Thayla
I’m a coward.
I ran away.
Well, I didn’t go far, but I definitely ran to the hot spring. I just needed two seconds of space. Of silence that didn’t feel like it was crushing me.
After Laney’s breakdown, we moved over to the couch, and she cuddled up to Rose. Within minutes, she was hard and fast asleep.
I took the opportunity and fled.
I told everyone I was just stepping out for some air. Damn if I didn’t wrap my power around me and starshoot here. I did get V to tell them where I was as soon as the guilt settled in.
It’s been an hour now and I just can’t convince myself to get up.
The sun’s rays burn against my back, but I’ll take that heat any day over the one that rises and falls inside of me randomly. One moment, I’m okay. The next, an icy chill threads through my veins. Then blistering heat melts it away.
That’s been the vicious cycle my emotions have been going through since the second Ellian stormed into our house.
I can’t get it to stop.
I don’t know how.
“Thayla…” V says, startling me out of my stillness.
“I’m coming back now.”
“No, you don’t have to. That’s not why I’m reaching out.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask, sitting straighter because of his sad tone.
“Nothing’s wrong. Lambrit wants to speak with you. He’s about to be there.”
My head whips to the tree line at the crack of a limb.
“Looks like he’s here now.”
He arches his brows at me and my face scrunches as I glance up at him.
“I’m sorry. I just…”
“Needed a break. Yeah.” He sighs. “Same.”
He lowers himself in the grass beside me and rests his elbows over his knees as he stares into the water. The longer I look at him, the more my heart hurts.
“Dumb question, I know, but how are you?” I ask.
He blows out a harsh breath and shakes his head.
“It’s weird, Thay. I spent so many years of my life so indifferent toward them. I understood early on I was the furthest thing from their ideal son. At some point, I quit looking at them as my parents and started seeing them as just adults who fed and clothed me. Then Laney…”
He closes his eyes and lets his head fall forward. My throat constricts. I already know exactly how he feels.
“Laney got very different parents than I did, and you know how resentful I was of that even if I didn’t exactly say it. I know I showed it.”
I try not to snort, but I fail and he cuts his eyes over to me.
“You called her the ‘other offspring’ for two years.”
His lips twitch.
“In my defense, I figured at any point in time, Mom and Dad were going to start treating her like they did me, so I might as well get her used to it.”
I roll my eyes where he can’t see it.
He’s being too hard on himself. Yes, he was a touch indifferent toward her at first as well, but he loved her from the first moment he saw her. He may have not understood that, but I did. I saw how tender he was with her.
“I’m feeling something I don’t understand,” he whispers. “I need you to tell me what it is.”
A long breath pours out of my lips, and I chuck the pile of meadow grass I was collecting in my hand. I knew this conversation would come the moment Mrs. Armend took her last breath.
“This…the type of grief you’re feeling isn’t the same as Laney’s,” I say quietly.
“You’re sad that they’re gone, but you’re truly mourning what you hoped to have with them one day.
They were so proud of you on the Veiling Day and since then, you’ve been planning your reunion.
The day you’d starshoot to Oddian and show them who you’ve become.
You were looking forward to seeing that look in their eyes again. ”
He lets out a grunt laced in pain and his fingers flex into fists multiple times.
“They were proud of you, Lambrit.”
“Yeah,” he huffs an unamused laugh. “One day of pride doesn’t erase the other thirty years of embarrassed smiles they gave people when I spoke about things they didn’t understand.
Or the quiet apologies they’d give because I wouldn’t speak in a crowded room.
It doesn’t change the fact my mom would tell me to pray and ask the gods to fix my quirks so I could fit in better. ”
His eyes narrow in a familiar anger, and my heart cracks open.
“No, it doesn’t change or erase that, but they were proud of—”
“Stop saying that just to make me feel better, Thayla. I don’t want meaningless words.”
My mouth shuts with the snap in his tone.
He releases a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, I understand. But they aren’t meaningless. Your mom…” I trail off and close my eyes.
I should’ve told him last night. It didn’t feel right just spitting out his mother’s dying words there in front of everyone like they meant nothing. Like they were a moment to go over on a checklist.
“She what?” he asks.
I blink away the visual of her in my mind and turn my body until I’m facing him fully. His brows draw down as he studies my face.
“I—we—were there, Lambrit. I held her in her last moments.”
