I stand at theend of the hallway, the small wooden door before me illuminated only by the spelled flames in glass bowls attached to the wall.
It’s the middle of the night, tortuous dreams once more keeping me from sleep. Tomorrow, Nox will resume his meetings with the council, giving them the manufactured story of what he found in the Mortal Kingdom, how we met, and why he is not going to entertain the idea of a betrothal to Haylee. And I will be left on my own for the first time in this kingdom.
My fingers curl into my palms at my sides as I work my bottom lip between my teeth, my attention falling again to the hidden door in front of me. Stepping forward, I push on the gray striated stone, a creaking sound echoing out. My shoulders rise towards my ears, and though it is impossible, as I stare down into the dark expanse of the winding stone staircase in front of me, I swear that I can hear King Dolian’s voice. I can feel his fists meeting my body in heavy swings, my chest rising and falling with the anticipation of the next hit.
“This isn’t the tower,” I whisper to myself, but I can’t get my feet to move. Squeezing my eyes shut, I shake my head like the movement is enough to banish his presence in my mind.
You will earn your title. You aremine.
The pain is piercing when I bite through my lip, the sting jolting me out of the spiral. Gasping, I take a step back and shut the door before leaning my forehead against it.
I had failed earlier when Nox took me on an outing to the city center. It was beautiful and lively, and Nox had done his best to keep us to the outskirts of the busy shopping plaza. As he held my hand tightly, offering kind nods and smiles to the people who passed us, he explained how this place compared to Vitour. While he talked of their differences, I reflected on the fact that he had beendesperateto go home, and yet for three months, he delayed leaving because of me. Eventually, the smell of something sweet had drawn us into a confectionery shop. A bell chimed as we stepped in, and the sugary citrus scent that hung heavy in the air began to feel stifling. It reminded me of a lemon loaf, and as I stared down at the glass case full of chocolate candies, my hands trembling, I was abruptly pelted with memories of Alexi.
Chocolate creams. Two hands of cards on a chipped white table.This place, this prison, is not where your journey is to end, Little One.Icy metal stairs biting into my feet as I followedmy uncle down them. Alexi kneeling, beaten between golden guards. And blood—so much blood.
Crying and desperate pleading with my magic to save him.Save him. Save him.Cradling his head in my lap and his blood pooling around me, cooling as it soaked into my nightgown. My hair. Never-ending screams wrenched from my throat until no further sound would come.
Nox had recognized what was happening and helped guide me out of the shop and into the forest for privacy. He held me to him, murmuring that it was okay if I needed to fall apart. That he would always be there to help me when I did. His voice to anyone else would sound whisper-soft, but to me, it was a shout down into the void of anguish I was stuck in. In his gentle tone, I heard the guilt that ravaged him.
I had felt fine, and then I wasn’t. But I shouldn’t be falling apart anymore. I am no longer in the tower, no longer in that kingdom. I am safer than I have ever been, and it has beenmonthssince Alexi’s death. Weeks since we ran. Shouldn’t time have been a balm to the wounds by now?
I had failed in the city center just as I am failing now. I fail every time I wake Nox up with my nightmares and have to watch as his guilt is laid bare on his face before he remembers to hide it from me. I fail when I don’t live the kind of life I had lost so much to gain.
“Rhea?”
I lift my head up as Nox makes his way towards me, only dressed in his gray sleeping pants. His eyes immediately fall to my lip, the wound already closing but the evidence of what I’ve done to myself present. He looks to the hidden door next as understanding flattens his mouth and makes him exhale roughly. His hand reaches out to gently tilt my chin up so the light of the flame falls over my face. I look away, shame and defeat making my cheeks burn bright.
“Look at me,” he commands, gingerly caressing his thumb over my bottom lip. A tear traces down my cheek, my lashes growing wet, as I slowly force my gaze back to his. “I love you.”
“Why?”
His shoulders droop with the question, but his focus never strays from me.
“You could be with anyone—loveanyone. It doesn’t make sense—”
“Rhea,” he interjects, sliding his hand until it cradles the back of my head. “There isonlyyou. There will onlyeverbe you. From this day until I draw in my last breath, my heart beats for you and you alone.”
“What if I can’t be enough?” I ask, the rasp of my voice harsh. “For you. Forthem. For myself. What if this version of me is all I’ll ever be?” Nothing but a barely held together mosaic of grief and despair. That fear is an anxious whisper in the back of my mind that has grown louder since I woke up from the Middle. What if healing—whatever that looks like—isn’t something that is possible for me?
Nox takes my hand into his and flattens my palm onto his chest directly over where his heart beats in a steady rhythm. “Youareenough. You could never change from this exact moment, or you could morph into something new every single night, and you wouldbe enough. I would still ache to be at your side. Any and every version of you is one that I want.”
My next inhale feels like it hits my lungs more deeply, the vibration of his heartbeat beneath my palm urging my own into a similar cadence. “I want to be worthy of you,” I whisper to him, closing my eyes when he wraps his arms around me.
“You are. You always have been, and you alwayswillbe. To meandto them.” He says it with so much confidence that it’s hard not to let myself feel like maybe it’s the truth. “But I can’t make you feel it about yourself. Only you can do that.”
I deflate against him, my cheek resting on his chest. “I don’t know how to do that.”
He holds me as seconds turn into minutes, his hands stroking in a soothing pattern over my back. Finally, he says in a soft murmur, “I think that all you can do is try.”
Our love story allegedlybegan in a small town near the Mortal Kingdom’s border called Santor. At least, that is what Nox told the council. As for the magical burst they could feel from here, he told them it was a spelled crystal in King Dolian’s possession and that he decided it would be safer to destroy it. He left out everything about the King’s Guard attacking us at the border, about how my uncle likely assumes him to be mage. I suppose the council would have no way of knowing those things anyway.
The first morning he left to meet with them, I kept to his room, reading and writing in my journal. He came back in the afternoon, and after he had relayed what he told them, we spent the rest of the day in his bed together. It was a fantastic distraction.
The second morning, I attempted, and failed again, to go down the passageway to his secret garden, returning once more to his room where I curled up with a book. Nox led me on a tour around the palace when he returned later that day, his fingers firmly laced with mine as we explored the home he grew up in. I didn’t know if it was luck or by design that we hadn’t run into any of the council members while out.
Our evenings were spent training with one half of my magic, the darker half constantly pushing against the invisible barrier I was trying to build to snuff it out. Nox was patient in his instruction, my fear of accidentally losing control and letting the shadows out again one that he delicately worked around. I hadeven tried manipulating an element for the first time, attempting to lift water from a small stream that runs through the forest behind the palace. Controlling my magic so precisely was a struggle, and I’m not entirely sure more than a few droplets of water rose from my efforts.
Nox at least lets me keep the pendant on when we are outside, his gentle words coaxing me to take it off once we enter his room again. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the importance of learning to control at leastpartof this magic without the safety of his blanketing me. It was that I felt sodisconnectedfrom that side of me as a whole that I didn’tlikefeeling it so strongly.
