Chapter 37 - Shatter
Derrick might have pulled me out of the pool and saved me, but my thudding heartbeat against his did not give him any reprieve.
He was completely shutting down.
I pressed my hand against his trembling chest, but he did not respond to my magic. My shivering fingers unlocked the clasps of his cape and jewels as I kept repeating that I was right in front of him. I grabbed his cheeks, pressed my forehead to his, and whispered reassurances and apologies.
Half an hour passed before his hammering heartbeat finally slowed.
Derrick and I sat on one of the couches in his chambers, curled up underneath blankets as a tray of warm tea sat in front of us. He stared at the carpet and dryly explained that the Barons disbanded shortly after Evereon walked out. They were all furious that Derrick had lost control of the meeting.
I held my cup as my stomach twisted. I had needed to go to the imitation healing spring and find the truth of my power, but Derrick still needed me. I should not have just abandoned him.
“And the Barons were not the only ones making demands of me,” he grumbled. “Annalisa wants dinner tonight. Just the four of us.”
Maybe Annalisa could even be there to hold him up once I left to save Riyan. Then it would not hurt him…as much.
I took a sip from the cup and tried not to spit it out. Rosaline was apparently still in charge of the tea. “Some time with your sister is just what you need.”
Derrick sneered and took the cup from me. “Doubt that.”
He threw tea back, not wincing once at the barbed taste.
The room with dark green walls felt like it was closing in on us as we picked at our plates. I sat on Derrick’s right-hand side at the round dining table, wearing the violet dress he had selected for me.
Brietta sat across from Derrick, proudly dressed in a deep green and wearing the same emerald tiara she wore for the Presentation. She glanced up at her husband as we ate, clearly waiting for him to share about the Baron meeting, but Derrick just stabbed at his haddock, silent.
Her brown eyes flicked over to me. The flipping of worn pages tickled the back of my mind as the door between Brietta’s eyes opened.
“ It went poorly, ” I sent into her mind.
Brietta let out a slow, yet frustrated breath.
The only person not steeping in the tension was Annalisa. Her cheeks were pink and her curls bounced around her shoulders as she ate.
“Grigory wrote that he would be back for me soon,” Annalisa said with a smile and a glance at her brother. “Since I will move to Thornebow province right after he returns, I think it would be a great opportunity for a farewell ball so—”
“No.” Derrick took another stab at his fish. “I cannot think of a worse use of what little time I have than to attend another ridiculous ball.”
Annalisa blinked and looked down at her plate. I tried to throw a magical tether her way, just to explain that Derrick was in poor spirits because of my swimming attempt, but her deflated mood kept me out.
She let out a determined breath and looked squarely at her brother. “Derrick, this is my last chance to—”
Derrick glared at her so fiercely that Annalisa visibly shrunk in her chair. Her eyes darted down and her fingernails clicked as she picked them underneath the table.
Brietta glanced at dejected Annalisa and then her gaze settled on her husband. “Your father used to do that too.”
Annalisa looked up from across the table with fearful eyes. We both dared to glance down the table at Derrick, whose brow turned hard.
I could just picture Alastar pacing at the bottom of his pit.
Derrick gripped his fork. “What did you just say?”
Brietta put down her fork and straightened her spine. “Fight for dominance at every possible moment. Right after the coronation, he started restricting everything Freya did.”
I sent a command into her mind: “ Damn it, Brietta! Not now! ”
She cut me a glance and broke the tether between our minds.
Derrick’s hands curled into white-knuckled fists on top of the table. “Leave my mother out of this.”
Brietta did not even blink at his rising anger. “Would you rather me lie to you for the rest of your life? If you are acting like an ass, I am going to tell you.”
Time to end this. I reached for Derrick’s wrist, but he stood up and slammed his palms on the table. The cutlery rattled. Annalisa flinched.
“Do not lecture me on what you know nothing about,” he bit out.
“You cannot intimidate me.” Brietta folded her arms. “If you wanted a meek and obedient Duchess, you should have chosen someone else.”
I did not know who to reach for first—Brietta to get her to shut the hell up or Derrick to get him to calm the hell down.
“I wanted to choose someone else,” Derrick said darkly.
“And do you think that gives you any excuse to act exactly like your father?”
My heart jumped to my throat and Annalisa gasped. Too far. Too fucking far.
Before I could act, Derrick picked up his plate and threw it against the wall by Annalisa’s head. She screamed as the porcelain shattered mere inches from her ear.
I stood up to grab Derrick, but he had already stormed out of the room. He slammed the door behind him so hard that the frame rattled.
I turned to Brietta. “What could you possibly gain from agitating him like that?”
Brietta stood and gripped the back of her chair. “He is getting worse, just like Freya’s diary said Anders did. I have to stop him from turning into a monster.”
