Chapter 6

I’m without anguish, sorrow, regret. I’m without the shades of right and wrong and the gray smudge in between.

Without the warm dawn of hope or the cold drop of fear.

I’m without fingers to tangle with truths that no longer matter. Without hands that hold and caress and hurt.

Without the substance left to snap.

I’m without breath to fill lungs that no longer exist. Without tight skin to keep me contained.

Without blood to drip. To spill or drain or splat or stain.

To gift.

I’m without …

Him.

Weight no longer pins me down, roots pulling from soil that falls away as I tumble with dewdrop stars floating on a sea of black ink. I dart through an ebony forest that seems to stretch for eternity, racing small globes of light that whiz between trunks.

The trees bear no leaves, no life, but I can feel their violent pulse through whatever’s left of me as I zoom past a place I might recognize. A castle that’s black like the gloomy trees, the sky, the soil, its walls choppy in places—as though unfinished.

I want to go there, but I’m at the mercy of the pull.

The terrain slopes, and then I’m plummeting toward a glittering iris that pours into a fathomless pupil.

I slow.

The eye looks at me. Assesses me.

A layered voice whispers in slithering tones, reeling me toward the hungry darkness. Two echoing words caw like a krah through the midnight murk and speak my hollow, condemning truth …

* * *

Burning hands grip me by the shoulders and shake, shake, shake—wrenching me away from that seeing end. I reach, fingers stretching, pleading for it to swallow me …

Dissolveme.

For it to scatter me into a trillion insignificant pieces.

I’m shoved inside a body that’s icy and hostile. That feels too much all at once, abrading my hollow heart.

“Orlaith … fuck—”

A soft voice. Concerned.

“Wake up—”

Angry.

“—what have you done?”

Terrible, terrible things that weigh too much.

Terrible things I can’t undo.

Another stiff shake tosses my head around.My chin smacks against my chest, and a burst of red explodes across the backs of my lids as I bite my tongue that’s cold and clumsy, tasting blood.

Eyes prying open, I take in the blurry profile of a woman with familiar shape …

Colors …

Smells …

Butter and spice, cut with the sharp scent of fierce, erupting emotions that battle the musk of him.

Hands too warm and small and not his.

Because he’s gone.

Because I …

I …

“I don’t want to feel.”

The words flow without shape or heart or the will to sink their roots into soil. Without the petals of hope, happiness, sadness, grief …

Empty as my empty heart—confirmed by a mighty, unfathomable entity. Cawed words that call me now.

I blink away, open my eyes on the empty, the cold, the end.

Peer into that fathomless pupil.

I drift closer …

Closer …

Something hard collides with my face, smacking me into my too-tight skin—crammed into all the nooks and crannies. “Don’t you dare die.”

I’m rolled across a sea of soft blankets I want to wither amongst. Ice clogs my veins as hands slide beneath my knees and back, and I’m tucked against a warm chest, lifted, floating …

Floating away from the smell of him.

I mumble.

Groan.

Plead.

“Geis ta ne vale—es tin nah!”

The string of sharp, crooked words lump upon me, the curled edges rolling off Zali’s tongue like a gentle pat after a scalding smack.

Guess she got my note. Meaning she knows I—

I whimper, warm mist settling upon my cheeks and hands. Gurgling, splashing sounds erupt around me, echoing, coaxing the image of a frothy waterfall to etch upon the back of my lids.

Again, I’m standing on the edge of that cliff, watching him disappear through the pillow of mist, falling from my life in devastating detail.

I can see the pain in the flat pools of his eyes, his outstretched hands an invitation for me to fall with him.

One tiny step. One tiny plunge.

One deep dive into our ever after that never was, before an inky nothing pours into my lungs and snuffs out my flame—

I’m folded forward against something hard and cold. My jaw is pried open, fingers probing so far down my throat my stomach spasms. Bile saws up my throat in a lumpy, splattering pour of acid and half-digested caspun.

“That’s it. Get it all out.”

