Chapter 18
A BARRAGE OF WIND BLASTS open the doors to our suite.
The East Wind stalks inside, the frayed hem of his cloak snapping around the scuffed leather of his menacing black boots.
I pause warily at the threshold, watching him pace.
His spine is a rod of iron attaching hips to skull.
His shoulders—bunched, coiled with repressed rage—creep continually toward his ears.
Soon enough, he will wear a channel into the floor.
I trace the scar on my bicep where the wound from the arrow has smoothed over. Following the second trial, the final twelve were taken to the infirmary, where they were treated and released. Having completed the second trial in last place, Eurus and I were the last ones to be seen by the healers.
“Last place isn’t how I imagined I’d be entering the final trial,” the East Wind growls.
After a moment, I step inside and shut the door. Pacing and pacing and more pacing: door, desk, sofa, table. As he passes before the window, the shadow of his body momentarily eclipses me. “I don’t understand. You’re a contender for the prize. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Eurus halts, pivots to face me, that hood seething with darkness, always.
“I should have been first,” he says. “I told you how important it was that I make the top three for the final trial. The advantage is enough to all but guarantee victory.” His wings stir, the long, curved bones partially unfolding in a motion I have come to recognize as a desire to flee.
“Instead,” he clips out, “I find myself in last place, the odds of winning too slim for comfort.”
Shaking his head, he turns to stare out the window. What does he see? Likely nothing. Not the gilded skin of this marvelous city, nor how the mountains cast violet across the valleys where the forest thickens and a ribbon of silver carves a slender path.
“I should have asked someone else for help,” he mutters, his back to me.
Lamplight spills across the overlapping black scales encasing his wings.
I stare at the hundreds of small, self-contained suns shining across his back, and wonder why I feel no joy at witnessing how beautifully the light is refracted.
“You said you n-needed me,” I murmur with a sinking heart.
“That I was the only person you could trust.”
“That may be true, but trust isn’t how you win a tournament. Victory is not claimed by the weak.”
“Are you insinuating I’m the r-r-reason you came in last?”
Eurus whirls around. “Had you not hesitated in climbing down the cliffs, we would have likely reached the beach first, unscathed.”
Though my back seeks to bend, my mind will not allow it. It is of iron, tempered steel. It reminds me of how far I have come. “I did my best to help y-you. Had I not b-been present, you would have succumbed to the poison before ever reaching the d-d-door.”
“If not for your delay,” he tosses back, “I might not have been hit at all. Had you swum to the boat, I could have reached the door without having to return to shore for you.”
I have often imagined an existence where fear of water did not plague me. Perhaps, in another life, I could have swum to the dock. But that life is not mine to claim. It never was.
“I don’t know wh-why you’re so upset,” I say, and I’m ashamed to find my voice quavering, my fumbling tongue not far behind. “We f-f-finished. You got to the th-third trial. You still h-have a chance to w-win—”
“There is no chance,” he says.
He will not give. It is everything or nothing.
“I h-hear you, Eurus. I’m trying to r-reassure you—”
“I don’t need your reassurance!” he shouts, tossing up a hand. “What I need is competence. Certainty. Courage.” He shakes his head at me, scoffs, then turns his back.
His blatant disregard for my feelings hurts. I am not perfect, but I am good. To think we’d made progress in building trust, however tedious the development.
“I d-don’t appreciate your t-t-treatment of m-me,” I grind out. “You could be k-k-kinder to—”
“I will do what I want.”
Blood crawls through my chest, up my face, its heat splitting open my veins.
His response has all the finality of a guillotine.
History dictates I bury my words. I pack them into a tight, dense ball of everything I wish to say but dare not.
By the Mother, when do I decide what is best for me? When do I begin?
Think of what you want—then claim it for yourself.
“Shut up,” I whisper.
The air stirs. It tugs at the tips of my hair as, slowly, the East Wind turns to face me. “Excuse me?”
There is a fire in me. I see it now: spark to coal to licking flame. “You heard m-me.”
“No, I don’t think I did—”
“You are obsessed with revenge!” I scream, and by the Mother, does it feel good to rid my body of this poison, this festering resentment.
“You will go to any l-l-lengths to get it—and then what? Have you asked yourself what will come after, wh-when the council is dead and you are free to return h-home? Have you considered the damage you will have wrought in your quest for vengeance? What of the lives y-you have destroyed, the families you have broken, the dreams you have ruined?”
