Chapter 14 #5
She recoiled in a snap. “Do you... Wait, you know who killed him! He did tell you!”
Jesstin clapped a hand flat against his chest. “Oh, I know who killed him, Elloven, I’ve always known, and now you do too, because you’re fucking looking at him.”
Elloven was so still, she became one with the swamp.
Jesstin dragged his tongue across his teeth.
It felt good to get the words out, but he had to slow down.
Now. He remembered what he’d told himself in the Infinitum, that the truth would hurt her, but if she knew how loved she was, she’d find something better.
All he wanted was for her to know she was worthy of love.
He sighed and tried to focus on the facts, instead of the carriage in his chest heading for a cliff.
“He was acting strange for months, so I followed him one night. Found him with this girl, thirteen. A child. She was a bastard of either Castien or Sestinn—I don’t know which—and she wasn’t the only one either.
There were others, and Gen found out and decided he wanted to help them.
He rescued them, cleaned them up, found them homes.
Didn’t tell me about any of this. All I knew was he wasn’t himself, and he wouldn’t tell me why.
So I followed him, and when I... I saw that girl, lying dead, I snapped.
I threw him across the room. He hit the edge of a table, and his neck broke.
He died instantly. He was trying to explain, but I didn’t give him a chance.
I was so disgusted I didn’t even want to hear what he had to say.
” He laughed bitterly. “Why would I? It’s something an honorable man would do, like your brother. ”
Elloven’s blinks slowed. Her eyes fluttered up and toward him as she seemed to return to herself.
“My mother...” She sounded far older, and it wasn’t only her voice that quaked; it was her.
The earth beneath her feet. The trees bowed to a wind that had not existed moments ago.
“She told me... She said... ‘you will learn something about Jesstin that will bid you forsake him, a great treachery that will send you to your knees.’” Her hand bunched around her collar, winding the fabric tight. “She knew. My—” Elloven dry-heaved.
“And she sent you away with me anyway.” So Esmeray had known all along.
She’d known and had still invited him for tea, had bid him rescue her daughter instead of asking the man who was already there and eager to do it.
For all Taven’s offenses, he hadn’t murdered her son.
“Go on then, Elloven. Whip up a storm to take me. Open the ground beneath my feet. Have your justice. It’s what you want to do.
It’s what you should do. It’s what I deserve.
” The wind quickened. He staggered as a root from a nearby tree erupted from the dirt.
He understood this had been his intention all along.
That he should die by her hand was poetic.
It was right. “Do you need me to say it again? I killed Gennady. I murdered him without a second thought. And I kept it from you because I was too fucking selfish, too fucking in love with you to be a man and come clean.”
Elloven screeched high enough to shatter glass, and the upheaval came to a slamming halt. Her next breath was clogged with pain.
He threw his arms wide in challenge. “You’re not going to beg me to say I’m lying, say it’s not true?”
“I have never seen such cruelty from you. Thoughtlessness, but this...” She curved away and swiped at her tears.
“So much about your behavior never made sense until now. Bloody hell, I’m going to spend the rest of my life looking back on these months and wondering how I could be so blind.
How I could let a man... let you...” She bowed over in a bitter laugh. “I convinced myself you loved me.”
“I did.” Steady. “I do.”
“Is that why you came for me?” Elloven moaned into her fist and stared into the forest before she spoke again. “You really hated Gen so much that you needed to ruin me too?”
Dread turned his bones to ice. That wasn’t what he’d meant at all.
It was precisely what he didn’t want her to take away, because the only promise still keeping him going at all was that even with the pain and the betrayal he’d leave her with, she’d remember the love, too, and know there was more love waiting for her. Better love.
“No, Elloven, that’s exactly what I didn’t want and why I kept pushing you away, why I tried so hard not to care about you.
” He ached to claw back the confession, to take her in his arms and let her feel what he could no longer say, but the damage was done.
Once more, he had hurt her beyond repair, but this time there’d be no going back.
“You tried so hard.” She tossed a rueful laugh at the sky. “Unbelievable.”
“I don’t expect you to believe it, but it’s the truth. I won’t lie to you anymore, and I won’t lie to myself.”
