Chapter Eighteen Claire
Creation is a language. It cannot be unsaid. Once it is introduced to the realm, all we can do is make something else to combat its negative effects.
—Lesson in creation magic from Diu to the Immortals
Translated from The Tale of Stars (L’Histoire des étoiles), Part I: The Book of Origins
Chapter Eighteen
Claire
I cover my mouth with both hands. Tears gush from my eyes and leak between my fingers.
Imprisoning his brother? Slicing up his back? Inserting foreign objects into his spine to induce paralysis? Ignoring his cries for death and forcing him to remain in dragon form?
Who conceives of such torture?
Beside me, Lucy’s ears twitch with awareness. I hold my breath. She licks her jowls, but sleep ultimately wins.
Every insult I want to scream at Diu tangles inside my chest, but I can’t release them. Not with Abel sleeping here. My shoulders tremble with the effort to remain silent.
When I started my search, I knew a cure was a long shot.
But the more time I spent with Abel, the more evidence I gained to suggest my hopes were not misplaced.
He loved his brother despite the curse. Lyle defended his research.
Even the assassins seem obsessed with his findings. How could I not place hope in it?
I painted a picture that doesn’t exist, based on the way everyone reacted to it.
I conned myself.
At worst, I suspected Abel’s journal would provide inconclusive research, something with gaps I could fill in. Not a death sentence.
I thought I would trot away from this journey safe and secure on a horse’s back with a satchel full of coins and the recipe for a cure.
I’d settle on a farm with rolling pastures and horses running to greet me at the gates.
Instead, this journal proves I have no future.
Even my reliance on sleep powder will be impossible to maintain.
Worst of all, Abel’s own entries read like he aspires to usurp control of Diu’s domain.
Like the Immortals did during the Dark Days.
The pressure in my chest builds too much. I allow myself one sniffle.
Abel shifts in his sleep.
I hold my breath, legs tense with the journal in my lap.
The slightest movement will wake him. He’ll see that I broke my promise not to read his research and easily guess the reason for my tears.
He’ll know I led him on a false hunt to save myself.
He’ll look at me like étienne Houdin looked at Anne-Sophie’s daughter.
He’ll kill me.
He remains turned away, shoulder blades exposed.
It takes a moment, but his rhythmic breathing works its way past the furious pulse in my ears.
Once I remember how to inhale, I rewrap Abel’s journal perfectly, just the way he gave it to me.
No Dame Blanche riffles through someone’s belongings without leaving them precisely how they looked before.
A snapped lifeline. That’s what this journal is. Useless—but I don’t want to let it go. So I slip it back inside my satchel under my bed, as usual.
Lucy lifts her head. I gather her close and bury my face in her fur, wishing I could confess to her all my secrets, and my hopes and dreams, crushed to pieces. She gekkers sleepily.
Burying my sobs is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I deserve to scream and cry. I deserve to release my pain like every other human instead of bottling it. The only semblance of safety I get is burrowing beneath this blanket. No one can survive this way. Not even me.
Abel obviously loves his late brother to this day—and that’s the most terrifying part of what he did.
He compartmentalized Micah and his dragon form too easily.
How could someone so polite and mindful of others dismiss his little brother’s pain?
Micah begged for death long before he died.
How could Abel not offer him a mercy killing?
This is what love looks like for Abel. If he learned my secret, how would he treat me?
I can’t run. Sleep powder will fail me—and the innocent people around me—eventually.
I can’t stay. Abel is cold. Cruel.
Dragons are monsters, but so is he.