Chapter Two
AVA-MARIE
I wished, with everything that I still desperately managed to hold on to, that I could gain some semblance of silence. Of quiet. Of peace.
No. Never. All that was within was inconceivably, unavoidably loud.
The voices. The voices were screaming at me, echoing with harbored rage. I could hardly think straight. I wasn’t able to see what was in front of me or decipher words that didn’t come from them. They thrummed on and on, crying out in despair, in suffering, driving me mad.
Charlie was so stunned he couldn’t speak, clutching the divorce papers to his chest with a stricken, stupid look on his face.
“You heard what I said.” I took a pen out of my pocket and tossed it. The pen hit his chest, rolling against the floor. “Sign the papers so I can be done with you.”
Charlie swallowed. “I… we… Ava.”
“No. I don’t want to hear excuses, or any of your shit. We’re done, we’re getting a divorce, and that’s final. All I need is your signature. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”
Charlie began to sob, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t able to muster tears. My heart had been so broken by him that whatever feeling still remained had shriveled up. I’d grieved so badly I’d gone numb. Charlie thought he was unable to feel?
He had no idea. There was no reality he could fathom in that insignificantly small brain of his that could manage to convey what this was like.
I’d lost everything. I was nothing. Merely a blank canvas floating in a world of gray, a rudderless ship sailing on a vast sea that had no beginning and no end.
I’d had everything only a few hours ago, and now, I was directionless and without purpose.
I wanted Charlie to kill me. I figured if he’d wanted to stop me from ending the world, he would’ve taken my life to do it. I never believed that he’d sever our bond, take my magic away, steal Oberi from me. Death would’ve been a mercy compared to this unforgiving pain.
I’d miscalculated. Charlie would never deliver me death, because he wanted to keep me all to himself. So to keep me alive, he’d done the crueler thing, and erased my identity.
“How… how did you do this?” He clutched the papers, unable to comprehend that I could go so far.
He didn’t know me. I was one manipulative, cold bitch, and my vast love could turn to bitter hatred if the right buttons were pushed, and by ancestors, he’d smashed them to pieces.
“Eddie knows a good lawyer. One who isn’t afraid of standing up to the Elvish monarchy, so not even your daddy can keep me in this marriage against my will.
” I’d gone to Eddie the second I’d gotten done sobbing on the beach.
It’d taken hours to pull myself together, but once I managed to, my first thought was to put as much distance between Charlie and me as possible.
“So Eddie betrayed me?” Charlie failed to grasp how his guard could continue to support me instead of him.
“You turned your back on him first. You made him kill his family and stage an uprising against the Elvish monarchy. He’s just settling the score.”
I ripped the rose quartz wedding band off my finger. “By the way, take your ring back. It was your grandmother’s, so it’s not right for me to hold on to it when I’m leaving the family. I don’t want it anymore.”
I threw the ring. It hit the floor and rolled.
Charlie scrambled to grab it, dropping the papers and sending them scattering, following the noise of the jewelry as it went skittering across the tile.
He finally picked it up with trembling fingers, cradling it in his hands like our marriage was some precious thing, not something he’d abandoned. “You don’t mean any of this.”
“If you can throw our marriage away like you did, so can I.” My hand felt vacant and raw without that ring on my finger, but it— like all the other promises we’d made to each other— meant nothing. It was better that I was free of it.
“Ava, please. You don’t mean this.” Charlie fell before me. He crawled on his knees like a dog, and it was embarrassingly pathetic.
He reached out to grasp my hand, but I yanked myself away. “Don’t fucking touch me. You don’t have the right— are you fucking bleeding?”
Ruby dots ran in a line along the floor, ones that stemmed from Charlie’s hand. His left hand was bandaged, soaked with red.
I gritted my teeth. “What the fuck happened to your hand?”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Charlie tried to hide it, but I snatched his wrist and held it up.
I thought I lost the ability to feel, but somewhere, a small spark of radiant fury exploded outward, consuming the room around us. If I still had my Fire magic, I would’ve burned the entire tower down. Even so, my rage was just as hot.
Charlie was missing a finger. I didn’t know why, until I worked out this had to be some kind of mob boss rule.
Cameron. This had been a punishment for the rebellion.