The anger written in the wrinkles of his forehead cracks as I tell him what truly happened. What she said. What I said. His mouth opens and closes repeatedly as indecision on what to say back to me wars within him.
Finally, he closes his eyes and breathes.
I don’t say anything. I let him take his time.
“She had such high hopes for this place. Not even just for me, but in general. She thought there was no wrong in the gods.”
“A lot of people think that. You don’t really know any better until you get here.”
“It’s so incredibly dangerous, and I’m so—” His jaw tightens as he shakes his head. “How could they do this, Thay? How could Mellcom and Jeremiah…”
I don’t have an answer for him. My mind is still struggling to wrap around this. I’ve put them on a pretty low pedestal for a while now, but even this, joining the side of the Abandon, attacking our home region, stealing innocent people, kidnapping…hurting Laney.
They went lower than I ever imagined they could go.
I shove them from my thoughts.
I can’t focus on them right now.
“I came out here to talk to you alone because I’ve made my decision about a couple of things, but I need your help.”
The switch from borderline anger to calm in him is so worrisome. I’ve never seen him like this, but at the same time, I’ve never seen him experience any kind of loss. All I can do, all I know to do, is support him.
“Anything you need, you got it.”
“You say that,” he whispers. His eyes bore into me and unease curls in my belly. “Do you remember when Mr. Wagner was accidentally killed by those oxids?”
I grimace. That was horrific.
“Yeah. You can’t really forget something like that.”
“What I remember most was how everyone treated Mrs. Wagner afterward. The whole region thought she’d gone mad when she decided to burn his body and carry his ashes with her rather than bury him.
No one took into consideration how hard it would be for her to stay in Oddian after that.
Living in the house they shared, walking down the same path every day that he took to the fields without him by her side. ”
I frown as he stares off for a moment. I remember her getting into that carriage to leave with her head held high despite the tears streaming down her face. To me, in my teenage eyes, she looked strong.
“The day she left, I overheard Mom talking about it. She said she thought it was beautiful. Mr. Wagner could go with her anywhere. He could travel the realm alongside her forever. She’d never have to return to Oddian to visit his burial site.”
He turns his watery eyes to me, and a lump forms in my throat.
“That’s what I want for them. I want them to travel alongside Laney and me for the rest of our lives. I know realistically, once our souls leave this realm, our bodies become nothing but empty vessels, but the thought, the idea, brings me comfort. I think it’ll bring Laney peace as well.”
“Lambrit…” I whisper.
“I need you to turn them to ash for me.”
Despite my soul knowing the request was coming, it still hits me in the heart like a Veilatara slamming its hoof through my chest.
My fingers tremble in my lap as I will the tears burning my eyes to go away.
Be strong.
For him. For her.
I blink once, wiping away the stubborn water that falls anyway.
“Okay. W-when.” I clear the stutter from my throat. “When do you want me to do this?”
“As soon as we leave here.”
“Lambrit, but…Laney. What if she wants to see them and say goodbye? You don’t have to rush this. You can take your time. I have a barrier around them. You can—”
He shakes his head at me.
“She woke up minutes after you got off the couch and left. I pulled her to the side and asked her if she wanted to go see them. She asked me what they’d look like, and I told her it’d look like they were sleeping.
She said no. She didn’t like the way that image makes her stomach feel.
I don’t like the way it makes mine feel either.
I’d prefer to remember the smiles on their faces when I stood on that platform in Oddian.
I don’t want them just lying on stone slabs in the healing villa waiting for me to decide what to do. ”
My soul shivers and my stomach lurches at the thought of her actually seeing them like that. I didn’t even consider how hard that would be when I first said it. The image would be burned into her brain forever.
“Okay,” I say, wiping my hands off on my shorts. Before I can push myself up, he grabs my hand.
“That’s not all, Thay.”
My body goes rigid at his soft tone.
“What else?”
He gives me a sad, soft frown.
“Laney can’t stay with us.”
The wind gets knocked out of me, and I struggle to breathe for a long second.
“What do you mean she can’t stay? Where is she going to go? She…we aren’t…No. I don’t even know what you mean, but the answer is no.”
I shove to my feet, and he follows just as fast. I try to step around him, but he holds his palms out, pleading.
“Move, Lambrit.”
“Listen to me, please. We aren’t abandoning her, Thayla.”
“That’s sure as fuck what it sounds like we’re doing when you say she can’t stay with us.”