Chapter 94
Quill
Free Fall
Numb
Manafest, UNSECRET, GREYLEE
All the strength I had felt just a few seconds ago drained from my knees as my father inserted the tape into the VCR and pointed the remote control at the TV.
The screen flickered before a quiet static sound filled the room and the image appeared.
It was the terrace steps outside the Fitzeks' estate. In front of them, me, lying in the gravel, pulling the gun out of my clutch. The one Davian and I had thrown into the sea.
Abruptly, I held my breath as I watched the recoil that had reopened my wound jolt through my arm, before Troy stumbled down onto me.
It was as if I were back there. In the night. As if I could feel Troy on top of me…
The urge to fill my lungs with air met only emptiness, because my body wouldn’t respond. Couldn’t…
The video played again… and again…
But a part was missing. The part where Troy attacked me.
In this recording, it looked… as if I were attacking him.
“Do you know what that looks like, Onera?”
My father stopped the recording and looked at me triumphantly.
“Like a homicide committed with a firearm.”
No…
I shook my head, took a breath, but couldn’t really get the air down into my lungs.
I was a murderer. And now he knew it.
He put the remote control down on the table and stepped toward me.
He knew. And he had evidence.
When Tony had told me he had invited me, I had sensed that he was planning something.
I should have known.
He was unpredictable.
This blow hadn’t even really hit me yet, and I already knew that I had lost.
“An ordinary citizen of Virginia could, with a good lawyer, see their sentence reduced to thirty years. With a very good one, even down to fifteen.”
He stepped around me like a predator who knew nothing stood between him and his prey.
And suddenly, I could no longer block out the chaos around me. All those scraps of paper. The torn-up pieces of me that would be lost forever…
It just came crashing down on me. Ruthlessly. And without mercy.
“Do you know what a woman with a juvenile and criminal record of multiple burglary incidents and pending charges, a fake identity, and the three best lawyers in the state working against her gets?”
He snorted disdainfully as he completed his circle around me.
Wherever I was, I no longer had control over my body.
Tears welled up in my eyes, even though I hadn’t yet realized what his words meant.
A part of me knew. A part I was only now beginning to grasp.
“Life without parole”
I closed my eyes. The tears just fell, unhindered, tracing their familiar path to my chin, where they dripped down onto the scraps of paper.
Davian.
I was going to lose him.
I turned my head away from my father as every door of my imagination opened in my mind and countless horror scenarios of my future reared up before my inner eye like tsunami waves above me in an endless sea.
And no matter how desperately I searched. Among all those scenarios, there wasn’t one in which Davian held my hand. Not one in which he pulled me to his chest and kissed my hair. Not one in which he held me and looked into my soul as if he knew it was meant to be his home.
Davian was my home.
But the tsunami waves in my head were too big. Too fierce. Ready to sweep away every shred of home and hope I had ever felt.
“Davian won’t be able to save you from this. And if he’s smart, he’ll see this as his wake-up call. But you, Onera…” He paused in front of the desk, eyeing me with disdain. “…you’ve dug your own grave with this careless misstep.”
He opened his suit jacket, but I barely noticed.
My knees gave way out of nowhere. And this time, I doubted they would ever regain the strength they needed to carry me away from here.
I sank back to the floor. And what had felt like chaos just moments ago was now the only thing I could cling to.
“You will forever remember that you should never have pushed me to my limits.”
Fighting his words, I squeezed my eyes shut again until it hurt, forcing more tears from my eyes as the tsunami waves kept surging higher.
“In a cell.”
Frantically, I shook my head, refusing to believe it.
“All alone.”
“No,” I whimpered softly.
Davian.
I need Davian.
“Until the end of your pathetic existence.”
“No…,” I sobbed desperately.
I was going to lose Davian.
I was going to lose him forever.
“Hello?” a stranger’s voice rang out.
I looked up at my father, who was holding his phone in his hands.
He stared at me, his gaze as dead as I would feel when they took away the only thing that had ever made sense.
I couldn’t lose him…
“You wanted a name for Troy Fitzek’s murderer?”
“No,” I whimpered again, but it was too late.
My father spoke as if this were a normal phone call.
“Gravia Onera Richter”
Confused, I blinked away the tears, but new ones came.
My father had said my name…
“She is trespassing at my New Year’s Eve gala. And she’s left a mess in my attic.”
It was as if my own father were ramming a knife into my back and twisting it. Over and over again.
