Chapter 45
FORTY-FIVE
ARYELLA
I entered the cabin as quietly as possible.
The curtains were closed, allowing very little moonlight to illuminate my path to bed.
Even if I hadn’t been too drained to use Aesta’s light, I still wouldn’t have risked waking the twins.
I let out a tired, relieved breath when my outstretched hand touched the edge of my mattress, but then I went too far and bumped a small wooden tray off my bedside table.
It fell to the floor with an obnoxious clatter that disrupted the silence.
“Shit,” I hissed.
Covers shuffled in the twins’ bunks. I spent too long debating what to do and how to hide.
Mavic moved quickly, grabbing a match and lighting the lantern at his bedside before I could crawl under the covers and conceal myself.
Our room was just small enough that a single lantern cast just enough light for them to see me.
“Ary?” Mina’s sweet voice trailed down from her top bunk. “What’s wrong? What are you doing up?”
Mavic peered hard at me for seconds that felt like eternity before he realized what he was seeing. He threw his covers off his legs, grabbed the lantern, and stalked toward me. “What in the hell happened to you?”
I turned away from them both, ashamed, though I knew I had no reason to be. I had already been beaten and gawked at, then prodded and examined enough for one night. It all bled together in a convoluted mess of targeted violation and apathetic disregard.
“Ary?” Mavic pressed while Mina climbed down from her top bunk and lit a few more lanterns. He looked me over with worried eyes. “What’s going on?”
I shook my head. It was too much to explain. It was all just too much . I wanted to curl up in bed, in his black sweater, and sleep.
Mina’s eyes traveled down between my legs, where stains of red bled through the light fabric of my pants. I wanted to ignore it, leave it as a problem for tomorrow when I could think straight. Mina, growing visibly paler at the sight, stepped forward to block my legs from Mavic’s view.
“Hey.” She calmly took my hands. “Let’s go to the bathroom?”
I looked into her bright green eyes, and though we were about the same size, she suddenly felt much taller. Stronger and more capable than I was tonight.
I tried and failed to keep my bottom lip from trembling and more tears from escaping. Before I could break again, she firmly clasped her hand in mine and pulled me into the bathroom away from a worried Mavic.
I looked around the small room. It had a small tub but no shower.
No more showers.
“Can you sit?”
I carefully lowered myself onto the bench next to the tub. The open wounds on my thighs stretched and stung. If I was here, I could at least put some of the salve Abram had given me onto my wounds.
“Who was it?” Mina asked hushedly. I told her all four names. She shuddered in horror, and then, “Did they assault you?”
I froze, thrust back into memories I didn’t want. They had beaten me. Their hands had been on my naked body. At a certain point, I’d succeeded in blocking it out. All of it. Was that assault?
“I wasn’t… raped.”
She nodded profusely, holding back tears, and I could tell she was trying to hide her relief, too. “They assaulted you.”
A ragged, broken sob. “They…” My voice shook. I gestured with a shaky hand between my legs. “They cut me.”
“They cut you?” She paled at my nod, then knelt on the hard floor and carefully lifted my boot. “Will you let me help you, Ary?”
“Mina, I…” I put my hands on her shoulders. “You don’t have to?—”
“I won’t hear of it.” She took my hand in hers, squeezing gently. “As long as you’ll let me, I will help my friend.”
I wanted help. I needed him . I needed Gemma or Damond, but Mina was here .
“Okay,” I surrendered, my voice barely more than an exhale. “Thank you.”
I couldn’t watch as she peeled the fabric of my pants off the wounds. I didn’t want to look again.
Mina let out a shocked, tattered cry when the wounds became exposed.
She covered her mouth with her hands, eyes wet and wide.
“Oh, gods!” Mina held her trembling fingers inches away from the wounds like she was afraid to touch them.
If I were her, I’d be afraid to touch me, too.
“Ary, I’m so sorry.” She drew in a shaky breath and took a few moments to compose herself.
“We’ll clean them up. We’ll bandage them.
” Another squeeze of my hands. “It’ll be all right. ”
My body would recover. Of that I was certain. As Mina carefully cleaned the wounded skin, I tried to think of anything but the one reality I couldn’t face. But it nagged at me.
He’s gone.
He’s not coming back.
You’ll never see him again.
