CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 18

AUREN

When you hit rock bottom,you feel it.

You break down, walls crumbling until you’re free-falling. The feelings that you tried to run from suddenly rush up around you in an unstoppable force, the gravity of your thoughts now nothing but a punishing plunge.

When you slam into the bottom, that landing jolts you all the way to your very soul. You hit hard, and it cracks the very foundation of the world. The ground fragments beneath you, lines stretching far and wide.

And then you’re left, a pile of rubble.

But I realize something as I lie here, surrounded by the destruction of my plummet. These cracks that have spread out from my caustic landing, they’re not evidence of my ruination.

They’re paths.

Each jagged line leads from me and then diverts away, showing me all the different ways I could go from here.

I lie on the bed with Hojat’s hands tending to my hacked back, with tears streaking down my face, where even breathing hurts. But I’m also in my mind, staring at the fissures around me, seeing where each one leads. Because now that I’m forced to feel what I didn’t want to, I have a decision to make.

I can choose to stay stagnant here, at the bottom of the cliff, broken and unmoving. I can rage, I can wallow, I can blame, I can hide. I can let the severed parts of me sever all the rest.

Or I can get up, dust myself off, and look back up. I can find a path that ensures I’ll never fall again, ensures that I don’t lose any more parts of myself. All I have to do is turn and follow my feet, one step at a time.

So that’s what I’ll do.

I let myself cry until all my tears dry up. It’s not ragged or turbulent anymore. Instead, it’s quiet. Slow. The kind of tears your expression lets fall without fanfare. There is no choked breathing or scrunched up nose. No pulled lips or furrowed brow. This is the suffering of the silent. A hurt so deep it doesn’t show itself on a face. The tears fall down my wooden expression, leaking from slowly blinking eyes while I stare at my reflection through the window. While I grieve for twenty-four strands of me that have been plucked away like petals from a flower.

When Hojat finishes, he’s treated the wounds, my nose long since acclimated to the scent of the sharp herbs. I don’t know if he did something to help dull the pain or if I’ve simply gone numb, but I barely feel a thing now.

He’s also given me a new oversized shirt that he has me wear backwards, so all the buttons are down my spine, making it easier to tend to my wounds.

“Alright, Lady Auren,” he says quietly. “It’s all done now.”

It’s all done now, I tell myself. So I wipe away the last of my tears and take a deep breath.

“Thank you, Hojat.” My voice comes out as a mere rasp, but the mender hears, because he gives a gentle pat on my shoulder.

“I’ll need to check it each day for a while until the healing process speeds up.”

I nod, feeling wrung out, lethargy tugging at my bones.

“Sir Digby?” Hojat says. “How about I take a look at you next?”

When Digby doesn’t reply, I turn my head to face him. He’s still standing sentry in the doorway, and I don’t think his gaze has left me for even a second. I notice how heavily he’s leaning against the wall, how his arm is tucked in tight against his ribs and how one leg seems to be giving him trouble. He won’t go without prompting, just like he never once ducked out early on a shift to guard me.

I give him a nod. “Your turn, Dig.”

He hesitates for a moment before his eyes pass over me and land on Slade. I’m not sure what the two men communicate, but Digby glances back at me with a tilt of his head, and then he and Hojat walk out, closing the door behind them.

As soon as they’re gone, I start to sit up, and Slade is instantly there to help me. Despite how much I’ve been sleeping, my body feels exhausted again, but my mind is too wired to sleep.

I hold the borrowed shirt against my chest, the back still undone. “Can I clean up a little?”

“Of course.” Slade helps me to my feet and leads me to an attached washroom. It’s small but clean, with a round tub, a washbasin, toilet, and a wooden vanity.

“I could fill the bath for you, but we’d have to keep the water quite low so we don’t get your bandages wet.”

“No, that’s alright. I’ll just clean up as best I can for now and do that tomorrow before he wants to change the bandages.”

With a nod, Slade walks over to the vanity and pulls out a small stool. I take the hint and pad over to it, gingerly taking a seat. I watch as he moves around the room methodically, quietly, and I wonder what he’s thinking. But I’ve never been able to read his thoughts as well as he’s been able to read mine.

He grabs a glass vial from the vanity before going to the washbasin. The bowl set into it is a deep blue, the wood around it the same color as the floor. He pours some of the mixture into the bowl and then reaches up, pumping out water from a silver spigot on the wall. Water splashes into the basin, filling it with small bubbles, and he grabs a washing cloth from a hanging rack before dunking it in.

I watch as he wrings it out, his forearms visible from the rolled up sleeves of his shirt. The twisting movement of his hands fascinates me, especially in the low lantern light. From this angle, I’m able to study the profile of his face, and something in me aches just to look at him.

When he turns and walks over to me, I hold out my hand for the cloth, but he says, “May I?”

Taken aback, I hesitate. Washing someone, tending to them in this way, it’s intimate—intimate in a completely different way than sex. I clutch the shirt against my chest, my mind trying to come up with what I want, and he doesn’t rush me. He just waits, and I know that if I say no, he’ll pass me the cloth and that will be the end of it.

