Chapter 30
Couples. The sun has never truly set and the boy has never grown. The trees never drop leaves and the water never comes. We are stuck.
“Lady Liv.” Isadora enters my chambers and curtsies. “Good morning.”
“Good morning to you.” I lift my quill from a letter I hoped to send to the outpost Cedric is stationed at. “Are you and Jett still available for a walk this afternoon? The snow let up enough.”
“Actually…” She smiles and steps aside into a curtsy as Cedric walks into the room. I nearly fall of my vanity seat and cross the distance. His hands lace around my waist and he lifts me slightly from the floor in embrace.
“Surprised?” He kisses my head and sets me down. He’s wearing a worn outfit likely from training and the lack of camp amenities. “I had to borrow clothing from Garreth and he wears shirts thin.”
“Surprised? Yes, on both accounts. I thought you would pack better or have servants to fetch things.” I screw the ink pot lid back on and open the window. “Why have you come?”
He hugs me from behind and I lean back into his touch, closing my eyes.
Can’t I miss you?
You may.
This visit is double charged, I’m afraid. I come bearing news.
I turn to Isadora, who is already curtsying her way out of my chambers, the door slowly latching behind her. Cedric motions to the bed but I take a seat on the trunk before it. The mix of nerves and excitement within him also transmits down the bond.
“I thought the threat subsided, that Duresden was merely testing the waters. That is the only reason you would be here right now and not at the camp,” I begin.
Cedric brushes his overgrown hair back – it nearly reaches his shoulders now – and leans against the dark grey wall.
“I could only get away this morning. The outpost needs more bodies and the lower generals of the western region of Frike are not pulling their weight. It should not be more than a day.” He looks at me seriously and I sense – no, I know – that something is amiss. The bond is not needed for that.
“Oh, then that seems to be well in order.” I take a deep inhale. “I thought perhaps—”
“A visiting cess will be here in the morning.”
“When you return,” I say.
“Yes, when I return.”
My hands feel clammy because he won’t look at me now and I am struggling to stay seated.
What is going on?
The fall of dust could be heard if I truly focused on it. Even the air in his lungs makes more noise than he does. His features are frozen, cold, pained. There is no indication he was injured.
And if he was injured, I would be able to sense it.
Time feels like honey; the grey particles floating around the room slowing their descent.
“You…” My mouth feels sticky. “You found the counterspell for my curse.” Each word is a trial. There is no other explanation for this behavior and even with that, his reaction is off-putting.
It’s scaring me.
Cedric rubs his brows, still avoiding me. “They do not have the curse, but they have an idea of it coming from the Silent Sect in the Rhydians. They want to try to prod it, to see what progress it produces. They sent word last night.”
“And you waited until now to tell me,” I whisper.
“I sat with the missive all night. I could not rest, could not do anything knowing that we had some progress.”
I straighten. “But I have made progress without the use of magic.”
He looks at me finally. “Yes, but it has been nine, almost ten months, Liv. The theory is that we could, perhaps, try to use magic to see what it will give us in return. Are you not curious to see what they could try? They wrote that it would not be invasive, that it would merely be a test. Think of your first few days here when they tempted your mind.”
“And I hated every moment of that! Every godsdamn moment someone went into my mind, prodded and scoped me, it was awful. And that was light compared to what you are referring to. I hardly believe Avonde would want to do this to me.” Standing now, I am quelling the shake of fear, of anger in my bones. “You cannot be serious.”
“No one wants to do this, Liv.” Cedric tightens his lips and asks, “Do you think I am forcing you to do this?”
The question catches me off guard and I feel my calves lean against the trunk. My body is hot, sticky, and doesn’t feel like mine.
It really isn’t, anyways.
This entire conversation, this concept, it completely negates everything I have come to admire about Cedric, the male in front of me.
“You. Tell. Me.”
“No, you know how I feel about your autonomy. It also cannot be good for you to be locked away like this.”
“I am right here! And I don’t want to do this. End of discussion.” I clap and turn away, tears now rushing the tight barricade of confidence I have worked so hard to build. “I can’t believe you would even offer something like this,” I sob.
Cedric comes near, his being omnipresent. He does not touch me and I would not wish him to. “This is not about forcing you to become Elivienne. This is about seeing if there is a hole that can be looked into. Curses, like all spells, have faults. They just wanted to see what this one’s was.”
My tears sting and I step away from him, anything to get some distance.
“If that is all they wish to do, then why are you so serious about it?”