Stop talking, stop talking, stop ? —
“You are not those things.” With her thumb, Mina wiped a tear from my cheek that I hadn’t felt fall, then tucked my hair behind my ear. “Do you know that?”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “I haven’t done anything with the commander. I know what Gerard and some of them have been saying, but I haven’t?—”
“Ary, I know.” Mina took my hand. “And it wouldn’t matter if you had.” Her pale green eyes held mine. “You could have slept with the whole fortress and you wouldn’t deserve this. You know that, don’t you?”
I knew she was right, but I felt confused and unsure.
Since waking up in Warrich ten months ago, there had always been a disconnect between my mind and body other than with him .
Tonight, Gerard and the others had shouted vile words while beating my body, a blur of insults and blows until their insults felt true.
How flimsy my mind’s grasp on reality still was.
How easy I was to manipulate again, if only beaten down enough.
I was going to fight back, just as he’d told me to. I wanted to. I needed to. But tonight, I couldn’t. Not yet.
“I know,” I finally answered Mina, my words sounding more like a whoosh of wind escaping my lungs from a brutal strike to the gut.
We remained in grim but companionable silence while she finished putting fresh, dry bandages on my thighs.
She then helped me strip down to my undergarments and assessed the rest of me for other lacerations and tended to those too.
When Mina started cleaning up, I was overcome with the urge to speak. I wasn’t ready to be alone again.
“He didn’t believe me,” I told her.
She stopped gathering supplies off the floor and looked at me, brow furrowed in concern. “What? Who?”
“The commander. Abram went and got him. He found out I was attacked. He asked if they fucked me. I didn’t give him an answer.”
Mina’s pale green eyes deepened with anger.
“But I told him what they told me, that they’ve been working for Molochai, and he didn’t believe me.”
She stood up from the floor but stayed silent, giving me space to keep speaking.
“A part of me hoped that he would care enough because I’m one of his cadets, even though to him, I’m not the queen. I’m just me.” My voice cracked, tears streaming down my face as I poured my heart out to my friend. “He doesn’t know who I really am, but that shouldn’t matter, right?”
Mina drew me to her chest, rested her chin on top of my head and answered, “No, Ary. That shouldn’t matter at all.” She sighed, carefully resting her fingers on my tender back. “But it’s clear that these days, there’s nothing more important to Elias Winterton than retribution.”
She held me like that for a while. Until my crying ceased, which was only when my body was so exhausted, it felt like I had nothing left. Mina shrugged out of the wool sweater she wore and went to pull it over my head.
“This is yours,” I objected.
“Take it.” She waved her hand. “I’ll just steal one of Mav’s.”
I wanted to request she grab Gavin’s sweater off my bed, but she’d already done so much for me, so I accepted without complaint. She winced along with me when I lifted my arms to pull it over my head and failed to hold back my faint whimper.
“Thank—” I sucked in a ragged breath from the pain as I shifted on the edge of the bench, then blew it out. “Thank you. I’m going to take just a minute.”
“Of course.” Mina smiled sadly. “We’ll be here when you’re ready.”
Once she was gone, I slid down from the bench and winced when my rear hit the floor and pain seared across my inner thighs.
“ Shera? ” I said down the pathway. Even my inner voice sounded weak. Unless she was close, I doubted she could hear me. “ Shera, are you there? ”
“I’m here.”
My palm flew to my mouth to silence a gasp. I hadn’t expected her. Even from those two words, I could hear that something was wrong.
I pretended it wasn’t. I held out hope.
“When did you get back?”
“I entered the hearing range minutes ago. I heard the female twin tell her brother she was helping you with bandages. What happened, Ary?”
“ Did you find him? ” I ignored her question. “ They’re saying he’s gone. ”
I could feel her on the other end of the pathway now, drawing closer, but she was silent.
“Shera? Did you find him?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Another moment of silence passed. Then another. “ Shera! ”
“He drank the poison around his neck, Ary. Molochai must have given him your name. I was too late.”
“No,” I whispered.
“ I did all I could. ” On the other end of our mental pathway, Shera’s voice was darkened by defeat.
“ I broke the vial of blood with my teeth and got some of the blood on him, in his mouth, but… it didn’t work, and I didn’t know what else to do.
I… I waited a week. A whole week just to see if he even flinched, but he didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe. ”
“Take me there.”
“ No. ” She didn’t hesitate.
“ Shera ,” I warned her. My body shook with panic. “ You will take me there. I need to see him. I need to see for myself ? — ”
“He’s gone. There’s nothing to see.”