She had to stop him? She had never faced Alastar. “That is what I am doing. Every night, without rest. And if you do not want him to shatter when I leave—”
“Sera, you coddle him!” She released the back of her chair and her brows knitted. “I thought I understood how you felt about him, but now you are compromised!”
“Compromised? All I am doing is fixing—”
“You cannot fix him, Sera!”
Fire filled my throat and I nearly opened my lips to fight back when Annalisa’s trembling voice broke the tension. “This is all my fault. I should not have said anything. I should not have made him angry.”
I unclenched my fists as soon as I heard her voice. “Anna, no—”
She let out a sob and Brietta and I were instantly at her side. We both rubbed her back and soothed her, trying to convince her that she held no blame.
Rain pattered in my mind as my thumb stroked the back of Annalisa’s hand. Just as I was about to lean into the raindrops and answer the call for help, Brietta looked across Annalisa’s trembling curls at me.
I did not need to throw out a tether to read Brietta’s eyes. She needed me to find Derrick before he destroyed anything else.
With a soft breath, I rose to my feet and started my search.
The music room was empty. So was his bedchamber. I even tried the kitchen with no luck.
At last, flickering firelight from a door on the first floor caught my eye—the portrait room of the Dukes and Duchesses past.
I silently pushed the door open to find Derrick staring up at the portrait of his grandfather. He gripped his hands behind his back and his chest was still.
I let out a rueful breath. After weeks of searching, we still had no idea who murdered Alastar the Wise or why.
Though whose fate was more necessary to unlock—the Alastar Derrick Pervale of the past or the Alastar Derrick Pervale of the present?
The soft light of the ember in my heart gave me the answer.
I shut the door and clicked the lock behind me. Derrick must have recognized my soft footsteps as his low voice rumbled over the popping of the fireplace. “I need to apologize to Lis. And Brie. I need to…I-I hate…”
His words failed him again. I passed under the wrathful eyes of Alastar the Conqueror as I joined Derrick on the other side of the room. He still did not turn from the portrait, so I wrapped my arms around his middle and pressed my cheek between his shoulder blades.
The eyes of the Conqueror, the Good, the Terrible, the Beguiling, the Gentle, the Faithful, the Brave, the Cunning, the Steadfast, the Wise, and—horrifyingly—the Bold all weighed on us. Each one of them was just a piece of the monster in Derrick’s mind, tearing him at the seams.
And what was going to happen when I left him to save Riyan?
Derrick’s voice rumbled against my cheek. “What legacy will I leave when I die? Will I just be ‘Alastar the Weak?’ or ‘Alastar the Tongue-tied?’”
I smiled softly against his spine. “You will have a much better name than that if I have anything to say about it.”
He let out a long, shaking breath. “It hurts how much Brietta hates me.”
I pushed on his ribs to turn him around, but he would not look at me.
“She does not hate you,” I said.
Not a lie.
I canted my head, trying to catch his downcast eyes. “She is merely angry about…the state of the world.”
Still not a lie.
Derrick stepped away from me. “I was so excited to meet her. After everything you had said about her in your letters and what I had heard from her brother…”
He raked his fingers through the roots of his hair and headed for the fireplace. “Well-read. Witty. Imaginative. Trustworthy. She was such a good friend to you and I thought once you and I were married…she would be my friend too.”
In a blink, his gaze turned wrathful and speared the portrait above the mantle. “But he ruined it!”
Anders’s coronation portrait had replaced Alastar the Wise above the fireplace. The Anders Hyton in the portrait was thirty years old, handsome, and confident—completely unrecognizable from the man I had known and feared.
When did Alastar finally consume Anders?
I shook away the thought and focused on the present. Maybe reconciling Derrick and Brietta would be what would save him. I could prime him to sign Brietta’s planned reformation and she would be so happy that she would want to be Derrick’s friend. She could halt Alastar’s destruction while I saved Riyan.
I took a step toward Derrick and forced a smile. “I think if you just heard her out—”
“He ruined us, Serafina!” Derrick turned around and his pained blue eyes met mine. “He ruined us!”
I gripped my hands and held my breath. The fire crackled behind Derrick as his scream echoed around the room.
Derrick’s face softened. “I am so sorry, Serafina.” He dipped his head and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Everything is slipping and I do not know why.”
Because he was waging war against the monster in his mind…and he had no idea.
I placed my hand on his arm. “Derrick, it is all right to admit that being the Duke is hard.”
He barked out a laugh so loud that I jumped back. “Hard? Serafina, this is my life!” His eyes gleamed with something between madness and anguish. “Being an Alastar is my life! ”
He gestured to the portraits around us. “Every Hyton son has been the same way. You are either the Duke of Lycaster or you are dead!”
