Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
There was no escape from her grief, especially not after sleep immured her in its suffocating embrace.
Instead, the darkness of her mind was given free rein in the realm of her subconscious.
Every thought she worked to suppress whilst awake was unleashed upon her in a barrage of nightmares.
The most vicious part of her psyche seemed to turn on itself, her imagination wielding the cruellest of her innermost thoughts, screaming them at her through blackened mouths, in melted faces, from fiery pits.
She could do nothing, trapped by the powerlessness of unconsciousness, a victim of her own guilt.
Aelia woke thrashing, her screams piercing in the darkness, but it wasn’t that that had woken her. Keeran loomed over her, a steady hand on either shoulder, gently shaking her out of her tortured dreams.
“It’s just a nightmare,” he said, over and over, although his eyes were wide, worry hiding in the creases between his brows. “It’s just a nightmare,” he repeated, more softly this time as she quietened.
Dawn teased at the horizon, softening the edge of the darkness that surrounded them just enough for her to make out his features.
She threw her hands over her face, mortified.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out, her breathing still a little erratic. “I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologise for a nightmare.” Keeran let go of her shoulders but didn’t make to move away. Only then did she become aware of his leg pressed against her from where he had skidded to her side.
“I woke you up?” She dropped her hands from her face, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
As if she wasn’t embarrassed enough by the way he’d stopped kissing her, leaving her naked from the waist up and gawking at him, she now had to face him knowing he’d had to wake her up from a nightmare like a toddler.
“No, I was already awake.”
Aelia pushed herself up onto her elbows, careful not to move away from him. She tried not to think too deeply about why she didn’t want to lose the pressure of his leg against her.
“How did you know I was having a nightmare?” she asked, mortified.
Something flashed across his face too quickly for her to understand it.
“You were crying out a little. I thought it better to wake you.” The uncertainty on his face made him look younger, as far as possible from the emissary of death she’d seen earlier that night, and some of the disquiet tangling her insides in knots eased.
He didn’t look repulsed by her, by what they’d done; he looked as worried as she felt.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, dropping her head to her chest. So fucking embarrassing.
“What is it you were dreaming about?” He ignored her apology, his voice gentle and encouraging.
Aelia pulled the blankets a little higher around herself, as though that would somehow stop the panic from rising at the thought of talking about it, of reliving the horrors her mind had thrown at her every night since she’d left Callodosis.
“You don’t have to tell me… but it might help. ”
Aelia bit her lip anxiously, the band of panic around her chest tightening with each breath she took.
“I see the people I left behind. The people Beserkir took from me,” she whispered. “Otis, Mirra, Fenrir… it all replays over and over in my head, and I do nothing. I don’t help them.”
His eyes darted to her face. “Do they talk to you?”
Aelia nodded slowly, blinking furiously at the tears that were welling in her eyes. She must not cry, she absolutely must not cry.
“What do they say?” he probed, gently.
“They say…” She choked on the words, an invisible hand tightening around her throat that she struggled to talk past. “They say…” She raised her face to the star-filled sky, tears falling unchecked as she remembered all that her dreams accused her of.
“Aelia, you cannot blame yourself for what happened to them.” A hint of steel entered his voice.
She nodded, but he saw through the empty gesture.
His fingers took hold of her chin and turned her to look at him, gripping her gently to emphasise every word.
“Beserkir is to blame. Beserkir, the Astraea, the King, even, for letting it happen, but certainly not you.”
“I feel so fucking useless,” she sobbed furiously.
He released her chin, his hand dropping to hold onto hers.
“He took them all from me, and I couldn’t do anything.
Fenrir is still out there, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
I can’t even stop a fucking thief.” Her voice cracked as she flung her free arm out at the camp.
She bit her lip to stop the sobs that wracked her body, the utter wretchedness she felt threatening to bubble over.
Keeran wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him, rocking her gently until her tears quietened.
He brushed her hair away to kiss her forehead, the simple gesture calming the living, breathing pain inside her.
