CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
VESPER
As they flew back to Rensburrow, Vesper’s neck and ribs bled like a total bitch, but it was his mind that remained an irreparable mess. What they’d just witnessed haunted him. He’d seen some pretty horrendous fuckery and yet this—
This was a new nightmare inducing brand of horror.
Gaelen stared blankly out into the night, his brother’s corpse draped across his lap.
Both Thorrin and Vesper had offered to take Dimitri’s body, but Gaelen refused to let him go, even for a moment.
Vesper could hardly blame him. He would have been the same with Izzy, and that thought lodged a lump in his throat and made his eyes sting.
In his desperation, Vesper even prayed as a last call for hope as he gazed out into the cold, hazy night, red moonlight glancing over the sad, dull land.
He wondered where Emmery was. How she was doing.
If she had found that man from her dreams and made headway in the prophecy.
If she would ever speak to him again when he told her he’d let her down.
If she would even listen long enough to hear him say those few words.
And he thought of Briar, Cal, Marlys, and the castle that had once been his home.
The one that would be ripped from his grasp.
And how he had lost Izzy all over again.
Only Nef’s occasional cough broke the dense silence as Vesper escorted her back to Rensburrow.
She clung to him and buried her face in his filthy tunic, while her hands trembled.
Kyrith was equally silent, her arms wrapped around her middle, face solemn.
She rode with Thorrin, not that Vesper expected anything different, but he couldn’t ignore the twitch in his arms that longed to comfort her.
When they landed, Kyrith slid off Vahla’s hide, and stalked away with her arms still clutching her middle. Vesper watched after her but didn’t know what to do. He helped Nef off Kaida’s back and gave her upper arms a quick rub while she refused to meet his gaze, fixated on the cold stone floor.
“Alright?” he asked, his brows scrunched. He knew she wasn’t but didn’t know what else to say.
Her nod was less than convincing. “And you?”
Vesper managed to shake his head. He wasn't in any shape to comfort her, and her eyes tracked Gaelen as he exited the cavern with Dimitri’s body in his arms. She squeezed Vesper’s hand and followed after Gaelen.
Thorrin approached at his side and said softly, “I did everything I could. I’m very sorry we didn’t get your answers.” He laid a comforting hand on Vesper’s arm, which shot radiating pain into the raw skin of his neck.
“We did. The answer was just no,” Vesper replied. He stuffed down the crippling disappointment climbing his throat, not only in himself, but toward his catastrophic future. He gave Thorrin a whisper of a smile through the ache. “At least you found the source of the bloodlace.”
But the firm press of Thorrin’s mouth was skeptical. “Let’s pray that’s what it was. Seems it still lingers up there.” He nodded to the open ceiling. “Not sure what will happen to those who are sick, either. We still haven’t found a cure.”
As his mind wandered back to Nef, Vesper swallowed hard. “We will,” he assured, but doubts clouded his mind.
They exited the cavern and trudged through the streets of Rensburrow, the little civilization quiet as everyone had gone to bed for the night.
“I need to get cleaned up, then check on Gaelen,” Thorrin said, and eyed Vesper’s neck. “Ensure you sanitize that wound and rest.”
They exchanged weighted glances before they headed to their separate cabins. Thorrin was clearly a better man than him. All Vesper wanted was to be alone, get some sleep, and try to forget what they’d seen.
Once inside his temporary home, Vesper stripped off his bloody tunic and cleaned most of the jagged meat of his ribs before the heavy, crippling exhaustion settled in. Even though his body was battered and bleeding, a numbness folded over him, like his mind refused to let him feel the pain.
He found a trough of cold water and plunged his hands inside, savouring the bite as it reddened his skin. He took a rough brush and scrubbed, got beneath his nails caked in blood and dirt and—
His mind wandered to so many things he wished he could unsee.
Those mothers reaching for their children through the ivory bars. Their limbs crumpling. Their translucent, bloodless flesh.
A little girl’s face slackened in death. Carrying her emaciated body outside. His whispered apologies when he thought no one could hear. How easily she went into that makeshift grave. How the soil had buried her face, and this atrocity, as if it had never existed.
How he had leaned over the cliffside and hurled until tears and snot streaked down his face. Until he wanted to sob and beg not to go back in there. To not see anymore. But he had straightened his spine and endured.
