Cirian was faster. He collided with Bastien, shoving him against the wall of the hallway.
“You’ve given up, then?” He questioned, holding the man in place as electricity crackled in the air around him. “You’ve decided you’d rather hide in the crushing oblivion than try and fix things?”
Bastien’s head lulled to one side, refusing to look Cirian in the eye.
“There’s no use. Just leave me be.”
“Coward. Are you so afraid of being wrong that you’d let yourself be puppeted by some shadowy arsehole instead? Maybe Tobias will be better off without you, then. Maybe—” he paused, swallowing before he continued. “Maybe we all will.”
Bastien didn’t respond as Cirian relinquished his hold, letting the man slump against the wall.
“Take it back,” Bastien muttered under his breath, then repeated it over and over.
Without warning, Cirian bellowed, the cry echoing down the empty hall as a bolt of cerulean lighting was loosed from his hand. The light flashed, then faded just as quickly, leaving me blinking into the darkness that surrounded us.
What hope I’d carried with us to this point was quickly burning out. Bastien had been the only plan that led to us making it out of this place. If he was lost to the Umbral’s embrace, then he took that hope with him.
“Let’s be gone,” Cirian said after a moment, turning back to me. “I can’t stand to look at him one moment longer.”
I rested a hand on his shoulder, but he quickly averted his eyes, blinking away the tears that he was trying to hide.
“You’re angry.”
“What led you to that conclusion?” he balked.
“He needs you. And you’re choosing to walk away.”
“He needs to quit being a coward,” Cirian replied, raising his voice loud enough for it to ring through the space.
“He needs understanding. He needs to know that he’s not alone. That his burdens aren’t meant to be carried in solidarity.”
Cirian glanced back at Bastien, his position unchanged as he continued to mutter under his breath.
“I don’t know how to help him.”
His words were broken. Just as broken as the man he longed for. I was broken, too. Broken by all the things that Rudderkin had put me through. But I’d emerged from the wreckage of my life stronger. They could do the same.
Reaching down, I took Cirian’s hand, guiding him back to where Bastien slumped against the wall.
“What are you doing?” he asked, no longer hiding the tears that shone on his cheeks.
“Anger won’t solve this,” I told him, reaching out and taking Bastien's hand in my other.
“I learned that lesson through broken bones and torn flesh when I was a youngling. Battle after battle, I fought, believing that enough violence could barter my way out of my misery. That if I leaned into the rage that came along with the unfairness of this world, I would come out unscathed. It was the lie that kept me scarred.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Bastien is at war with himself,” I continued. “And your anger is nothing but violence heaped over the top of his head. How will that help him?”
“So, you’re saying that I should yell at him some more—I’m kidding, Azrael. Please don’t give me that look.”
I wiped the disappointment from my face, shifting my attention to Bastien. He didn’t react to my touch, his lips still moving soundlessly as he stared, half-lidded, at a point on the wall opposite us.
He was broken. That much I could understand. Piling on the responsibilities till he fractured. He would never know peace so long as he suffered under the yoke of his own expectations.
Suddenly, I found myself wishing that it was only another battle that I faced. I would have felt far better prepared. But there was no escaping this place without Bastien’s help, so our only hope lay in the hands of this shattered man.
“Bastien.” His name echoed off the walls around us. He didn’t lift his gaze to look at me, but I continued, “Why are you here?”
Silence fell between us. On my opposite side, I could feel the irritation growing in Cirian.
“He’s not going to tell us anything—”
“Quiet,” I urged him, tightening my grip on Cirian’s hand without taking my focus off Bastien. “Bast, why did you stay?”
“Because it’s easier.”
“What’s easier?”
“Everything. I don’t have to feel this way anymore.”
“Feel what?”
“Like I’m a mistake. Like I’m stuck between two worlds, neither of which wanted me.”
“Keep going,” I urged.
“I had to kill a part of myself to stay among the mortals. And even then, I never felt like I belonged. But it’s just the same in Paradise. I may be Reviled by blood, but I’ll never truly be one of them. So, I chose to be nothing. It’s easier to be nothing. Please, please just let me be nothing.”
“But you’re not nothing,” Cirian chimed in, stepping forward and taking Bastien’s other hand. “Source’s sake, Bast. You’ve never been nothing a day in your life. Can’t you see that?”
Bastien shook his head, each motion spreading splinters through my heart. How could we not have seen the cracks before now? The last months without Tobias had been difficult for each of us, but Bastien carried that weight in silence, and now it had smothered him completely.
“Then let us show you,” Cirian continued, glancing over to me. I nodded my head in encouragement. “Don’t trust that voice in your head. It’s deceiving you. Trying to convince you of something that simply isn’t true.”
Bastien didn’t respond.
“You fucking raised Tobias from the dead,” said Cirian, his words trembling. “You defied Adoranda Greene and lived to tell the tale.”
“You helped many of my people escape that day,” I added.
Bastien slowly lifted his gaze, somber eyes staring back at us.
“We would never have pieced together the clues about the Distortion attacks without you,” said Cirian. “And from what I’ve heard, you didn’t even argue that much when Tobias asked the two of you to sneak my lifeless body out of El Shaddith.”
“Your quick thinking of impersonating Cirian saved many lives that day, ours included.”
“We couldn’t have stopped Lynette without you. And it was you who chased Tobias into the Ether to bring him back. It was all you, Bastien. Without you, we would have watched the man we love drift away to gods only know where.”
He continued to watch us, golden eyes searching our pleas like a drowning man desperate for something to cling to.
“And last night…” Cirian started, but his words faltered, fresh tears building in the corners of his eyes.
A tether, sliver-thin and almost translucent, appeared between them. Bastien let out a sputtering gasp as it connected with him, pulling taut. The two men stared at one another for a moment, a wordless exchange that passed between them.
Bastien opened his mouth to speak, but then his features contorted in pain, and the tether snapped, recoiling to Cirian, who let out a yelp.