Chapter 4 Spring #5
A hundred answers swarmed through Elana’s exhausted mind. You could have gone by yourself. It didn’t have to be with me. You’d be putting yourself at risk. The village hates you, has whole festivals devoted to remembering your downfall.
But what came out was a soft, scared sound. “They’ll trap you again, you know. Given half a chance, they’d do it again, twice as securely as before.”
Nessa shook her head. “I know better now. You made me better.” She tugged at the chain around Elana’s ankle, letting out a frustrated huff as it rattled.
Without the key for the lock, Elana wasn’t going anywhere. “Stop, it’s no use. You’ll just wake everyone with the noise.”
Nessa came back to the top of the bed, cupping Elana’s face in her hands. “Let me help you. Let me free you.”
Elana shook her head, bitter tears rimming her eyes. “And then what? Marcus will never stop. We might be free for a moment, but we can never be free of him. What’s the point?”
Nessa, kneeling at the side of the bed, sat back on her heels. “You have never actually been trapped if you don’t believe that a moment of freedom is worth a hundred years of captivity. I would risk anything to have that moment of freedom with you. You have to let me try and fix this.”
Elana turned away. The hurt in her heart weighed her heavily into the mattress, pressing into her chest like a bruise. “You could have fixed this a hundred years ago by never being a monster in the first place. If you’d never killed those people.”
Nessa fisted her hands in frustration. “I won’t defend myself. I know what I did was wrong and unnecessary. But until you have been persecuted for decades, treated with nothing but fear and disgust, you will never understand what overtook me that day.”
Elana shook her head. “And now, all the valley wants is for the shadows to be gone for good. Now, the only way I can be certain you’re safe is to send you away. Go, Nessa. Go somewhere else, and be safe. Be free.”
Elana turned her back to Nessa, hot angry tears streaking into her pillow.
She silently cried for everything that had come to pass; for falling in love and having it be impossible, for never choosing to love a monster, for being born shadowless and growing a new shadow only to have the source of all that new and exciting growth ripped away from her by her brother.
He was the monster. She bit her lip and pressed her face into the pillow to stifle a sob.
Nessa’s cool hand on the back of her neck was the last thing she felt before the soft footfalls faded out of her bedroom.
Once she was sure she was alone again at last, she turned over to reach into her bedside table. There, she felt the shadows against her fingertips and retrieved her darkly woven crown.
She pressed the braid of it into her chest and wept.
When Marcus returned from the temple, it was early morning and Elana had not slept.
Her mind had swum in the darkness, fading in and out of reality, but sleep was a balm that would not come to soothe her wounds.
He entered her room, crashing across the floor with his boots on, throwing the curtains wide to let in daylight.
Elana threw her arms over her eyes, struggling to sit up.
Marcus swung her vanity chair around backwards and straddled it, looking at her over his folded forearms for a long moment. Elana let her eyes adjust to the sunrise pouring in, finally meeting his gaze.
“The priestesses have set up guard at the well once again. The ratty tent you made for the thing is gone. I burned it.”
Elana was shocked at the sudden shard of grief that pierced her. She had worked so hard on the tent, and Nessa had decorated it so beautifully. It may have been a patchwork, but it was a patchwork that showed how committed she’d been to Nessa from the start.
And then she’d let it all go last night when she asked her to leave.
Elana cleared her throat. “And… the dress that I—”
“Gone,” said Marcus flatly. “Along with the monster. We have no idea where it is.”
A mixture of relief and fear flooded through her, confusing her senses. Was she glad that Nessa had escaped or concerned that she was really gone?
Not that it mattered. There wasn’t anything to be done now. She closed her eyes and moved to roll over, to turn away from her brother who had ruined everything.
But Marcus’s hand shot out, pressing Elana’s shoulder down into the mattress. Cold terror spread from that point of contact, numbing her fingertips.
“Where is it, Elana?”
Her mouth worked open and closed, but not only did she not know the answer to his question, she wouldn’t have answered it if she had. “I don’t know,” she breathed at last. “I don’t know.”
A muscle in Marcus’s jaw twitched in frustration. At last, he withdrew his hands, his fingers tucking into a fist as he did. “We will find it,” he said. “And we will end its reign of terror once and for all.”
If a hundred years trapped at the bottom of a well hadn’t done it, Elana didn’t imagine that the temple knew how to finish Nessa now. She had seen Marcus’s axe swing straight through Nessa’s arm to no ill effect.
She almost asked him how they planned to finish things. But she realized that if they had devised some new method of killing Nessa, she didn’t want to know. That knowledge could not soothe her in any way.
Marcus stood. “And you, dear sister, have a part to play as well. When the festival begins, I have someone you will meet. You will dance with him, and share a beautiful evening, and at the end of it all, he plans to propose. He has seen you, and since his wife died in childbirth he has been keen to have a new companion. His home is sturdy and his son will know you as a mother.”
Elana’s eyes closed of their own accord. Alderic Aubert. He was twice Elana’s age, and there were reasons no other maiden had stepped forth to fill the void left by his dead wife. He was old and drunk and angry and leered at young women even when his wife was alive.
“Do you really think so little of me, brother?” she whispered, her throat thick. “Would you really condemn me to that life?”
“Better than the life you’d choose for yourself, apparently.” He rose, twirling the chair back toward the vanity.
“You’d trade me to a monster, forsaking the monster I’d prefer.”
Marcus stepped close to the bed again, looming over her. “At least Alderic can provide you with a life that people will understand and respect.”
“Shadows damn that life, and that man,” hissed Elana through her teeth.
Marcus shrugged one shoulder elegantly. “See if you still feel that way after a week in this bed.” He crossed the floor, but turned back to her before he left. “If you do not marry Alderic, I will turn you in to the temple as a wanderer. You’ve had enough leniency.”
He shut the door.
Though she felt like she couldn’t carry the burden of any more shock and betrayal to her system, she found that somehow, the threat of being turned into the temple liquified something inside of her.
From beneath her pillow, Elana pulled the crown of shadows once more.
She ran her thumbs over the slick softness of the braids, her only remaining connection to Nessa.
What was she going to do?