She shook the thought from her head, finally rolling onto her side right as Desi slipped beside her. They talked for hours after Nymiria finally dressed herself. Desi told her of the rumors that'd spread and the hysteria that arose when everyone discovered that there was a coven of Mimics hiding themselves in troves around Yaar. She told her of Dorid's temper tantrum when no one could find her, how he broke down into hysterics when it was believed that she and Mimic-Brandt had eloped.
Nymiria just smiled and listened.
Time passed, her mind wandering in and out of the fantasy world she'd left behind. But there was one face that never seemed to leave both realities.
Aziel.
Nymiria wasn't sure how long she waited before she heard him coming up the stairs. Desi had long-since excused herself for the night and the moon was already high in the sky. Each step he took seemed to drag on the wooden staircase, signifying that he was exhausted. It made sense considering all that they'd been through earlier that day, but when she opened the door and saw him turning towards his own rooms, her heart fluttered.
He didn't seem to have noticed that she was watching him—his forehead and palms pressed against his door, his chest rising and falling at such a quick pace that the mood swiftly shifted into something darker.
Their relationship hadn't changed, shehadto remember that. He was still a nuisance, still obnoxiously full of himself, andmean. He'd hardly been nice to her. She should not have cared this much about what he was feeling, but she did. And the urge to approach him and console him was stronger than ever, her brow furrowing at her own thoughts.
"Are you alright?" She whispered.
His hands and head still resting against the door, Aziel turned his face to look at her. "Go away." Though he meant it, the words did not hold the usual bite that they would have earlier that day. He sounded tired. Helookedtired. Like all of the life and power had been drained from him completely.
"I won't leave until you tell me you are fine." She insisted.
Perhaps it was not her place to be worried over him at all, but it seemed impersonal for her to not, at the very least, ask.
He shook his head, shoving himself away from the door only to right himself. "Good night, Nymiria."
There was not another word spoken. Her first instinct was to follow him and annoy him enough to have him talk to her, but even she knew what that look on his face meant. Something happened. Whether it was a death or some form of a punishment, she wasn't sure, but that sort of sadness was only recognizable to someone who experienced it before. A sadness of the soul.
Nymiria did notlikeAziel, but he had saved her life. And he'd proven that he wasn't entirely against her, nor did he hate her. And as much as it should have bothered her to feel the way she did, there was no force strong enough that could stop her from being concerned about him.
Spending the rest of the night in her rooms did not sound appealing to her. She needed…something.
Guidance.
There was a guilt that'd started eating away at her earlier in the day, a deep desire to spread herself on the ground in her garden and connect with the bones that were under the surface.
In the three years that Owen had been gone, she'd never been apart from him for more than eight hours. She visited him every single day. And while his ghost still hauntedher—
She paused.
The candle in her hand flickered, her brow furrowing once again as she peered around the dark hall, only to be met with silence.
Not an eerie silence, but… astillsilence. One that was not interrupted by flashes of green eyes, nor seductive whispers that would snake down her spine. The world around her did not give a single hint of her ghost being present. And, when she really thought about it, she hadn't heard him in days.
Panic began to settle into the hollow of her stomach, her chest heaving as she turned towards the stairs and bound down them as quickly as she could. Nymiria flew through the halls, her candle extinguished and abandoned the moment it had burnt out.
Each hall was silent.
Each turn she took, she was greeted by uninterrupted darkness.
Owen was not there.
The panic inside of her slowly burned to a rage, at the realization of what she'd agreed to—of what Aziel meant when he said he took her weakness away. That guiding voice, the one that whispered reassurances and guided her through all of her self-loathing and guilt was gone, replaced with a silence that was too quiet to be comforting at all.
She'd spent the last three years following that voice, making her decisions based upon the curvature of those deep green eyes that always haunted her peripheral vision.
Before Nymiria could realize where she had gone, she found herself staring at the large iron gate that housed what she could only explain as her heart.
Owen might not have loved her, but she lovedhim. It was real for her. It was real.
It was real.