It would never stop. Never…
“Yes, you heard correctly. Richter.”
He hung up, shoved the phone back into his pocket, and stared at me coldly.
The knife was still stuck in my back. Turning like the hand of a clock. Ever since I was born.
How had my heart managed to stay alive until today? Why was my body keeping something alive that had never been wanted?
“Why would you give yourself away…”
That wasn’t my voice, and yet I spoke. A short circuit in my brain. Because I had lost control of it minutes ago.
The triumph in his eyes returned.
“All this time you thought I cared whether people knew about you. And indeed I did. Until you shot my mentor’s son.”
I was a murderer. And the whole world would soon know it.
No one would ever read my books.
“He attacked me.”
My father gave a dry laugh. “Unfortunately, there are no recordings to prove that.”
And the knife kept turning.
This man would do anything to make me suffer. He had made it his life’s mission. And I… wouldn’t be able to stop him.
“Why…,” another sob escaped me, and I grimaced, my face contorting under the unbearable pain in my chest. “Why are you ruining me…”
“Me?” He stepped toward me. “Ruining you?”
He crouched down in front of me, grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him.
“You are the one who ruined me. Every second since you came into existence. But this pathetic charade is over now. Say goodbye to Davian. While you still can.”
He stood up.
No.
No, no, no!
A sob broke out of me, and I braced myself on the floor in front of me so I wouldn’t topple over to the side.
I was going to lose Davian.
I was losing him right now. With every second that passed, I lost another second I could have had with him.
I was losing my Inkbird.
The paper bird that had carried me across the endless ocean. Beneath me, the deepest, most merciless sea. One I had never been meant to survive.
Desperately, I gasped for air, but my lungs ached.
My father threw something on the floor in front of me, and I heard the rattle of metal.
First I spotted the matchbox.
Then I realized it wasn’t a matchbox.
“Or do society a favor and erase yourself before the state has to waste tax dollars on you.”
It was as if my eyes could only cling to the box. As if it had just unlocked a new scenario of possibilities.
My body didn’t like this scenario at all, had played this movie far too many times, that now my arms began to tremble.
“What am I talking about,” he laughed with a snort. “We both know you don’t have what it takes.” He stepped past me. “I’ve won, Onera. And I can’t wait to see you in handcuffs.”
His words faded away. So did his footsteps. Until I heard the attic door creak. But the sound seemed to me as if I were miles away. As if I were drifting away.
Wasteland
Royal & the Serpent, Arcane, League of Legends
Davian. Davian…
I searched my mind for Davian, for versions of my future where I could be his.
But all I found were too many versions of a future where I was wearing handcuffs and there were bars between us.
So many versions of this nightmare that this matchbox in front of me seemed like a ladle of water in a desert without oases.
I tore my gaze away from the box, let my hands wander into the sea of paper, and clung to the remnants of my manuscripts with an unbearable tearing inside my chest until the agonizing sob simply burst out of me.
In the place where they would take me, no manuscript would be safe…
And Davian… would never be able to protect me from this life again, and least of all from myself.
Sobbing, I leaned forward, pressed my head into the paper until I couldn’t take it anymore and began banging my head against the floor.
Again and again I reached into the paper, rummaging and rummaging, pushing thousands of scraps aside until my sobbing filled the entire attic.
I found broken pencils, a split fountain pen, and blank sheets of paper.
And with every second that passed, it was as if someone were smashing my bones with a hammer after having already torn the flesh from my body.
My body. A skeleton. A cage for a soul that had never been meant for this world. For as long as I could remember, it had wanted to get out, to flee, far away. Anywhere but this physical existence.
How was I breathing?
How was I still alive?
How was I supposed to go on living?
Davian was the air I needed to breathe.
“Davian…,” I wanted to scream, but all that came out was a hoarse whisper.
He wouldn’t hear me. He wouldn’t find me before the police…
We were doomed.
Simply doomed…
They would take me away, lock me up. Forever.
I didn’t want a forever without Davian. I was too weak for a forever in this world, without that man, without whose ink battery my ink would refuse to flow.
Not a thousand reasons could compare to the meaning he had given my life.
His smile… The mere thought of not being able to see it every morning made me sob out loud until I curled up on the floor.
I clutched the pendant he had given me, whispered his name, and the tears threatened to dry me out.
But how could a sea of tragedy ever dry up?
My hand bumped against the matchbox.