But I don’t want him to pass the cloth.

Swallowing hard, I stand up and reach back, undoing the top two buttons at my shoulders. Since the shirt is so large, I’m able to peel the sleeves off one at a time, letting it fall to the ground. Even with the strips of bandages wrapped around me, I still feel exposed. I twitch, arms ready to come up to cover myself, but Slade is always a step ahead.

His calloused hand comes down to circle my wrist, and he gently encourages me to sit. As soon as I do, he starts to drag the cloth over the skin of my arm with the gentlest touch. I suck in a breath, jolting a little at how cold it is.

Slade chuckles. “Sorry, I should’ve warned you.”

Yet every stroke he makes against my skin doesn’t stay cold for long. How could it when he’s touching me?

He works quietly and thoroughly, my arm being swept with soap and water, while his free hand threads his fingers between mine, gently bending my wrist backwards and forwards. He bends my fingers next, releasing the tension in each one, before he starts to slowly stroke up my other arm.

By the time he’s finished with that, my entire body has gone supple and soft. He moves his attention to my shoulders, massaging into the tense muscles, careful not to get close to my spine, meticulous in his gentleness so he doesn’t hurt me.

It doesn’t turn sexual, even though my nipples harden into points and my breath catches a few times. Slade just continues to take care of me, easing the stress and the tension from my body one muscle at a time.

When I help him peel off my leggings next, he kneels at my feet, that slow drag of the cloth making me just as languid as before. But when he digs his fingers into the arches of my feet, my eyes nearly roll into the back of my head.

His quiet care has calmed the thrumming of my mind, helping me to see everything so much more clearly, while he’s won over my body so thoroughly.

But then, he always does.

When the cloth comes up to wipe at my forehead and cheeks, I blink up at him. Our eyes lock, and he brushes a thumb along my chin. He drops the cloth into the bowl and then, still watching me, he reaches into his pocket and holds out his hand.

There, sitting in his palm, is a frayed piece of my ribbon. The same one Midas had tied around my wrist.

My eyes fill as I reach out and tentatively take it. The moment I feel the satiny fabric, a sob passes my lips, tears spilling over my cheeks.

A twinge pulses at a single spot beside my spine, as if my body knows where this ribbon was. As if it wants it back.

For a long time, I just sit here. Slightly bowed over, staring at the dulled gold of the unmoving ribbon, thumbing over the tattered end still stained with blood.

Then, I raise my head, look at Slade where he’s leaning against the wall.

“I don’t want to be weak anymore.”

My confession stands on a tension line between where I am and where I want to go. It’s a precarious balance, but I curl my toes and stand up straight, hearing Slade’s words whisper back to me.

Don’t fall.

Fly.

We’ve been transported back into that moment in the library again. Except now, parts of me are missing. Taken away. The wounds on my back twinge, but it only serves to make me feel more resolute. I twist the ribbon in my hand.

“I don’t want to be weak ever again.”

He absorbs my determined declaration with quiet study. I see his dusky green eyes flicker just beside my face, as if he’s looking at my aura. His is stowed away, the black vapors that hug his form hidden right alongside his spikes and scales.

“I want to master my own strength—physically and magically,” I tell him, my words sounding out of breath with the exertion of what lies ahead. And even though it no longer feels, no longer moves or lives, the ribbon still offers me its fortitude.

I wait, my breathing erratic, the feel of my heartbeat thumping hard against my bones. I’m not exactly sure what I’m waiting for him to say. Maybe that I don’t have to worry. That I have him and the others in my corner now.

But none of that changes my determination.

I need to be strong for myself. Because I will never forget that feeling of being held against a wall while I was mutilated. I will never forget that feeling of utter helplessness.

Perhaps things are born from trauma. An anger. A clarity.

A beast.

It scares me. Terrifies the hell out of me—of what I did that night. Because I don’t know my own power. But that’s been the problem all along, hasn’t it?

Maybe none of us truly know our own strength. Not until the world has hacked away at us. But the point is, we aren’t strong because of our trauma. We were always strong to begin with. We just needed to figure it out for ourselves.

Which is why I meet Slade’s eye, and I don’t waver when I say, “I want to be so strong that I never have to fear anyone else in this world. That if I need to, I can make them all fear me. And I want you to teach me.”

Silence reigns like a rigid monarch.

For a moment, I wonder if I’ve crossed a line. If I’ve shocked him. Worry makes me want to gnaw on my bottom lip.

But then, Slade grins.

I can see it right there on his face—the pride. The excitement. It’s wholly fae too, something almost animalistic about it. As if his own vengeful beast is ready to rise up and roar alongside mine. It’s contagious, and maybe a little unhinged, and I feel my own lips tipping up too.

He comes over, reaches up to grab hold of my chin, and then he leans down until his lips are skimming against mine so that I can feel his words when he murmurs. “Oh, Goldfinch. I’d thought you’d never ask.”