88. Aurelia

Chapter 88

Aurelia

I wake in the middle of the night, lurching upright with a start. A deep, dark feeling of foreboding lurks in my bones.

Something is wrong.

Very wrong.

"What is it?" Lyle asks, sitting up and checking my body for signs of injury.

Savage leaps up from the bed, prowling around as if something is darkening his mind too.

"I don't know," I say, wiping sweat from my forehead. He pushes the sheets off me and I scramble out of bed, going to the window to peer out of it.

The lawn behind the school is peaceful, lit by silvery moonlight. "Where did you say Scythe was?"

Savage comes to check the window too. He opens his mouth to reply, but then stiffens.

My head snaps to look out the window, and where before not a soul had stood, a single terrifying figure stands, looking up at us. Writhing shadows, dark as the void, cloak him from head to toe, leaving only red laser-beam eyes trained on me. The cherry red butt of a cigarette glows as he lifts it to his mouth and inhales deeply.

"Troubled little regina," he whispers in my mind. "What will she do now?"

"Come here and fucking say that!" I snarl.

What am I missing?

Lyle puts his hand on my elbow. "Regina," he says quietly.

Immediately alarmed by his tone, I turn around. In one big hand, Lyle holds a letter. White, heavy cardstock. "It's addressed to you."

I snatch it from him, not even caring for my manners and prising open the glue sealing it shut. It comes open easily, a fresh seal.

Heart pounding, I turn on the lamp by the bed and frantically read the words.

I've never seen Scythe's handwriting before, but it's sharp and sloping. Perfect and severe.

Aurelia,

I never expected you.

You know I have been watching you. And what I have seen confirms for me, that I made a very grave mistake in ever thinking you were my enemy.

Watching you with your friends. With Sabrina after she returned. With Minnie after the Titus incident. Then with Savage, the way you treat him. With kindness. With loyalty. All of it healed something in me.

Savage taught me how to love. But you… You taught me about devotion. About obsession. I am utterly obsessed with you.

I might be mad. I might be losing my mind. And if I truly fall apart, if I truly fall down the narrow crag of madness, let it be because of love. Because my mind may not be pure, but the love I have for you is.

When I look at you, my realities collide in the most violent and loving way, and I do not know what to do with that, Aurelia. I really do not know.

I used to know what I wanted: to do the work the Wild Goddess assigned to me and then return home.

And then you came along and threatened everything. I wanted to send you away. I wanted you gone. But now, I want you to stay, and it is I who must go.

I will always be with you. You with me. You run through my veins. You always have.

But I cannot stay here.

The darkness encroaches upon me. I need to end it before it swallows my mind whole. Before it takes who I am away from me and leaves me as nothing but the worst of the beasts who walk the land.

I only stayed long enough to make sure you would be okay.

You can rage, Aurelia. You can scream and swear all you want, but you must keep going. For Savage. For Lyle. For Minnie. For those who are not granted the choice.

You had to destroy a part of yourself in order to survive.

Awaken that part, Aurelia. It's time.

We must mourn the fallen, but we must be careful not to fall with them.

Perhaps in the next life.

Forever yours,

Scythe

The letter flutters to the floor from my hand as a crucial part of me quivers.

Scythe believes his fate is death. He believes he was doomed right from the very beginning. That we can never be together.

One part of me, the part that fell into his mind and saw the result of his psychosis, whispers, I understand. Of course, I understand.

But another part of me, the part that burned my father's house down and set light to my mother's funeral pyre, simply roars with fury and betrayal.

Outside, a wolf howls. I would know Savage's voice from a mile away. I would know his pain from across countries, across worlds. His anguish is mirrored in the howls of the other wolves in the academy as they hear him, open their windows, and mirror their leader's pain.

My feet do not feel like my own as I rise and walk out of the bedroom, the two sides of me warring, and I, unable to choose which voice to follow, simply become a ghost. A person in-between. A person who does not exist.

"Savage found these left for him," Lyle says.

His voice draws me to the dining table, where a silver lighter in the shape of a shark and a matching silver cigarette case comes into view.

"I got this," Lyle continues. He holds an envelope. Bigger and heavier than mine. Unopened.

"Open it." My voice is faint. Barely there.

My lion obeys and I do not watch, my eyes staring blankly into space.

"There are plane tickets here," Lyle says with surprise, holding out a number of tickets in a fan. "For all of us. To Singapore. They leave before dawn. There's even some for Minnie and her pack…and Beak."

He'd intended for us to leave, too.

"Beak lost his regina. The most powerful eagle in the school. He'd be a good candidate for you."

He'd planned this all out. Probably for ages.

"Where is Xander?" I ask.

"Smoking outside. I think he suspected, but he didn't know it would be tonight. None of us did." Lyle's voice is exasperated, and he runs a hand through his mane, then pulls me in towards him.

I push away.

"We do not react," I say faintly. "We respond."

"What?"

"We do not react. We respond."

The cacophony of howls outside fades away as I feel Savage's wild, frantic presence barrel back inside towards me.

"We have to go get him!" Savage says, his eyes darting around in panic. He storms up to Lyle and grabs his arms. "We've got to go now, before he gets too far out and I can't reach him."

My lion takes Savage's face between his palms. "He's gone, Sav. He wants us to leave too." He holds up the tickets.

Savage slams the flat of his palm into them, and paper goes flying everywhere. "Fuck that, Lyle! No one is leaving. No one! " Savage comes up to me then, taking my shoulders and shaking them. "Let's go get him, regina."

"He made his choice," I say faintly.

Savage's face crumples. "No."

I shake my head. "You may go if you wish, but I will not come with you."

With permission given, Savage turns and sprints outside, mentally shouting Xander's name.

Within minutes he's gone, caught on a dragon's wind. So it's not them who makes the building tremble on its foundation now.

Shouts sound from below.

"Angel," Lyle says, stepping in front of me, filling my vision with bare skin and muscle.

"He left us," I repeat. "Gone just like that." It's twisting in me. Turning, flapping, screaming, scraping. My anima demands to take control. To rid my heart of the pain, the darkness that wants to claim me. We do not react, we respond. I cannot go down the rabid path. Not now. Not when I'd made promises. Not when there were lives at risk.

Scythe had been there when I'd made the vow to my mother. He knew what it meant to me that I'd had his help.

And he'd abandoned us.

Just like my family had abandoned me. He would have known the pain he was causing when he did it. He would have fucking known.

"That bastard," I say through clenched teeth.

A thought rises up within me. Something that has lurked in the back of my mind like a snake in its den for a long time now.