Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Chapter 25
Brynla
The moon is keeping me awake. Rotund and tinged with blue, it sits in the dark sky just above the castle spires, slicing through the half-closed curtain. The light illuminates Lemi as he sleeps curled up beside the bed, turning his black coat into shades of indigo. I would get up and close the curtain but I couldn’t move, even if I wanted to. My body feels depleted, my soul outside myself. The longer I stare at the moon, the more hollow I feel, as if it’s shining a light on my loss.
My loss.
This morning Andor told me it had been a week since I lost my aunt, a fact that still seems less of a fact and more of a notion. An awful, terrible, impossible notion, about two things that couldn’t be true. One is that my aunt is dead. Two, that time has passed. Because how can time just…pass? How can it move on past her death? How come the world didn’t stop when she died? Because my world stopped when she died.
Though, looking back on our conversation, I should have told him I didn’t lose her. To lose someone is to admit fault on your behalf. To lose someone is to imagine that one day they’ll return, back in the place you last left them.
I didn’t lose my aunt in that sense. She wasn’t misplaced, she didn’t wander off. She won’t someday come back and we’ll be happily reunited. She was instead brutally murdered and died in front of my eyes.
And loss is too pithy of a word; it doesn’t reflect at all the magnitude of having someone you love more than anything, the only solid, real family you have left in the world, ripped from your life. It doesn’t even begin to describe the hole gouged in you with tainted claws, creating a wound that not only won’t heal but will fester and infect the rest of you, spreading right into your very soul.
But perhaps it was my fault. I may not have lost her like I’ve lost my coin purse before, but it was my responsibility. It all happened because I came back to the Dark City and put her life in danger. I had Steiner send the message via raven. I am the one who put all these events in motion. Yes, I could blame Andor. I do blame Andor, since he was the one who put me in this horrible position. But in the end I’m still the one who decided getting my aunt out of the Banished Land was more important than anything else. And that was selfish of me, there’s no getting around it. I wanted her out because I wanted her with me, because I thought I knew what was best for her.
How naïve and foolish I was. I don’t know what’s best for anyone, let alone myself. My ego, my need to save my aunt when she didn’t need saving, is what cost her her life.
And I don’t know how I will ever recover from this.
I wish Andor had left me behind in the city to grieve.
I wish he had left me behind to die.
In the background, there’s a faint knock at the door. I don’t even lift my head to look. Usually it’s either Solla, bringing food I won’t eat but which Lemi happily laps up, or it’s Andor. Given that the moon is high, I’m guessing it’s Andor.
I hear the door creak open. Flickering candlelight spills across the room, competing with the moon. Lemi’s tail thumps against the floor and for a moment I feel betrayed by my hound. Why did Lemi let Andor leave with my unconscious body? Why didn’t he stop him? Even now he seems happy to have Andor around, oblivious to my feelings.
Then again, I think I’m oblivious to them.
“Are you awake?” Andor asks softly.
I clear my throat. “Yes,” I whisper.
“Can I come in?”
I usually tell him to go. Or I let him stay for a few moments as he tries to talk to me, tries to reach me through my grief, searches for the person I was before this all happened. He can’t find her. Neither can I.
But tonight, with that cold, cold moon peering into the room, making the shadows darker while illuminating my pain, I don’t think I want to send Andor away. For once, I don’t want to be alone. I want to forget.
“Yes,” I tell him again, and he’s closing the door softly behind him. I reposition myself on the bed to make room for him, watching as he moves across the room, his tall, muscled body moving with such grace that it makes my heart trip. Funny how my body still has the capacity for lust, for desire, for physical need, even when it’s absolutely breaking inside.