Keeran was quiet for a moment, before he finally said, “you are not useless, Aelia. You are the most determined, stubborn, uncompromising person I’ve ever met, and if freeing Fenrir is what you’ve set your heart on, then Beserkir should be trembling in his boots.”
Aelia laughed through her snivelling, tilting her head up to look at him. There was such warmth in his eyes, his lips curving to match her tearful smile, that the last of the hollow tension in her chest shrivelled back to being bearable.
She wiped away her tears with trembling fingers, the soft light of the sun threatening them with its presence more with each passing moment. Keeran noticed it too.
“We should try and sleep for another hour or so before we head out,” Keeran murmured. He made to get up, but she grabbed his arm.
“Don’t.” She couldn’t bring herself to say what she truly wanted to, her pride limiting her to just that one word.
He hesitated, looking over to his pack, his thoughts hidden behind an unreadable wall, and embarrassment twisted in her gut as it looked like he might pull free.
But he didn’t. Slowly, carefully, he lowered himself to the ground next to her, leaving his arm in her grip.
The birds welcomed the hazy light of dawn, but Aelia was asleep far too quickly to notice them, and this time, ghosts didn’t haunt her dreams.
Aelia woke up with her arm draped across Keeran, the steady thump of his heart reassuring in her ear. She blinked her swollen eyes, the memories of the night before coming back to her bleary brain with an accompanying wave of embarrassment.
Gods, she’d spilled her fractured heart out to a man who’d practically leapt away from her touch earlier that very night. Fucking fantastic.
Yet here he was, his breath catching softly in the back of his throat, his arm wrapped tightly around her.
She couldn’t explain the warmth that coursed through her, and frankly, after the cyclone of emotion she had experienced recently, she didn’t even bother to try.
Instead, she closed her eyes and savoured it.
The sun was high in the sky when she next opened her eyes, stirred awake by Keeran shifting under her. He froze for a second, his mind presumably catching up to the fact that he wasn’t alone, before his arm tightened around her infinitesimally.
A smile escaped her, a bubble of happiness breaking through the heaviness that had filled her chest for days. It swelled even more when Keeran pressed his lips to her head, kissing her gently.
“Are you awake?” he asked, his voice thick with sleep.
She pulled back as far as his arm would let her to look up at him.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling up at him. Keeran didn’t reply, staring at her unabashedly until she felt the need to break the silence. “We’ve overslept.”
He tore his eyes from her to squint up at the sun.
“So we have.” He sounded surprised.
“We should get going,” she said, her mind jumping to Fenrir and how little sign they’d seen of him and the Astraea. They had a lot of ground to cover today.
“Do we have to?” Keeran squeezed her closer, burying his face into her hair. A laugh bubbled out of her; half relief, half happiness. Whatever the reason he’d pulled away from her yesterday, it didn’t seem like it was because she wasn’t truly artemian.
“Unfortunately.” Aelia fought the urge to snuggle back into him, making herself push up and out of his arms.
Keeran grumbled something about her being stubborn and uncompromising, and she thumped her fist gently down on his stomach, eliciting a deep laugh that rumbled through his chest.
They fed the horses, packed up camp, and had their butts in the saddle in record time, even eating the leftover stew as they rode.
The road ran alongside the bank of the lake, and again she was overcome with the beauty of it.
This was just one of the Tears of Deliah, the huge, interconnected expanses of water that broke up the plains between here and Llmera.
As she scraped her bowl clean, she marvelled at the sheer size of it.
Even cold, Aelia couldn’t believe how good the stew was.
She could easily have eaten all four portions in one sitting and decided then and there she’d be the one to go hunting today.
There was no way she was passing up the opportunity for another meal like that one, even if she had to beg him to cook two nights in a row.
Her pride could stoop to a little begging for food that good.
She twisted round to put her bowl in a saddlebag, wincing at the new bruises the thief had left her with. Aelia hated how unhelpful she’d been, leaving Keeran to deal with all six of the men after they’d wiped the floor with her.