Again, her fingers gore deep. Again, my throat blazes with fiery wrath until I’m so empty the only thing left for me to spew is my aching guts.

I’m lugged back, head flopping, and then I’m lifted.

Floating again.

Scalding water hammers my chest and smothers me in a boiling spill, waging war with my frosty skin.

A scream rips up my throat.

I try to squirm, buck, flee—but my limbs are cast in ice.

“S-stop …”

I’m certain my flesh is blistering. Will it slip off my bones in bloody drips that swirl down the drain and disappear forever?

Don’t cry—

My raspy scream echoes off the walls, and I reach up, tangling my fingers with the long, sodden streaks of Zali’s hair. “Pl-please … t-too … hot—”

“If I don’t heat you up, you’ll die.”

The words fade into a soft, distant echo as I’m reeled toward that inky endless … head tipping … arm dropping to the stone …

Another slap tosses my head sideways so fast the world tips on its axis.

“Stay awake.”

Her voice attacks me like a swinging hammer, and I open my eyes. Sketch the blurred shape of Zali’s face—her eyes twin swirls of rusty resolution.

She eases me onto the stone floor, my head in her lap, then reaches sideways and digs through something that rustles about. Water continues to pound me as her fingers thread between my lips and crank my jaw. Something is shoved beneath my tongue before my teeth are allowed to snap shut, the gooey substance softening.

Melting.

A familiar taste glides across my tastebuds, tugging the strings of my conscious mind …

Exothryl.

“Swallow,” Zali orders, and the milky sheen glides down my throat, planting a seed of warmth inside my gut.

Why is she trying to help me?

“I k-killed … your … promised …”

“And now you’re stuck with me,” she murmurs. “Hopefully my superior communication skills will save me from getting stabbed in the heart.”

I groan, and my lids yield to the downward tug. Again, my lips are pried open, the underside of my tongue burdened by another chalky node.

Water continues to stomp my chest, thawing me from the outside while warmth takes root within—planting an ember in my barely beating heart. Stirring my pulse.

My mind.

Even so, the pull to follow him is fierce. If I were to tuck into a ball, I’m certain gravity would roll me toward a swift end. Like I’m tethered to him, my soul seeking his.

I slam the lid on that thorny thought and drag my eyes open, squinting through the drizzles of water.

Frowning, Zali studies me, her hair a curtain around her face, lips a thin line, as if she’s biting down on words threatening to spew forth. Like another slap to the face, it occurs to me that I’m stripped bare—all my weaknesses on display for this woman who is so put together. So poised, perfect, strong.

I’ve never felt so raw. So vulnerable.

So fucking lost.

“I just wanted to sleep,” I croak, and her palm collides with my face again. My head tosses sideways, cheek blooming with a slap of pain.

“Stop that,” I slur, upper lip threatening to peel back.

She grabs my chin and jerks my face to the side, forcing me to look at her. “Don’t make it so easy for them,” she hisses, waving the half-chomped lump of caspun in my face.

“You don’t make any sense,” I groan, closing my eyes against the water’s relentless spray. Against the swirl of wrath, disappointment, and concern staining her eyes.

She cares. For me.

I don’t know what to do with that. How to handle it. It’s easier to … not. Because I hurt people who care.

Every. Single. Time.

“I make perfect sense,” she grits out, and I’m lugged into a sitting position, swaying like a bloom in the breeze. Water batters my back and seeps through my heavy length of hair, my shoulders bowed forward, blinks slow and deep as I take in our surroundings.

We’re in Rhordyn’s washroom, amidst a sea of smoggy steam heavy with the leathery, frosty scent of him. Of us crushed together. Crammed into each other’s atmospheres. Before my damage devoured him.

Before I killed the man I love.

Zali’s sodden, bright-red cape drags along the floor like a trail of blood as she walks to the corner of the room, drops the bitten stump of caspun into the latrine, and pulls the chain.

My heart plummets so fast I almost rock forward and face-plant the stone. “What are you doing?”

“Welcome to your reckoning,” she bites out.

“I needed that!”

