Chapter 13
Trio was not pleased to see him. After having passed a rather solemn and silent Nymiria on his way to the Twisted Willow, he’d drawn the conclusion that something had happened.
He wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with the blood splattered all over Nymiria’s body, but when arrived at the tavern, he gathered that Aziel had misbehaved once again.
For nearly twenty years, Trio stood by Aziel’s side.
He was the closest thing to a brother that Trio ever had.
Although he’d left Yaar at the young age of fifteen, he never abandoned Aziel entirely.
They would meet frequently—sneaking off into the forests and getting drunk, exchanging stories, sharing news.
And up until they were nineteen, Trio lived on his own.
He roamed around from place to place in Gaellagh, finding hovels and dilapidated homes to spend a few nights in before he moved on to another location.
He never imagined that his best friend would grow up to be a god. He never imagined that the young boy he’d spent his entire childhood following around would be able to accomplish something this great, and that they would lead a revolution together.
For all intents and purposes, Trio was extremely proud to call Aziel his brother. He was proud of all that they accomplished. But not even Trio could even begin to understand the way that Aziel’s mind worked.
He was a complicated man; one that guarded himself, that’d built nearly impenetrable walls around his heart.
And when Nymiria Celentas strode back into his life like a raging storm, she’d torn every stone out of that wall.
Aziel liked to pretend that the wall was still there, but Trio had never seen him this concerned over another human being.
Of course, Aziel cared about other people.
He cared so deeply that he’d risked almost everything to ensure their people were liberated and freed from their prisons.
But Aziel’s care for Nymiria bordered on the lines of obsession.
Every Mystic heard about mates at least once in their lives, but it was such a rare occurrence that they were now considered to be blessed by the gods.
A special gift, rather than something natural.
Trio didn’t know what it was like to care for another individual so deeply, but he could imagine, just by the way Nymiria and Aziel looked at each other, it was absolute hell.
Two people drawn together, but too afraid of pain to let go of the pasts that haunted them. It was easily fixable, in his opinion, but trying to talk either of them into giving the other a little grace was like trying to convince a pig that it was a cow.
“You’ve been very, very bad.” Trio sighed, leaning against the twisted railings along the staircase.
Aziel looked up from the floor, blood coating the skin from his hands to his elbows as he scrubbed at the gore that caked the wooden flooring.
A roll of tobacco hung from his lips, smoke rolling up into his squinted eyes.
“Any news?” He asked, pinching the roll from his mouth and flicking the ashes onto the blood.
“I believe there are more dire conversations that are needing to be had at the moment. Perhaps we should begin with you telling me why I just passed Nym, completely covered in blood, and why all signs are leading back to you.” He chuckled, swiping up the mop that was propped against the railing.
The young god flicked his hair out of his eyes and pressed his cigarette between his lips again, taking a long drag. “I killed a few people.”
“He made them explode!” Gorford called out from behind the counter.
Aziel shrugged, smiling cheekily. “I did make them explode.”
Trio snorted. The damned fool sounded so proud of himself. But, hell, Trio would be rather pleased with himself, too. Finding a new trick with your Graces was always quite thrilling.
“Nymiria didn’t seem very pleased about it. Did this have anything to do with her?”
“What makes you think that?”
Trio snorted. “Lucky guess, I suppose.” He began mopping at the blood, but there was so much of it that it was practically useless. He was simply smearing guts across the floor at this rate. “Can’t you clean this up with a simple flick of the wrist?”
Aziel shrugged, scrubbing harder. “Yes, but this instills discipline. It reminds me that even the gods still have to clean up their messes.” He grunted and the cigarette fell from his lips and to the floor, the white rolling paper soaking up the blood and sizzling out. “Shit.”
“How unnecessarily humble of you.” Trio tisked. He continued to mop, thankful that the thick red was now turning pink. “What happened?”
“A few of Dorid’s men were on my toll.”
“And Nymiria?”
Aziel’s body tensed, but he continued with his task. “They recognized her.”
It was the only explanation that Trio needed, he could use his imagination with the rest. “Why did she look so sad?” Aziel was suddenly lifting himself off of the floor and tossing his scrub brush into the pale of bloody water.
One simple flick of the wrist later, the rest of the blood was gone and the floor was spotless.
Trio blinked down at the mess and scoffed, rolling his eyes as he followed Aziel back to the bar. “You aren’t going to answer me?”
“From what I recall, the two of you love to gossip over drinks. Perhaps you should follow her back to the palace, get her drunk, and she’ll tell you everything.” He raised a glass of whiskey to his lips, but Trio snatched it away and slammed it on the counter.
“Stop being a brat.” He snapped.
“I’m not being anything.”
“Yes, you are.” Trio stepped closer to him, shoving a finger into the center of his chest. “You made her sad and you regret it.”
Aziel’s gaze dropped down to Trio’s finger, small black veins appearing under his eyes. “She doesn’t want me, Trio. Because of what her mother did, she will not allow herself to want me. And you expect me to just be fine with that? That I am not supposed to feel anything?”
Trio slowly removed his finger, releasing a strained breath through his nose. “No one is expecting for you to feel anything other than what you feel. But I warned you that this will not be easy for either of you. Your bodies might heal fast as gods, but the wounds on the soul take years to heal.”
“I know.”
“Then why distance yourself from her, build these walls between the two of you, when all either of you needs is someone who won’t give up?” The question lingered between the two of them, but Trio could see the very moment that Aziel’s defences dropped.
He saw it in the way the man’s shoulders sagged, the way his jaw loosened. “I don’t want to manipulate her. I don’t want her loving me just because I was there. She will only spend the rest of her life convincing herself—”
“Did she tell you this? Did she say any of this to your face—that she didn’t love you or care for you?
Because, from what I’ve seen, all she is doing is because she cares for you.
Though it may not be shown in the way you want, she is caring for you.
” Aziel was not used to seeing Trio angry.
He’d seen him bloodthirsty, with nothing but death in his eyes.
He’d seen him enraged at the sight of injustice, but it was never directed towards him.
Aziel brought his hand up to the branches twisting and writhing along his chest, rubbing at them as if to coax some sort of feeling out of them. Trio noticed.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” He asked.
The young god looked up at the ceiling. “Yes.” He responded, too ashamed to admit it in a voice that was louder than a whisper. “I’ve been working on it.”
The twisted, gnarled tree that was seemingly engraved in his skin had been growing.
He hadn’t used his Grace on himself in years, but it seemingly did not matter.
Once he started taking his own pain away, that tree became invasive.
It numbed him, made every bad thought and emotion seem meaningless.
It twisted and curved and cut its way through his flesh, growing larger and larger until there were hardly times when he felt anything at all.
Aziel was never warned of what using his Grace on himself could lead to, not until Teigh discovered the start of that darkness.
He’d corrupted himself, Teigh had said. And there was no known cure for it.
For the first five months, Aziel spent what little leisure time he had searching through every text he had about self-inflicted curses, but none of them were quite as complex as this.
None of them mentioned anything about self-corruption.
There were still pieces of himself left, squirming and gasping for air in between the darkness, but those pieces were so fragmented that he had a hard time latching on to them.
“Aziel.” Trio’s voice was low, his eyes filled with remorse as he looked at his friend. “Go home. For just a moment, think of me as your voice of reason and go home.”