My eyes danced along the cold faces of the Dukes’ portraits—each of them the winners of the Alastar trials, each one with blood staining their hands.
Derrick sank onto the nearby couch. “I cannot change it. I cannot sulk about it. This is just my life.”
The defeat that spread across his face pained my heart. Even if my affinity was healing, I had no idea what I could really fix.
At the very least, I could make my friend feel better about the life he never got to choose.
I sat next to him on the couch and rested my cheek against his shoulder. “Remember when I wrote to you that I loved roasted hazelnuts? And then suddenly Annalisa got tins of roasted hazelnuts in her parcels even though she hated them?”
I looked up through my lashes and caught his smile. “I told her the sweet shop included the tins for free so she would keep tossing them onto your bed.”
My smile grew bigger. “Remember when I used to tell you all the Ashmore gossip because you were bored?”
His nose wrinkled as he let out a quiet laugh. “It was better than any theatre.”
I wrapped my hands around his arm. In the silence, we said more than we ever could on parchment. He was there for me and I was there for him, regardless if we were two schools apart or two provinces apart.
If he knew that, maybe he would not shatter.
“No matter what happens, we are still Midnight and Birdie,” I said. “Remember that when the burden of your life is so heavy.”
I let go of his arm so he could turn toward me. His eyes were soft—even Alastar was quiet within him.
I gently brushed a stray curl out of his face. “Think of girlish gossip instead of sneers at court. Feel the threaded stars under your fingers instead of the weight of the crown. Taste roasted hazelnuts instead of the bitter tang of Cupid’s Blood.”
Derrick’s brow suddenly hardened. “How do you know what Cupid’s Blood tastes like?”
My stomach dropped. No… no! How could I have let that slip? He could not, could not know the truth of the Darkest Night.
I would tell the truth how it benefited me—how it would benefit all of us. “I…remember when Brietta was poisoned at Annalisa’s ball. She grimaced right after tasting that oddly purple wine—”
“Serafina.” His eyes were dark. “When did he poison you?”
A direct question. I swallowed, keeping my teeth clamped shut as the truth tried to force its way out of my throat. I held my breath and my chest burned.
Derrick turned his shoulders to me, his chest rising and falling with his furious breath, but his voice broke. “When?”
I closed my eyes as my breath escaped me—and so did the truth. “The Darkest Night.”
The log in the fireplace cracked with a sickening pop. I peeled my eyes open—Derrick’s face was completely white.
I reached for his hand. “Derrick, you had no way of knowing.”
He jerked his hand away like his touch would burn me.The muscle under his left eye feathered.
“Derrick, no!” I tried to grab his arm but he rose from the couch. “Your father hurt me, not you!”
He walked to stand in front of the fireplace and I leaped to my feet.
“I cannot lie!” I pleaded. “Listen to me, you did nothing wrong.”
“But my body did.” He glanced over his shoulder, the orange firelight dancing in his watering eyes. “Just like with Brietta, right?”
My hand pressed against my heart and I thought my chest might cave in. Tears stung my eyes. “Derrick, how could you think—?” No point in explaining. If I got into his head, I could fix the cracks in his castle walls. Regardless of what either of us felt, he still had to release Fraleigh from servitude.
I might have already lost Derrick, I could not lose Riyan too.
My hand shot out, beckoning him to take it. “Come on, we need to go to bed.”
His eyes dragged up from the fire and settled on his father’s portrait. His jaw clenched. He did not move an inch.
Only after convincing him that someone might attack me if I went upstairs alone did he leave the portrait room. He silently escorted me to the Hyton bedchambers with his eyes bolted forward and his jaw set tight.
I nearly tripped over my feet when he stopped abruptly in the middle of the blue-carpeted hallway.
“Stay in your room tonight,” he said, low and clipped.
I glanced at the familiar door, but I did not dare move. I had to get into his mind and fix what I broke. “Derrick, do not do this—”
“That is an order.” He would not even look at me. “And lock your door.”
His shoes thudded on the carpet as he retreated to the carved wooden doors at the end of the hallway. I wanted to chase after him and try to get him to see sense, but my feet were glued to the rug.
He…he had never ordered me to do anything before.
After Derrick’s chamber doors slammed shut, I resigned myself to bed. I had not even bothered to take the Hyton dagger off my garter, I just fell on my back and crushed a pillow to my chest.
I refused to admit defeat. The full moon was only three nights away, but I could still save him and Riyan.
Even though sadness weighed on my chest like a damp, musty cloud, my eyes fluttered closed.
I could free us. I could fix him. Everyone would be happy…
Then the sting of smoke filled my nose and my eyes popped open.