Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
He was dreaming, Auster knew he was dreaming, but he had to wonder what he had done wrong to be forced to live this dream over and over again.
Watching from outside himself as he made the mistake over and over.
As he tried to kill Autumn. He realized now that if he had actually succeeded, he would have killed Eleni too.
And the more that he was forced to watch what he’d done play out, the more he was forced to recognize that Autumn had been there the whole time, that Boreus had been right. As much as he wanted to rail against it, it was the truth.
And he’d tried to kill her.
He’d tried to kill her, and rather than do what they should have done and send him from the Mountain, they had sent him to serve her.
She had to hate him now; there was no coming back from what he’d done.
He’d lost them, Eleni, Autumn, Boreus, all the people he had loved and had wanted nothing more than to protect.
They would be gone from him now. Auster pulled himself from sleep as the dream started again and wiped the wet off his cheeks. He was still tired, void; he was so tired, but there was no rest for him until he heard them tell him exactly what they thought.
They deserved to be able to tell him that; he deserved to hear it from their mouths. That he’d destroyed everything they had ever had. Auster rose from the bed in the villa and dressed. Making to leave and go to them, and then he froze.
He had not been summoned, and Autumn had told him to stay here until he was required. Auster sat on the sofa and put his head in his hands. Trying to figure out how to send them a message when they would likely not want to hear from him at all.
He was deep into finding and discarding ideas when the front door creaked and startled him out of his contemplation. There was a light and a breeze, and Auster was convinced that the Highest had changed her mind about letting him live and slipped off the couch to his knees to wait for his doom.
But it wasn’t the Highest; it was Autumn with a tiny, glowing light in her palm and Solace at her side. She stopped in the doorway and just looked at him.
“I thought you would be asleep.” She said, but her voice wasn’t cold; she didn’t sound like she hated his existence. “You are supposed to be resting.”
“I tried,” he said the words carefully. “But I keep dreaming, and I can’t sleep until you tell me I destroyed it all.”
“Would that make it better?” She sounded nonplussed. “Would that help you to hear me angry?”
“I don’t know,” he said helplessly. “I know you hate me. I know I ruined whatever love you might have held for me. I also know I can’t do anything about it.”
“You did,” Autumn said quietly. “You destroyed everything that you cared about. If you only ever cared for Eleni and Boreus. Then, yes, that is gone.”
“What about you?” Auster wanted to cling to her leg, as useless as that was, but Solace was there, and the fox had all of his teeth out and was growling quietly.
“You never cared for me,” she said, voice full of quiet certainty. “So my feelings do not matter. I will be with the others while they work through the betrayal that you forced on them.”
Auster felt like he had a pit in his gut, like it would swallow him whole, and knew he deserved every moment. “You hold my service, what can I offer?”
“I want nothing from you,” Autumn said firmly. “You can stay here and rot in your own pain. But they would not thank me if you died, so I will mind you for them.”
She sat down in one of the chairs across the room, digging in her pocket and coming out with a small silver bottle. “Light makes this, she gave it to me when I couldn’t sleep. It should help you rest.”
He didn’t know what to say. Autumn—he’d tried to kill her, but she was sitting in the same room as him and was offering help. He knew he didn’t deserve what she was offering, but he was exhausted, and how was he to try to make things right when he couldn’t even focus his eyes?
“Thank you,” it was poor, but it was all he had at the moment. He uncapped the bottle and took a sip. It was vile, and it took him a moment to get his stomach to accept it.
Autumn leaned in and took the bottle. “Go to sleep, East Wind. Tomorrow I will return, and you will write to the ones that you destroyed. Each day until they write back.”
“I will,” he rose and bowed, nearly falling as whatever had been in that bottle hit him like a hammer.
He didn’t remember getting back to bed, but there was an instant where her face hovered over his as she tucked the blankets around him.
He didn’t dream, didn’t wake, and when he finally did, more than one day had passed and there was a tray of food on the table in the sitting room alongside a stack of paper and a pen.
He knew what she wanted, so he sat on the sofa and started writing.
Stopping to eat every now and then, until there was a pile of letters in front of him.
He couldn’t reach Eleni, but part of the stack was for her anyway.
Part was for Boreus, acknowledging his rage, accepting it and telling him that he would not seek forgiveness.
And the final part was to Autumn, the one he’d tried to kill.
The one he’d reviled without understanding.
The one that held his service. He wrote to her, thanking her, for whatever it was worth.
Thanking her for all that she’d done for the others, for being the reason that Eleni had lived for as long as she had, for her music in the moonlight, and for not asking for his death, though it would have been within her right.
He wrote until he ran out of words, and his hand was cramping so badly that it refused to hold the pen any longer.
The paper was gone, and the pile of letters was divided into three neat stacks.
But Autumn didn’t come; she’d said she would, but by the time Auster could no longer stay awake, she still hadn’t come.
But when he woke in the morning, the letters were gone. Or most of them were gone. Autumn’s stack was precisely where he’d left it and his gut dropped again. She’d rejected him, and that was well within her rights.
There was another stack of paper, another tray of food, and the days rolled. Every morning, there would be paper and food, every night, there would be stacks of letters, and in the morning, two of them would be gone.
But Autumn’s letters stayed, and there was nothing from the others.