I didn’t want Charlie anymore— didn’t want to be connected to him, to be married to him, any of it. But that didn’t mean he was Cameron’s to control and use, like some sort of doll his father got tired of playing with and decided to mutilate.
Parents did not possess the right to mangle their own children, no matter what kind of maniacal actions they took.
I dropped Charlie’s wrist and he backed away, rising to his feet.
If I still had my healing powers, I could’ve fixed Charlie’s hand, perhaps even reattached his finger so I could continue eviscerating him for what he’d done to me.
But he’d taken that ability, so now, he was left to bleed.
Something inside rose up in revolt and said that Charlie belonged to me, that I was the one who decided what to do with him. “Maybe if Cameron wasn’t such an incompetent ruler, he could’ve seen the insurrection coming and stopped you. Perhaps I should be blaming him instead of you.”
“Don’t. I’m the only one responsible for all this,” Charlie admitted quietly.
I wanted to agree, say that everything that had gone on today was his fault alone.
But deep down, I couldn’t. Because if I said that out loud, it would be a lie, because I’d had my part to play, too.
A low whimper sounded throughout the room, and that singular noise shattered me.
Oberi. I hadn’t noticed him when I’d come in, because he’d hidden behind the bed.
But he emerged from behind the mattress, emitting low whines and giving me the saddest eyes I’d ever seen.
Slowly, his tail wagged when he saw me, like a stray dog trying to convince me they were a friend.
My heart tore apart just looking at him.
Oberi might as well be dead to me, but he was still walking around and moving, still able to speak to Charlie…
but not to me. His emotions, thoughts, and essence were separate from my own now.
He was a complete stranger. It made him appear to be a living corpse in my eyes, a ghost I could witness, but not converse with nor experience.
I deserved this. I’d killed a piece of Oberi’s soul while I was on that beach earlier, and proven to myself I was willing to destroy my Familiar if it meant I got the chance to do as I pleased.
Looks like the universe granted my wish.
Something glimmered in the low lamplight. Panic wrapped around my neck tightly, constricting off air when I saw that Oberi was wearing a collar.
“What’s around Oberi’s neck? Who put it there?” I wanted to murder, to kill. Whoever had put that collar on Oberi would regret it, because I’d take a knife and saw their head from their neck bit by bit, slowly, just so they knew how it felt to be so restrained.
“Cameron. It’s a punishment for what I did. Don’t bother trying to remove the collar. He’s promised to execute anyone who tries.”
The voices were so loud now, bellowing in belligerent wrath that I couldn’t hear myself speak. “Oberi had nothing to do with it! He was helping me.”
“You think I didn’t tell him that? He didn’t want to listen.”
What a moronic fool. Daydreams played behind my eyes, ways I could torture Cameron for going through with this punishment, methods I could use to inflict misery upon him for merely having the idea to collar Oberi in the first place…
I needed to redirect myself. Cameron wasn’t the issue right now. I’d deal with him later, and ancestors, I’d make him pay for chaining up my Familiar—
The reality crushed me, taking away all hope. Oberi wasn’t my Familiar anymore. He wasn’t anything to me. He belonged only to Charlie, and anything we shared before was gone.
But you know what? Fuck it. Whether I had a connection to Oberi or not, I still loved him.
He’d taken my side when Charlie had been off committing the insane fuckery that had put us all here.
He didn’t deserve to wear that collar, and if I had anything to say about it, which I would, he wouldn’t be wearing it for long.
I folded my hands in my lap. “Looks like everyone’s suffering for what you did. I don’t even know if you feel sorry for it, or if you’re just upset your plans didn’t work.”
“Of course I feel remorse. I know I fucked up. In every way I possibly could, I destroyed everything that matters. But please, give me the chance to fix it.”
“There’s no fixing this! It’s irreparable!”
In a whisper, Charlie added, “This isn’t just about me, Ava.”
The world stopped revolving when he said that, bringing everything to a brittle stop. The harsh truth threatened to slap me in the face.
I couldn’t face it. Instead, I emitted a low, heartless chuckle. “You are not blaming me for this. This is absolutely on you.”
“You made a promise to me that you broke. I thought I was doing the right thing, because you asked me to make these decisions when you couldn’t.”
“I asked you to reel me in, but I trusted you to be mature enough to know when things went too far, and to respect my right to back out if I said no!”