Chapter 24 #3
My resistance crumbled, and I let her wrap her arms around me. We clung to each other for just a moment, as both of us shed the tears that the adrenaline had brought up.
I thought I saw blurry figures through the tears, but I wasn’t quite ready to let go of Freya. But then I heard it, heard him.
“Lexa.” Griff. His voice could draw me through anything.
The daze of using my power like that.
The shock of killing two men.
As I came back to myself fully, I saw the damage I had wrought. There were scorch marks where the ring of fire was, and a burn mark where the body had been. The other body was still tied to the wall by vines.
Griff dropped to my side, taking my hands in his as if on instinct. “Deep breaths, Princess.”
His words resonated through my chest as I did as he said. One breath in, one breath out, concentrating on the weight and warmth of his hands on mine, providing my heart and thoughts the tether they needed.
“Are you injured?”
I shoved aside all the thoughts that were tumbling around in my head. “No. Neither of us are.”
It was only then that I realized we had been speaking mind to mind this whole time.
“How?” I asked in wonder.
“Now is not the time to figure it out. What do you need?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
And for the moment, I would be. I would handle my emotions at a later date.
Griff gave me a look that said he didn’t believe me, but he understood.
Freya returned to the girl. Speaking to her in soothing tones, she healed the worst of the pain. When a man in a green cloak moved to help them, the girl shied away. Freya motioned him to leave.
I shook off Griff, who kept his distance as I approached the girl. “How can I help?” I asked Freya in a low voice.
At my words, the girl’s head turned to me, her eyes low and covered by her hair. “Thank you, your highness,” she said in a shaking voice.
Of all the times to be noticed as the fucking princess.
She clasped my hand. “I don’t know what would have happened to me if you hadn’t appeared when you did.”
That calmed some of the rage and guilt inside of me. It was worth it, to defend an innocent. An innocent who had no one else. But tonight, she had me.
But she wasn’t done. “His eyes went dark, so dark. Like night.”
My blood ran cold.
Freya looked at me at the same time I looked at her.
And then we both looked down at the hand clasping mine.
I reached out with my body channel and felt Freya doing the same.
I found no hint of darkness in her, and with a quick glance, I knew Freya agreed.
Was it possible that Cillian, that those in the faction, were being controlled by the darkness itself?
Was the darkness already inside the castle?
Freya wiped her sweat-soaked brow and told me softly, “We need to get her to the healing wing.”
I looked her over and saw the burn marks, the skin scorched away in multiple places. There was no way she could stand.
“My name is Lexa,” I told her softly. “What’s yours?”
“Aoife,” she gasped through the pain.
“Aoife, there is a man here I trust with my life. With anyone’s life.
Will you let him carry you?” My voice was gentler than I thought possible after what I had just done.
She recoiled at the thought, but I gently stroked down her arm, infusing my touch with calm from my soul channel.
“I promise you. I will be right by your side the whole time. Freya and I both will.”
She stared at me with wide eyes, and I motioned for Griff to approach.
“Aoife, this is my friend, Griff. I promise you are safe with him. He’s…” I paused, searching for the words to explain who he was to me, to convince her to let him help her. “He’s who I trust most in the world,” I said in a whisper. “He would die before letting harm come to you.”
Her eyes never left my face as he gently picked her up, careful of her legs. I just hoped I was worth the trust in her eyes as Griff carefully carted her to the healing wing.
Later, much later, Griff got me back to my rooms. I collapsed on the sofa, my head bowed forward, staring at the floor.
The emotions I had shoved aside returned with a vengeance.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking—hands that had commanded power to squeeze the life from two men.
I pressed them between my knees, trying to make the tremors stop.
Griff sat next to me, close but not touching. I was terrified that if he touched me, I might shatter completely.
“I killed him.” I let the words spill out.
“I could have incapacitated him, stopped him a dozen of different ways. But when he sent the flames toward Freya, and burned Aofie, I lost myself. I wanted him to hurt. I wanted him to burn. To know that there was nothing he could do to stop it. I wanted to kill him. Them. What kind of monster does that make me?”
“You are not a monster.” His voice was fierce and certain. “You are someone who protects the innocent. Even as it shatters your heart to do so.”
“How do you live with this?” I asked him softly, my voice breaking.
He took my shaking hands in his, rubbing his thumbs over my knuckles.
The tremors slowly started to abate. “By knowing that you saved many people, yourself included, from the horrors he would have wrought. By remembering that if you show mercy to the cruel, you can damn the innocent to that cruelty.”
“Does it get easier?” I needed to know if I would live with this feeling forever. But even as I asked, I feared what it would mean. What type of person would I be if killing did become easier?
“You get used to it,” he said, years of weight behind those words. “But it never gets easier. The day it does, that is the day you should worry about your soul.”
Something broke inside me at those words. The tears I’d been holding back finally came pouring out.
Griff didn’t hesitate. He simply pulled me to him as I crumpled, one hand a band across my back, the other running over the back of my head. Those hands that knew killing, offering nothing but comfort.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured against my hair, his voice thick with his own emotion, reminding me that he too had taken a life today. “Whatever happens, whatever it takes from you, you are not alone. I’ll carry it with you.”
He was talking about more than just tonight. He was talking about the war that was inevitable.
I buried my face in his chest and fell completely apart.
My tears soaked his shirt. Tears for Aoife, who would carry scars from this night forever.
Tears for Fiadh, lost to darkness. Tears for who I’d been not even a few hours ago, laughing and drinking with my friends.
Tears for who I was now, blood on my hands.
And tears for Griff. For all the times that he’d had to make the choice, carry the weight, live with being both protector and destroyer. For the fact that he understood exactly what was breaking me, because it had broken him, too, over and over again.