She glares at me so hard I’m forced to drop my gaze. Probably not the right choice of words considering the state she just found me in.

She strides toward me and kneels, and I look up in time to see her hand crank back. I snatch her wrist a second before her palm can collide with my cheek again.

Her eyes widen, darken, like pots of honey flamed over a bed of hot coals as I use my grip to pull her so close her breath is blasting me—the water streaming over her head, her hair the deep, dusky shade of red wine now that it’s plastered to her cheeks.

“Don’t.”

Her lips slash into a wicked smile. “There she is.”

I snarl.

She stands, scrubbing her face with her hands. “Did you tell anyone else?”

“No …”

“That’s something,” she murmurs, then sits on her heels and stares down all my broken bits like she’s not afraid to cut herself on them. Her gaze lands on my eyes, and the divot between her brows deepens. “You need sunshine.”

A thousand other versions of the same proclamation pick at me from the past. Mersi, Baze, and eventually, him …

I frown, still swaying with a tide of my own. “You don’t know what I need.”

Nobody does.

“Your kind needs sunlight to survive,” she growls, forcing me to look.

To see.

My mouth falls open, heart vaulting.

She knows what I am.

“You … How—”

“It’s why Rhordyn had you housed in the northern tower all these years. It got the most of it.”

“He told you?”

“Because I can be trusted,” she declares. “Because I’m an ally, not an enemy.”

My vision goes hazy.

Rhordyn trusted Zali with my hidden identity. Trusted Baze.

Didn’t trust me.

I was so mad at Baze for knowing. For keeping it from me. Was so mad at Rhordyn for the same that I let it rot my perception of him. Let all that mad boil into a thick, potent, deadly poison.

Now I’m seeing it from a different angle—one absent of the hurt and heartbreak and those feelings of betrayal that bubbled to the surface the moment he unlatched the necklace from around my neck.

A question bulbs in my chest, roots curling around my ribs as the shoot begins to spike up my throat—

What am I missing?

Zali looks at the ground, seeming to consider, then at me. “Are you certain you got him in the heart?”

The words stake through me, jerking me back to the now, and I flinch at the memory of how it felt to wield that talon as it slid through his chest.

The underside of my tongue prickles with the urge to vomit again.

“Yes,” I force through the bars of my teeth.

“Was he wearing anything around his neck?” she asks, her voice lifted with something akin to hope. “A rope of some sort?”

A vision flashes in my mind’s eye—of Rhordyn. Bleeding. Battling for air his lungs wouldn’t pull. Of a leather thread draped around his neck, tethered to something hidden beneath his shirt.

I shove the image away, heart bouncing around in a rib cage that suddenly feels too small.

Too tight.

“Yes.”

Her face pales, and she curses, eyes swirling pools of pained calculation. “What now?” she croaks, crucifying me with a glassy stare.

“What do you mean?”

“Ocruth is yours.”

The words slide through me like a sword, stopping my heart’s ferocious rally.

My mouth opens, closes, opens again. “N-no …”

“You’re his ward,Orlaith. He had no children. No family.”

No.

No-no-no …

“But you’re his promised—”

“A political pairing that was far from sealed.” She pulls Rhordyn’s cupla from her pocket and waves it at my face. “This doesn’t mean shit for my people now.”

“I— I don’t want this … I don’t fucking want any of this!”

“Too late.”

Two small words that shackle me, adding to a thousand too-late cuffs already wrapped around my arms and legs. Weighing me down.

Rhordyn showed me what I really am. Kissed me like I was his salvation. Told me he would try harder.

Too late.

Too late.

Too late.

He said he’d show me the worst of it …

Too late.

Somebody had already shown me the worst and staked his death in the soil of my malnourished heart. And now that we’re here—now that he’s gone—there’s a voice bellowing in my ears, telling me I was wrong.

That I should have taken notice of the gray smudge between Rhordyn’s black and white. That I should have waited just a little longer. Listened to the words I snuffed on his tongue when I plunged that talon through his heart.

I flinch.

Too late …