She waited for him to give her some indication or clue this was all a ruse, some hysterical prank. She laughed again, but she could feel the tears welling in her eyes. She fought them back because she wouldn’t let her face be tainted with them. She couldn’t look her best, her most delightful, when she was crying.
As her laugh settled, she looked at him, not knowing what to say or how to react.
“I’m sorry,” he said. She felt a tear in the corner of her eye.
Don’t let it escape. It will ruin everything.
She smiled even bigger than before, though she knew it was not the most aesthetically pleasing of smiles she could present. It was the one where she felt like she could best control the muscles in her face and prevent herself from totally losing it.
“Oh, no matter.” She pulled away and turned from him. “Things happen, I suppose. It’s been a very long time.”
Another laugh. She couldn’t help herself. But even as her lips curled upward, it felt like the tears forced their way out of the corners of her eyes. She wiped one away quickly. She could do this. She could keep it together.
“Eilee,” he said, grabbing her arm. She turned back to him, tilting her head, still presenting her smile.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t feel good about this. I met her and…”
“Oh, what does it matter?” Eilee said. “All that matters is your happiness, Trey.”
She could tell by the expression he made that he knew she wasn’t happy, knew exactly how devastated she was. It was almost silly for her to keep up the pretense that everything was all right, considering how she was feeling, but she wouldn’t let up her act. Beauty was the one thing she had left, so she couldn’t let anything taint that.
“Dear, dear, dear,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “I love you so much, and I have had eons of joy with you. It’s time I share with another.” She kissed his cheek, her face twitching, giving too much away. “Now, please, I was trying to read a book. If you could go, that would be amazing.”
She wasn’t asking him to leave because she wanted him to, but because she knew she couldn’t bear it much longer. She was fighting with everything in her. But in some way, she wanted him to stay. She wanted him to apologize and say he was wrong, beg for her to stay with him or say that it was all some sort of test.
But he turned and walked out the door, closing it behind him.
She stared forward blankly, still feeling a pressure in her face.
The tears sprang free, unbidden, and she bowed forward, as if she’d been stabbed in the gut, which in some way she had been, and in the back too. No, it wasn’t okay. She wanted to know everything—who the tramp was, how they’d fallen in love, what he’d shared with her. His loyalties had strayed in their time apart.
Just the thought of him touching another higherling’s skin made her drop to her knees. She felt like she was suffocating. She breathed heavily, whimpering. She’d been through war. She’d been in battle. She had suffered the loss of many friends in the worst conceivable conditions, but of all the things that had happened to her, this was her greatest loss.
It was as though everything she had contained while he was speaking with her exploded in that moment, and she bashed her fists on the stone floor, screaming. She reared her head back, continuing her scream so much louder, shouting, calling as if to her creator to tell Him she needed to be soothed. But no one had seen Him in so long, and He was the only one who could console His daughter like she needed consoling.
She pushed to her feet and paced the room, not knowing how to respond. She hurried to the walls, grabbing the books, pulling them down and ripping them apart, tearing the pages out, screaming in the process. She knew her fit was contorting her face in the most hideous of expressions, and if anyone saw her, they would be horrified that the Almighty’s greatest creation was not presenting herself properly.
But she didn’t care about presentation in that moment. She only cared that she had nothing. She turned to a piece of rubble, a long shard of glass that lay in the corner of one of the shelves. Impulsively, she swooped down, grabbed it, and drove it into her arm, continuing to scream, not because of the external pain but because of the pain she felt in her heart, because of the pain that felt like it was about to burst out of her chest.
When she’d reached her wrist on that arm, she switched arms and began slicing into the other. The pain felt good. It felt right, because it dulled her awareness of the ache that ripped at her heart, that felt like it would never end. She rushed up and threw herself against one of the bookshelves so that it toppled over, with her landing on top. She crawled onto the books, grabbing at them, clawing at them, stabbing at them with the shard of glass. The moment felt so familiar. She’d fallen into this madness before, and yet it was so fresh, so new, and utter misery.
“Eilee, Eilee!”
“Trey?” she asked, turning quickly, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found, nor was it his voice. She had just wanted to believe that so desperately, it felt real.
“Eilee!”
She screamed, her eyes opening as she found herself surrounded by a dim white light. A stranger sat beside her, his hand around her arm. She pushed the heel of her hand into his face, thrusting him back.
She glanced around the room, noticing a blaggovite slithering across the floor, toward the edge of the room. It had all been a nightmare, a lie…and yet, all too real.
Tears burst from her eyes once again, and she turned to see Quintz recovering from her attack. She rolled away from him so he wouldn’t see her…how much pain she was in.
“Don’t look at me,” she muttered as she shielded her face with her hands.
“We have to go.”
