Chapter 10
Lhoris and I started camping separately from each other after our chat. It made sense if we wanted to avoid another attempted murder. When I watched him from the shadows, he genuinely seemed to fare better without me, though I couldn’t say the same.
Without Lhoris’ odd behavior to keep me distracted, I was stuck with my own thoughts and worries. After the incident, when I’d spent so much time alone, I was mostly just numb. I worked with the kitchen staff to keep myself moving, so I wouldn’t just hole up in my room and rot on my bed. It felt a little like atonement, too. Not just for what I did to poor Ozanna and by extension my little brother. No, I had centuries of sins to make up for. Which were my own and which belonged to the assholes holding my leash?
And the fragile little bonds between me and my sons ached. So did the one to their monstrous mother, but that ache I could live with. I didn’t give a flying fuck how that bitch was doing. No, worry for my sons was what kept me from resting. The painful tug of their fear and sadness was getting worse by the day. I couldn’t help wondering if it was because we were getting closer or if something was wrong. Or really, more wrong than usual.
We’d make it to the fortress in a few hours at the pace we were going. The horses were dead fucking tired of it though, and I hated to push them so hard, but I’d rather eat horsemeat and walk back to Bergellon if it meant we all got back to Bergellon. With the end of this part of the journey in sight, it was probably a good idea to stop and give the beasts a break. Mine was starting to slow down, though I thought he was really trying to do what I asked.
I whistled at Lhoris’ back. He was a good way ahead of me, but he’d hear. We were close enough I could see his scowl when he brought his horse to a stop and turned to glare at me.
“Horse break,” I said gesturing to my nearly exhausted animal.
Lhoris glared at the horse, and then his own, but he eventually came to the same conclusion. There was a little spring nearby that would be fine for the animals. And I think the beasts knew it too. We were that close to where they considered home, and they turned to head toward it without our direction, fast enough I started to suspect my horse had just tricked me. But that might be giving him too much credit.
I wasn’t in the habit of getting to know the horses. Not when having a favorite could end up getting it killed. I liked the creatures too much to risk it. But this guy and I had been through a lot together these recent months. Maybe I was getting to know him whether or not I wanted to.
Lhoris and I took our rest on opposite sides of the spring while the horses did what they needed to.
Thank the gods I was already on the ground, stretching my sore legs and back when I felt it—a buzzing rip in my chest, like a scream of agony I could feel instead of hear. It knocked the fucking wind right out of me, and I toppled to my side, clutching at my heart.
No, not my heart, but what was attached to it.
The bonds to my boys trembled and throbbed with hot, ripping pain. I grasped for them, as if the bonds were actual things that I could catch and hold tight in my hands. To pull the child on the other end toward me. As if holding on to them could stop them from being torn away.
My back arched and I reached to the stars, trying to capture the fading threads as they dissipated and left great big howling holes in my soul. A low, harsh moan escaped my lips between the tiny gasps I could finally take. Or maybe they were sobs, I couldn’t tell. All I could really feel was a suspended moment of anguish that came to an abrupt, final stop. Bile burned the back of my throat and I rolled onto my side in time to vomit into the fallen leaves. My curling fingers dug into the damp soil and raked at the ground as I lifted onto my hands and knees.
I should have just killed myself before they were born. I should have killed myself instead of letting Lhoris talk me into trying to save them. I could have saved them so much suffering if I hadn’t been such a fucking coward!
“Brother?” Lhoris was standing above me, his head cocked. “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t turn my head, just wiped the drool off my chin with the back of my hand. “Nothing.”
Everything is wrong.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I sat on my ass, sweat pouring down my face and under my shirt. “Must’ve fallen asleep. Nightmare.”
Lhoris’ lip twitched into a momentary sneer, but he shook it off. “We can rest a little longer and still be there by dawn. But I’m staying where I can see you, brother.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Lhoris shook his head and walked away. I didn’t care where he went so long as it wasn’t near me.
I hugged myself and curled around the raw holes, that weren’t really there, and breathed. In. Pause. Out. Pause. I had to look. I had to see how many I’d lost this time.
I didn’t want to look.
But you have to you, fucking coward.
Turning my attention inward, I found two gaping pits where my sons should be. The two older boys, right on the cusp of adulthood, so close to getting names. Names I’d picked for them when I got to meet them again after Lhoris healed me.
You don’t deserve to even think those names.
But where was the third one? The baby? For a moment I couldn’t breathe while I frantically rummaged through the shards of my shattered soul, searching for that third tether. It was lost somewhere in the turmoil around the two graves.
I found it nestled against something I’d never felt before. It was a partial … something, but warm and radiating the promise of life yet to come. There was only one thing it could be and the fact that he’d somehow found Ozanna in this mess was a fucking miracle.
My chest heaved. My eyes burned. But I clung to that little piece of impossibility and rallied around it. Just like all the other times.
“It isn’t my fault,” I whispered.
Liar.
It was Dulanzo’s doing, start to finish. Every bad place I’d ever fucking been, every wound, every loss had its root in choices he made for me. Choices he took from me.
Not even my self-loathing could argue that.
I sat up and wiped the sweat and tears off my face.
“Are you ready?” Lhoris asked from the bough of a nearby tree. He was so fucking calm it was unsettling after weeks of seeing him act like a lunatic. Or maybe I was just unsettled, and he was fine.
I turned my face up to the stars and begged, once more; please, please, please?
“Yeah,” I nodded and got to my feet. “Let’s go get this motherfucker.”