My breaths come short. My skin, singed by the fury eating at my veins, feels feverish to the touch.
Rage? No. That is too simple an emotion.
“Have you asked yourself that?” I press.
“Have you asked yourself at wh-what cost your revenge will come? You think things will change for y-you, Eurus, but the truth is, even if you kill the council and return home, you will still be the s-s-same person. You will continue to hold on to mistrust and judgment. You will live out your eternal life m-miserable and alone because you cannot find it in y-your heart to forgive yourself for what occurred.”
“Forgive myself?” It emerges too quiet. A low, chilling hiss.
“Yes.” I cannot—will not—waver. “Whatever torture you endured when you were younger… it’s not y-your fault. Your father’s abuse is not your fault. The council turning a blind eye—”
“You know nothing of my situation!” he roars, wings snapping open. A brute wind rocks the room. Books are flung from their shelves, and chairs topple onto their sides.
The door to my bedroom lies open, offering sanctuary. Although some small part of me longs to quail, retreat, hide, I do not. Eurus needs to hear this. He needs to know what I have only recently discovered for myself—that change is not dependent on external forces. It comes from within.
“Think of wh-what this is doing to you,” I murmur. “Winning won’t heal you. It won’t change the injustices that have been d-done—”
“As if you have the right to speak of things like change.”
A blink, and he is before me, looming, enormous, all-powerful. My back hits the wall. I’ve nowhere else to go.
“Before I took you away, you were a lowly apprentice, treated no better than vermin,” he murmurs, head dipping low. “Two hands to stir brews, two legs to run errands. That’s all you were to your old employer: disposable.”
I flinch, a hand lifted to ward off the blow. It’s not true. Her ladyship needs me. I have been diligent all these years. One day, she will see me as I am. She will understand what I have sacrificed.
But the East Wind goes on, each snarling insult cutting into me. “You allow that witch to abuse you mercilessly, yet daily you crawled to her, begging for whatever scraps she tossed your way. Did you expect her to love you?”
“I-I…” My airway cinches shut. Disposable. “I-I-I—”
“Have you no pride, bird?” He shakes his head pityingly. “Have you no self-respect?”
His derision carves deep, through skin and muscle, down to where my heart’s rhythm flags. I feel old in this moment. Old and fatigued. For what I have fought is a long, arduous battle, and I now stand on the killing fields, bleeding out, alone.
“M-maybe I have l-l-lacked self-respect in the past,” I whisper, each word a distinct ache, “but I gain more and m-m-more each day. And I n-n-never pretended to be st-st-strong. I’m mortal. We are m-messy and naive and f-f-foolish. We l-live and d-die, create and d-destroy.”
My voice fades. I might stop there. I might leave my thought unfinished. I might hand to him victory in silence. Might… but won’t.
“At least at the end of the d-d-day,” I go on, face lifted toward his hood, “I can s-say that I’m t-t-trying.
I’m able to s-s-see those bright places in the dark.
I still search for them. I always w-w-will.
” Tears—they wend down my cheeks, drip from my chin.
I let them come. It is a relief to oust the pain and know that I have not allowed suffering to harden me.
“That you p-pity me matters n-n-not. Because I pity you, Eurus. I pity y-y-your callous nature, your single ambition to end the ones who have h-h-hurt you. But m-most of all, I pity y-your heart, for it is empty, and selfish, and cold. And it is the only company y-y-you will keep in your long, lonely life.”
With those parting words, I brush past him, shutting the bedroom door soundly at my back.
Flinging myself onto the bed, I release a soul-wrenching sob, an outpouring of shame and fury-stricken grief.
Eurus is right and he is wrong. I have distanced myself from Lady Clarisse, yet a part of me still craves her approval.
I fear Eurus sees what I have spent the better part of my life trying to bury.
That I am weak and unwanted. That I am as useless as her ladyship so gleefully claims. No matter my efforts, I will never be enough.
Later, my limbs strewn across the mattress like a collection of limp cuttings, my every emotion wrung dry, the soft creak of hinges reaches me. I tense, for the East Wind’s tread is as familiar as it is unwelcome.
“Bird.”
“Go away,” I whisper brokenly.
His footsteps cease. Still, I sense his presence. “There are things I wish to say to you.”