65. Hazel
Hazel
I always knew my shadows were chatty beasts. Restless and impossible to please. Now, this new darkness creeps through them, and they’re strangely silent. They burrow to my wrists while the void bares its teeth at them.
Footsteps sound down the stone stairwell. A steady gait. His sword clacks against the metal at his wrist with every swing of his arms.
I turn in my cell, curling against the cool wall while a spit of shadow dances on the floor of my cell. It twists and weaves and battles.
Until it dies like I will not.
Like I cannot.
That’s why I’m here. I have no doubt that if Wilder knew how to kill me, he would. Instead, they lock me in this dark cell as if it is any different from living in my mind.
Far above in the palace, Wilder wanders.
I can hear so far now—feel so far now. He paces all night, worrying about what Davorian said.
I wonder what it’s like to think the fates are a gift, only for it to be stripped away.
Clearly, Wilder and Elorie had hope in what they were given, and now they are like the rest of us.
They thought finding their counterpart was that simple.
A chuckle leaves my lips. Malachi would appreciate that naivety. He’d laugh with me at how easily they were fooled.
But he can’t because he’s gone.
I clutch my stomach, steadying my breath.
Elorie wanders as well, in and out of the mountain. She wonders who she is—what she is. She worries for the male she believed to be her mate. Wonders if magic muddied the truth or if, just as there are two sides of her, there are two males bound between them.
Their wandering and worrying keep me up all day and night.
Callum clears his throat when he reaches my cell. One hand rests on his sword, but I don’t bother looking at him. He shifts on his feet, at a loss for words.
Does he know I hear him too? Pacing above me, training day and night like it erases what he learned on the beach.
He was bound to come down here eventually. Everyone always wants answers. There was a time I wanted them too. Until I learned that answers only come in the form of lies, so I stopped asking.
Callum’s magic wraps the bars. It’s strangely calming. With the void, I could probably break free from this cell, but I haven’t bothered to try. Where would I go?
Malachi promised to free me—to Cleave me.
Instead, he gifted me this other piece of my soul. A piece that remembers such horrors; I can barely close my eyes without reliving this other life. The darkness used to be a comfort, and now there is a fresh nightmare in the shadows.
“Do you need anything?” Callum asks.
He’s too kind.
Too generous.
Callum has always been my opposite in that way. He’s too much of all things good, while that’s exactly what my magic feeds on. It’s why I don’t bother answering him.
I don’t need anything except to be left alone.
I wait for him to turn and leave, but he doesn’t. So I close my eyes and rest my head against the stone wall behind me, lost in the shadows that terrify the darkest parts of my mind.
“You can’t starve yourself,” he says, not giving up.
I huff out a laugh. “As if I need food.”
Maybe that confession is even more concerning. I’m not hungry, not thirsty. So long as this void wrestles around inside me, I do not need anything except this empty space.
Callum circles the cell until he’s in front of me, and finally, I do look up at him, regretting it the moment my eyes meet his pale-gray ones. While I am the darkness, he is the light.
I am the shadow, and he is the breeze.
Callum brushes his thick dark hair off his face, and I look away. I don’t want to see his face. I don’t want to hear his voice.
I want to be left alone.
“I can’t do that,” he says in answer to my thoughts, which has my teeth gritting.
“Why?”
“You know why. You know what I saw in Rohldova.” He squats down, and I level him with my gaze.
“Does it matter anymore? Nothing matters after what happened that day. Davorian comes for us all. Fate comes for us all. And this comes for everything.” I twist my fingers in the air, a dance of shadow and nothingness.
“How long have you known?” Callum asks, ignoring my rambling.
His jaw ticks.
A beautiful jaw.
A beautiful face.
A beautiful male.
It’s strange how the Fae age so quickly and then so slowly. Callum is the same as I remember, and entirely different.
The calm that once surrounded him has long been stripped away. The shadows told me why he is the way he is now; they showed me his secrets. I saw what his father did, and it makes me sick.
I was too easy on Cyan in the Ley Court. My brother should have executed him for the things he’d done. Now, what do he and Alasdair do to my brother’s kingdom with him gone?
“How long have you known?” Callum asks again, his voice thick.
I meet his gray eyes, my chest tightening. It used to be so easy to ignore him, and now it’s like he’s woven through me.
“Does it matter?”
“You know it does.”
What I know is that there is no more running. No more hiding now that my shadows showed him everything. I was so careful for well over a century, and in one weak moment, Callum learned all my secrets.
He saw what I’ve been protecting him from.
“Hazel.” Callum grips the bars on the cell, his eyes a beacon in the darkness. “How long have you been using your magic to stop me from seeing that you’re my mate?”