16

Phases snail past me.

All I do is fester in this bed.

Time moves on beyond the door and the windows, but in here, I have become one with the bed, I have moulded into the mattress, I have learned every divot and contour of the ceiling above me.

It’s best when I find sleep in the haze of it all.

Dreams steal me away; they are my escape from the cold, brutal truths that haunt me when I am awake.

Daxeel’s callousness runs deeper than I ever could have imagined. Fathomed , Ronan said; I couldn’t fathom what Daxeel has schemed.

Not only does he love me so little that he will throw me into the second passage of the Sacrament, he means to destroy our bond. I’ve never heard of such a thing.

Without evate tethering us together, what’s to keep my life? Without evate, he will fulfil his fae promise.

‘ You will meet my dagger .’

I should have listened from the beginning. I should have heeded Eamon’s warnings, and Daxeel’s .

He means not only to sacrifice the bond but to sacrifice me.

‘It is not your time.’

He once told me that, when I stood on the roof Comlar’s tower, right on the edge.

It wasn’t my time—because I am to die in the Sacrament.

With my death, the Cursed Shadows will reign.

I should care more about the end of the human realm. The darkness to come and devour it, the dokkalves to invade and kill it.

But I don’t.

Selfish, most call me.

They are right.

It’s only myself, my own depraved future, my own heartbreak, that keeps me weighed down on this mattress, the stink of sweat and unwashed sheets and grimy hair my only companion.

It’s the only companion I want; the smell of my defeat. My stupidity.

Na?ve, silly halfling.

So, as the door shudders with the final knock on the door from Eamon on the other side, as he tries to lure me out, I stay pinned on my back.

I want no other companion.

I stare at the carved ceiling above.

With only one glowjar to illuminate one dusty bubble of light near the bed—the rest of them I threw into the wardrobe—I listen as the knocks stop, and the silence begins.

I welcome it.

Even if it means Eamon stands out there in the hall, shoulders sagged, probably resting his head on the doorframe, thinking of ways to peel me out of this room I hide in.

My Eamon, I am sorry.

But my heart breaks for me.

For all these phases I’ve locked myself in this bedchamber, Eamon is the one who knocks most. Aleana sometimes, and I recognize her visit by the frail rap of her weak knuckles on the door. Eamon’s comes stronger but gentle all the same.

Then, there are the other times, the other visits.

Tris, who dared to enter with fresh sheets.

I threw a pillow at her head, and she left. Hasn’t come back.

Then the one who brings me meals.

It could be Tris, maybe Eamon—though he doesn’t knock when he does this—or even Aleana, but I doubt she could carry the weight of the meal trays every phase. I would hear the rattle and clatter of the dishes as she tried to lower the tray to the floor.

But that’s what my unannounced visitor does, twice each phase: Brings a tray stacked with hot cooked meals, coffees and sweet desserts, pitchers of fresh springwater and bowls of freshly cut fruits.

They don’t knock.

They just leave the tray on the floor at the door.

Then leave.

I only know it’s there when the door starts to shift colour, as though telling me with the swirls of a rainbow to get up from this mattress I belong to. Those warped paint-stroked signals haven’t been wrong yet. There’s a meal out there in the corridor for me each time.

And still, I don’t answer the door for anyone, because I have a hollow realization that it’s a lonely existence to beg everyone around me to love me.