“ Please! ” I begged her. “ I can ? — ”
“ You can what? ” Shera retorted. “ Dig him up? I’m not letting you do that to yourself. When he sent me to you months ago, I promised him I’d protect you. It’s not what he would have wanted. ”
“ What about what I want? What I need? ” I choked on an audible cry. “ I can find a way to be sure. ”
“I am sure! ” Shera answered, her own voice breaking. “ I watched as four men found him and buried him, and then I waited for two more days after that, just to be sure. He’s deep in the ground. He is gone.”
“Shera,” I cried, aloud this time. “I can’t accept that… Please.”
“After everything he’s done… Let him rest, Ary.”
A low, dreadful whimper left my throat, to the sound of a wounded animal seconds from death.
But I had died before, and this was worse. He sacrificed himself to keep me safe.
I should have known the only one besides Molochai himself who could take him down was him .
“Shera,” I croaked out. Her name was all I could say, and barely.
“ You’re going to be okay, Ary ,” she promised.
That didn’t feel possible. Not right now. After Brinnea, I’d thought I had a solid grasp on who I was. Christabel’s daughter. A warrior. A queen. A woman with choices, desires, and thoughts of her own. I’d reminded myself of this repeatedly.
But no matter how ardently I’d tried to deny it to myself, all of who I’d become rested secretly on one foundation: him.
I realized I wasn’t really, truly sure of who I was if not his . Not because I wasn’t capable of more. I had proven that to be true. But because it was the one thing I wanted to be above all else.
And after four centuries of murder, his last act was selfless.
This world would never remember him as anything other than a bloodthirsty savage.
The demon that haunted their nightmares, generation after generation.
To them, he was evil personified. To me, he was strength and sacrifice.
He was warmth and safety and truth and love.
He was freedom , and now he was gone .
My foundation shattered, and so did my sanity.
My head hurt so much I couldn’t think straight.
Dull and sharp and never-ending all at once, pain bouncing off the walls as they closed in around me.
I lay on the floor of the bathroom for a long time, curled up at the foot of the tub, convinced this was a nightmare.
I wanted to wake up. I needed to wake up, and yet, I couldn’t even sleep.
Since the night he’d saved me from that wolf in the barn, I hadn’t been willing to imagine a world without him in it.
Even when I demanded he leave, when I tried to despise him, when I couldn’t make sense of anything I felt, I hadn’t considered the possibility.
A world without him wasn’t a world I wanted to know.
I couldn’t bear the gaping emptiness the thought left in me.
Then again, what right did I have to not bear it? His hands had taken the lives of so many of my people. I was sure their families wanted to wake up from their own nightmares, but they never got to. Why should I get that privilege?
I mourned the man that killed them. I mourned them, too.
Could both things be true at the same time?
Was I betraying them by mourning him ?
What did that make me? Could I even move forward? Could I be their queen while loving the memory of him?
Gods, save me.
I searched in circles for reasons and answers. Begged for a way out. If I shattered the mold of my mind, maybe something would become clearer among the wreckage.
Nothing was clear . Nothing felt safe or warm or good.
I wanted to rip out my hair and my consciousness with it. I needed silence. I needed to run, run, run away from this feeling, because it wasn’t something I could survive.
But the door opening and a familiar voice saved me from my own spiraling thoughts. Or damned me back to reality. I hadn’t decided yet.
“All right. Up you get.” Mavic’s arms slid beneath my body. I kept my eyes closed, even as I felt a gentle breeze across my bruised cheek, and he lifted me up.
“I promised her we’d leave her be until she was ready,” said Mina.
Mavic’s chest rose and fell against my shoulder. “Well, Mina, there’s no way we’re leaving our friend and our queen on the cold bathroom floor all night.”
At least he called me his friend before his queen.
Mina pulled back my bedcovers, and Mavic laid me down, facing away from them. I groaned as pain shot through my core and all my extremities. It was everywhere.
“You’re safe in here, Ary.” Mavic brushed a caring hand over my shoulder. “I promise. On my life.”
“Mina?” I whispered, throat crackly and dry, before she could walk away.
She was at my side in an instant. “What do you need?”
I couldn’t have who I needed. I couldn’t tell her that, no matter how badly I wanted to.
“Thank you.” When I attempted a smile, my face throbbed and tightened with pain. I must have been bruised there, too.
I didn’t hear Mina’s answer. I closed my eyes and pretended to be back in the dream I’d had on the shower floor. Gods, I hoped it had been real.
Maybe he had made one final stop before he left this world for good. Or maybe it had just been my mind’s way of coping with the fact that he was never coming back.
At least in the dream, I had told him I loved him.