Vesper sank into how fucking guilty he felt about it all.
Because if he’d gotten off his ass, done something with his sorry existence, maybe it would have never happened. But he’d been drinking and fucking his life away when he could’ve been actually doing something.
Zyphira was right. He was a waste. He’d fucking failed every last part of his purpose here.
He scoured his skin until the top layer of flesh rubbed away. He wanted it gone. Wanted it all washed away. The brush’s bristles bit into his raw skin and blood clouded the water as he scrubbed, needing to feel it, entranced by the scrape of the bristles, each streak of pain, and the release—
A soft knock on his door halted him.
Vesper dropped the brush, tugged his wet hands through his hair, and rubbed his face, trying to pull himself together before he answered.
Nef stood in the doorway, still covered in Dimitri’s blood.
Hesitance embedded her words. “I don’t really want to be alone.”
“You know you’re welcome anytime.” He moved aside to let her pass.
Nef stepped into the cottage and padded to the table before she perched herself on the ledge. She pinched the crusty fabric of her tunic and stared down at the blood, seemingly entranced by it.
Vesper retrieved a clean shirt and some soft trousers that would drown her. “I’ll give you some privacy,” he said.
She took the clothes from him, laid them in her lap, but then just stared numbly at her hands. And she sat there. Unmoving.
“Nef?” He said her name in a reach for her without touch.
She didn’t look up. Her hands began to shake. His eyes widened as he watched her, unsure what to do. He’d been on the other side of grief but had never known how to comfort people. The only time he felt as if he did alright was with Emmery, and even that had been a shot in the dark.
Then her bottom lip quivered and her face crumpled. A sob wracked her body, and her shoulders slumped as her face fell into her hands.
He crossed the room and gently removed them. “Hey. Look at me,” he said softly.
She lifted her puffy eyes to his.
“Let’s get you cleaned up. Everything else can wait,” he said, echoing Briar’s words from when he’d been broken and bleeding those months ago.
A taut silence passed, but she lifted her tunic over her head and tossed it aside.
Vesper kept his gaze on the floor as he retrieved a damp cloth and a small bucket of water.
Beginning with her hands, he wiped away the dirt and blood.
Then he moved to her face. Carefully, he untied the bandana she’d covered her blood oath with and tenderly washed the scar too, wishing he could remove it entirely.
As he wiped the grit from her cheek, she asked, “Are you going back?”
He took a jagged breath. “There’s nothing left for me here. I need to get back to Ellynne. I need to—” His throat bobbed with a swallow. “I need to make sure that doesn’t happen again. That nothing like it happens again.”
She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“They were all Hollow, Nef. They were clearly targeted.” He dipped the cloth back in the water and gently stroked it down her cheek.
“Things need to change and … I can’t wait for someone else to do it.
I got my answers with Izzy and the prophecy.
And I—” He sighed. “I need to move on. Thorrin and Kyrith will keep looking for the cure. I will, too, but I need to go home.”
Nef’s fingers found the hem of his tunic. She fiddled with it. Then in a tiny, broken voice, she said, “I don’t want you to go.”
He gave her a small smile and swiped the cloth under her chin. “You won’t even notice I’m gone. I’ll visit when I can.”
But the thought of her not being here when he returned plagued him. And he couldn’t fucking do anything about it. Maybe it would be the same when Castle Dusk was taken. He would have nowhere to go.
“I’ll miss you,” she murmured. The words sank into his chest, beneath his battered ribs.
Her fingers dipped under his tunic and traced the skin above his trousers.
He shivered and clenched his jaw, focussed solely on cleaning her up and not on the fact she sat on his kitchen table, only a tiny scrap of fabric binding her breasts.
Nor on her fingers wandering to the button on his trousers.
He sucked air between his teeth and shut his eyes. Because she had just been through something. They all had.
And she mourned Dimitri, her life, and her dwindling health.
“Ves?” she hummed his name.
He continued the cloth down her neck to mop up the excess water. “Yes?”
“I think— ” She took a stunted breath. “I think I’m in love with you.”
The cloth slipped from his fingers and hit the floor with a wet plop. He met her eyes then and found such sadness it ravaged his heart, but he had to set her straight. “No,” he whispered. “No, you aren’t.”
“I am,” she said softly. “I think I have been for a long time.”