Chapter 51 #2
“ What did you do to him? ” I asked Shera, who had just plopped down on the edge of the rug in front of the roaring fire to begin grooming.
“ I showed him who he’d be dealing with if he hurts you. ” She peered up at me with one eye. “ Though something tells me he already has. ”
Elias’s slightly horrified stare was fastened on Shera. “I don’t think your cat likes me.”
I shrugged and popped a grape in my mouth from the tray he’d left me. “I’ll talk to her.”
“What?” His brow knitted in confusion.
“I can talk to her.”
“You can talk to her?”
I tilted my head at him. “Are you having trouble hearing today? Or were you not paying close enough attention in your youth during lessons about our gods?”
He let out a nervous laugh, and I took a moment to marvel that Elias Winterton was now nervous because of me . Perhaps finding joy in that was petty, but I couldn’t find it in me to feel bad about it.
“Soltum.” He ran his hand through his thick and messed bronze hair. “Is that… is that how you defeated that beast so handily in the second test?”
A chill started at the base of my spine at the memory. The beast’s voice echoed between my ears, crawling down and around my neck like cold fingers.
She is searching for you.
“Aryella?” Elias’s concerned voice drew my attention back to him. I’d been staring into the fire and hadn’t realized. “Are you all right?”
My hand reached for my neck, to where the handprints often were. “Yes.” I dropped my hand, and then I lied straight to his face. “I’m fine, and I’d like to speak with Damond now.”
“Sure.” He stood immediately. Elias seemed so willing to appease me. Did he feel guilty over everything that had happened in the Barracks, or was this how he would have treated me all along had he known I was his queen?
“Thank you,” I called after him.
He gave me a curt nod. “I’ll send him in.”
After he left, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the floor-length mirror to my right and tilted my head to further expose my neck.
The bruises along my jaw and cheeks were starting to yellow and fade, and the handprints were nearly gone.
I wanted to conceal them, but my magic still felt weak from healing Gemma.
At least whoever the cold hands belonged to hadn’t visited me since the morning after the second test. I wasn’t naive enough to believe they weren’t coming back.
While waiting, I chose a simple ivory dress and a pair of matching flats from the bottom of the wardrobe. Then, I started to pace and ramble in my thoughts. Most of all, I prayed that Damond knew something that no one else did. That Gavin was still alive somehow. I would look for him. I would?—
A knock on the door cut off my thoughts.
“Come in,” I called.
So much had changed since the last time I’d seen Damond, but he looked just the same. Perfectly kept brown curls, circular glasses, and a warm smile. Only now, he also looked tired. And sad .
“Hey, you,” he greeted me. He carried a large leather bag that he dropped to the floor as soon as the door closed and locked behind him.
I had planned on keeping it together, but the moment I saw Damond, all I could think about was that he was the one other person in this world who truly cared for Gavin Smyth. My heart crumpled, and my makeshift composure was gone.
“Tell me it’s not true,” I pleaded in a choked whisper, covering the distance between us. “Damond,” I cried again, a little frantically this time. “Please tell me he’s not gone.”
His warm expression descended into pity. “I’m sorry, Aryella.”
My knees gave out. He lunged forward and caught me before I could hit the ground.
“You’re all right.” He brushed his hand over my hair. “It’s going to be all right.”
I ignored him, gripped his forearms to steady myself and rushed out, “I have to look for him.”
“Ary.” Damond shook his head. “No.”
“ Yes! He searched for me for four hundred years. I can’t just give up?—”
“He’s gone, Ary.”
“How do you know?” I demanded, shaking him by the shoulders. “Tell me how you know!”
His chest rose and fell with a controlled breath.
“We had a meeting spot west of Tovick. Every month for the last ten years, on the fifteenth day of the month, we’ve met there.
He’s only ever missed when Molochai gives him a command to kill.
When that happens, he always found a way to send word.
But he missed the last one without doing so. ”
I pulled away from him. “The middle of the month, when you said you were out trading? Did you go see him during the months we were in Varamuth?”
Damond winced, affected by guilt. “Yes. I saw him.”
I thought I should be angry with him, for hiding this from me, but all I felt was sorrow. “How was he?” I asked deliriously.
Damond studied the ground beneath his feet. “Was he okay?”
“This isn’t going to help you.” The pity in his eyes made me feel pathetic, but not pathetic enough to stop pleading.