“Because I care for you. Because I know you want to be healed.”
“No, you just want Elivienne back.”
He curses under his breath. “Of course I want Elivienne, you, to be better. Gods, what I would give to heal you.”
“How many times will something like this happen? How many times will I be the subject to an experiment?” My panic now turns into something somber, something softened. Softened in the way paper gives in to its folds after enough uses.
“You have not been one yet, have you?”
“No.” Not since the awakening, that is.
“Then do not speak as if I have forced anything upon you. This is just a development, not a solution.”
“Yes, yes, I get that. But will you? Force me?”
“It would be remiss of me to ignore the obvious alleys we have not ventured down. You knew that the cess were working on finding a solution. You wanted a solution to the curse. Why are you now afraid of it?”
“My issue is that I am just as much Elivienne as I am Liv, now.
You and I have formed a relationship, one that I once thought was stronger than this, without my memories.
I have become comfortable in this castle, this place, without my memories.
I have started to finally feel connected to my body, inklings of my powers, without my memories.
It feels like you want to force something into place that is not ready or necessary, really.
“So, if it is a matter of calling me Liv or Elivienne, you can call me Elivienne. But if you just wish to get her back, if that is your sole goal to retrieve her in the hopes there is a difference between us… then, no. I have no desire to further disappoint you or play a part in that. I will always feel that I am a disappointment to you, or lacking, because I am not who you really thought I once was,” I say, my chest caving in with each word.
He goes to speak but I continue. “I have fallen in love with you as I am, Cedric. If this life, the way I am living, is Elivienne, I am Elivienne. The only issue is that I do not remember the before and it is an issue that will resurface if not in our relationship but other places. I can see it.”
“Healing you has been my biggest priority for years and right when I feel we could fix it, you reject any notion of it,” he whispers. It is hard to grasp that he does not see my perspective. I feel his hand brush my pinky and I cry even harder. Yet, I refuse to look at him.
This feels like betrayal and one I am not even sure I can understand.
“Just give it some thought,” he says before the cold whoosh of air from his departure blows the red tint of my hair into my eyeline.
My eyes are frozen in place, my body incapable of movement.
A paralysis of body and mind. There is a shaking in my fingers, my left hand clamped so tightly, the smell of blood welling and healing prominent.
He would never force me; this is something he has been adamant about and I believe that. Things have been good between us, no, more than that. Things have been great. Our bond feels real, too real, and every interaction we have had for weeks has been inspiring.
He is excited… hopeful. He wants to push it, to make it better faster.
If I refuse the cess, their magic, I let him down.
I could try it, sit through their prods again. But it feels like a step backwards. All of the progress I have made brought back to that first day I sat before Avonde.
How can I live with this disappointment?
The night comes, as it always does, and I am sat at my vanity.
Unchanged.
Unmoving.
Someone taps my shoulder. “My lady?” It’s Isadora. Jett is here too. I can hear her pulling the covers of my bed back. A small fire is lit in the fireplace near the door, the embers crackling, the smell of woodsmoke comforting.
They help me from my chair. Each of their movements is delicate, careful. My dress slips from my form, my corset with it. The pins holding half of my hair up into little braids is undone. Jett brushes it and Isadora takes a wet cloth to my neck and forehead.
I try to thank them but even the act of moving my mouth elicits tears.
Cedric wants to help but this help feels like a punishment.
There is little argument that I did not anticipate magical intervention, a cure, but there is so much fear attached to that.
Does Liv cease to exist? Will I forget all of this?
The connection between the two identities within is wavering now. It feels so far away.
My covers are pulled up, my pillow fluffed. The two women wait by the bed for a dismissal or perhaps any action from me.
Any sign of life.
I have no order to give so I close my eyes and try to go away to that space within, that kernel of energy that is protective. My innermost self, my innermost way of living.
At some point, the bed heavies with two other bodies.
I know they are there with me, near me, acting as community or solidarity.
They shouldn’t be but they are. And so we lay like this throughout the movement of the moon and the lightening of the stars as the sun moves into position.
Red and green stained glass reflects upon the golden frame of my portrait. I have yet to stop staring at her.
Jett’s voice on my back lacks the edge in which she normally speaks. “Lady Liv, can we get you anything?”
Elivienne stares back at me and I wish her to speak through me, but she remains full of secrets of her own.
“May we help you with anything at all?” Isadora asks.
“Blood,” I say, my voice weak. “A good amount of it, I think.”
“Is that all?”
“A carriage and some parchment, as well.”