“Oh, how noble of you, Jesstin. Do you feel better now?”
“No!” He suppressed a pained grunt. “I never wanted to hurt you, Elloven. I never...”
“Never what?” Elloven demanded as she turned back.
Jesstin couldn’t let her leave believing this. He had to correct the misunderstanding. It felt somehow worse than what he’d done to her brother.
But could there be a cleaner break than the one she’d just unknowingly offered?
“I told you who I was,” he said, the calmest he’d been since she’d shown up. The ground made a subtle shift. He was dizzy. Weak. But it was almost over. “That’s all I can say, Elloven. I told you.”
A hazy look crossed her reddened face. “I guess this is my fault then? For believing you were more?”
“That’s not—”
“You’ve said enough. You’ve done enough. I wish you’d left me dead.” Her head shook wildly. “No, I wish we’d never met. I wish you’d never known my brother. I wish... I wish you had never been born, so I don’t have to live with knowing that even for this I couldn’t bring myself to kill you!”
“You still can.” He held his palms up. “I won’t fight you.”
“No. No. The greatest restraint... I have ever shown... in my entire life... is right now.” She enunciated each syllable with unquenchable anger.
Her eyes couldn’t hide her pain, which ran even deeper.
“But death would be a mercy. You showed none to my brother; I offer you none now. You were right all along, Jesstin. You’re no better than either of your fathers, than Castien.
You may even be worse, because they never pretended to be anything other than what they were. ”
She was gone in the next breath. The last he saw of her was her loose golden hair disappearing between two trees as she flew from his life.
Her rebuke had only been the eye of the hurricane. The absence of her carved a deeper scar, and the void she left sent him to his knees.
“That was a hard thing you did,” Gennady said.
Jesstin slumped as a great weight left him. He’d never been more glad to see his old friend, nor more miserable. “How long have you been there?”
“How did you learn the truth, Jess? About that night?”
“It was shown to me.” Jesstin spread his palms to the moist earth. He tried to breathe, but she’d taken the air with her. “In the Infinitum.”
“Must’ve been a right shock.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jesstin pleaded.
“You threw me across the damn room while I was trying—”
“Why did you never tell me what Sestinn and Castien were doing? Did you think...” He paused for breath. “You were protecting me?”
Gennady lowered to a crouch. “The truth, Jess? Yeah, I figured you’d kill them both, and maybe you’d get caught.
But that wasn’t really what stopped me from telling you.
You’d been carrying the burden of your father’s and brother’s sins so long, more than even you realized.
I knew if you’d seen... heard the things I had, you’d never be able to set them down.
And the weight of those sins would eventually destroy you. ”
“So you thought it was better for me to remain ignorant while they terrorized women? Children?”
“I hoped I could fix it all on my own, so my best mate would break free of the past and finally live.”
Jesstin cackled. Tears slipped down his cheeks and into the corners of his mouth. “And yet.”
“But I was at least half wrong, wasn’t I? Because you didn’t kill them. You continued my work instead.”
“What do you want me to say, Gen?”
“Why didn’t you show her this side of you tonight?”
“I showed her what she needed to see.”
“Why, Jess?”
“You know why.” Jesstin’s fists clenched in the mud. He needed to destroy something from the inside out, to pummel and pulverize something, anything, and eviscerate it until the damage drowned out everything else.
“She was always going to leave when she found out,” Gennady said. “But if she deserved the truth, she deserved the full truth, which means being honest about more than what happened. It means being honest about how you became the man I’m looking at now, and that story is as much hers.”
“If I’d done that, she might have stayed, forgiven me. You don’t want that for her. You can’t.”
“Curious thing about being dead, our desires are no longer so limited. And with time, our anger isn’t so unlimited.
” The air shifted, and Jesstin could almost feel Gennady’s hand on his shoulder.
“It’s over. You’re free now. I think you’ve carried this long enough, but you’re too stubborn to listen to a word I say.
Otherwise, I’d be alive.” Gennady cracked a halfhearted laugh at the poor joke.
Jesstin couldn’t find it in him to join in.
It was all he could do to keep from collapsing.
“I didn’t come here to rub it in. I actually came to say good-bye. ”