“Please,” I begged desperately. “I need to know.”
Damond sighed in defeat. “He was without you . He was worried sick. Of course he wasn’t okay .
He was in hell.” He watched fresh tears stream down my cheeks and took my hands in his.
“He was my godfather, Ary, and I cared for him deeply. After his oath to Molochai took my parents, he was the only family I had. If I wasn’t absolutely positive he was gone, I would be out there right now, by your side, searching for him.
Instead, I’m here, more than willing to repay him for everything he’s ever done for me. ”
I blanched. “Giving up on him isn’t repaying him?—”
“I am repaying him by protecting you .” His brows knit together. “He knew Molochai would eventually call upon his blood oath and give him your name. He was adamant he needed to stay away for that reason, and he knew his death was a probable outcome.”
“If he killed me, I would have come back,” I insisted. “It wouldn’t have been permanent. We could have found a way?—”
“It wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.”
I shook my head, refusing to accept that he gave up and ended it all. Or would he, after I sent him away? After I made him feel like I wanted nothing to do with him?
If I can’t spend eternity looking at you, I’d rather my soul cease to exist.
The agonizing memory ripped the air from my lungs. “I can’t just let him go.” My voice cracked on the final word. “He never let me go, he?—”
“He knew you were still alive,” Damond interrupted with the hard truth. “That’s the difference. You weren’t gone forever.”
Numbness started to seep into my veins, a defense against lonely, empty pain that threatened to drag me somewhere deeper and darker than I could survive.
“You’re going to be okay,” he promised me, his hands tight and reassuring on my shoulders. “You’re not alone.”
Damond lifted his leather bag and emptied the contents on my bed. My hand rose to my mouth to stifle a sob at the sight of the wolf pelt Gavin gave me on my twentieth birthday. And I heard those words , in his voice…
May your light blind your nightmares, and your love burn away the life that confines you.
“He left this,” said Damond. “He asked me to give it to you if he didn’t make it.”
I stared blankly at the perfectly folded pelt. Resting on top of it was a letter with my name on it, in his handwriting.
“You were the air he breathed, Ary,” Damond reminded me. “Without you, he had nothing.”
That wasn’t true. He had Damond. There had to be others who cared for him over the years. I refused to believe that he spent so much time entirely alone.
“Do you want to know the last thing he said to me before he left us in Brinnea?” I whispered. “He said, ‘Don’t let this world take one more thing from you.’” I blinked out a tear and looked up into Damond’s eyes. “I swore to myself I wouldn’t, but I failed. It took him.”
He pulled me in tight and held me for a few minutes, my cheek against his chest.
“I know you need time to process this,” he said at last, “but come see me or call for me soon. Winterton can show you where I’m living. We have a lot to catch up on, and I want to hear about it all.”
Damond closed the door behind him, and I approached the wolf pelt that I hadn’t touched since Brinnea, since I wore it during the dinner we shared, when everything between us was free and perfect for a little while.
I was scared to touch the wolf’s fur. I was scared to open the letter, knowing it might be the last I’d ever hear from him.
I owed him so many things. He’d saved my life and helped me find my strength, my truth and my fire.
He’d taken his own life to save me from suffering by his hand.
Reading his letter was the least I could do, so I braced myself and unsealed it:
Ella,
If you’re reading this, then I’m gone, and I’m so sorry that we didn’t have enough time.
I don’t know if you’ve grown to hate me, or if, by some unearned grace of the gods, you’ve forgiven me for all I’ve done and what I’ve become. Regardless, know that I love you. I have always loved you. And I swear to you, I will find you in the next life and every life thereafter.
But now, in this life, I want you to live. Find love. With him or someone else. But he better make you fucking happy, and he better keep you safe, or I will find a way to haunt his soul throughout eternity.
Most important, I’m telling you not to hold on to me, Ella. Perhaps, given the way I held on to you, that’s a hypocritical request. But while you’ve always been my whole world, you have the whole world right in front of you.
Promise me you’ll seize it.
Destroy Molochai. Shine your light.
Live, my Ella.
Be free.
—Gavin
I shook with quiet sobs on my knees before the hearth. I held the letter to my chest and the wolf pelt to my nose. It didn’t smell like him, but it felt like him. Rough, warm, and soft all at once.
A breathtaking, intoxicating contradiction that I now had to learn how to survive without.