“Rhea.” Xander’s fingers gently tug on my elbow, and I take in the hallway we are stopped in.When had we stopped walking?“Are you okay?”
“I—” My response gets swept away by the weight of everything that has been revealed. By my own insecurities and the way I hate not knowing where Nox is or if he is okay. By the crushing and relentlesslonelinessthat somehow feels worse than when I existed in a tower with only Bella at my side. To myabsolute horror, a sob chokes it way up my throat. I cover my mouth, squeezing my eyes shut as I turn away from Xander.
“Hey, uh, are you—” He stumbles over his words from behind me, his voice muffled from the ringing in my ears.
Stop crying. I repeat the command over and over, but I’m helpless to stop it. I try to claw at any tether to reality that I can find, but I’m a stranger in this place. To myself right now. There isnothingthat I can anchor to because my anchor isn’there.He isn’t here. That leaves me bereft, smothered in the waters of my own grief and anxiety andanger.
And apparently, it is time for it all to come rushing out in front of a man I hardly know and barely trust.
My feet begin moving again, my body led by a firm but gentle hand on my shoulder. I expect to be taken to my bedroom, but as I blink away the tears that line my eyes, I’m met with the double doors that lead to the library. “What are we doing here?”
He opens one of the doors and ushers me in, pitch black greeting us until Xander pulls a small flame gem from his pocket. “I thought you might want to be somewhere that is calm but not your room. A change of scenery, I guess.” There is a hesitancy to his answer, like he isn’t quite sure if he’s helping or hurting the situation. “I can bring you to your room if you prefer—”
“No, a change in scenery is perfect.” He guides us to the back of the library, where we settle down between two bookcases. Xander sits opposite me, lit by the flame gem laid by his feet. Tilting my head back against one of the shelves, I close my eyes and force each of my breaths to be slower than the one that came before it. The air is filled with the scent of worn leather and old paper, of ink and something earthier. As if the dirt between the stones is somehow seeping through the cracks. It is comforting and foreign all the same. Xander sits with his legs extended in front of him, his ankles crossed and arms folded over his chest.
For a while—minutes or an hour, I’m unsure—we sit in the silence together.
When my heart no longer feels as if it’s trying to escape my body, I draw my knees into my chest and lay my cheek on top of them, ignoring how the movement pulls at the brand. “Thank you.”
Xander tucks his onyx hair behind his ear, shaking his head. “No need to thank me. I have experience with those kinds of…attacks.”
“Attacks?”
He blows out a breath, adjusting his position and making the armor he wears creak with the movement. “When it’s like your mind is trying to convince you to fight. That if you don’t, you’ll die. Go up in flames despite the fact that you’re sprinting from them.”
“Mine feels more like I’m drowning,” I tell him, staring off into the darkness that the flame gem doesn’t touch. “It’s like I’m adrift in choppy waters, the current constantly trying to pull me under. And I kick and kick, promising myself that relief is coming. That I just need to hold on for a little while.” The weight of Xander’s stare falls on me, but I avoid meeting it. “But if I’m honest, I’ve been kicking for a very long time.”
Though there is still a wild mix of emotions within me when it comes to this guard, I am grateful for the silence he offers in response to what I’ve said. We sit for so long in the library that eventually my eyelids begin to droop and he suggests that we go. “I will walk you to the foyer, but I should leave you there and let you make your way back alone. Just in case.”
“Right.” It would be one thing to explain that I simply couldn’t sleep and went for a walk around the residence. It is another entirely to be caught with Xander in the middle of the night, no matter how innocuous our meeting is. Quietly, we make our way from the library to the foyer and say goodbye.
My room is dark when I enter it, a chill in the air seeping in from the open window. After closing it, I grab my nightgown from the armoire and head into the bathroom to wash and change, forced to look at the brand as I take off the bloodstained gauze covering it. I pinch my lips together to ward off anymore tears as I stare at the ugly mark. Ignoring the acknowledgment that I am forever changed by it. Once changed, I crawl into bed and cover myself with the comforter.
Though sleep tries to draw in around the corners of my vision, I force my eyes to stay open for as long as I can. Staring at nothing but letting my mind wander into a place that is neither here nor there but somewhere in between. Like when I visit the Middle, except it’s my poor attempt at pretending that Nox is actually here with me. Reality without him is almost too much to bear, but sometimes, my dreams are even worse. At least when I am awake, I understand clearly that he isn’t here. But in my dreams? There are moments when he is standing in front of me, those gray and silver-flecked eyes seeing me as wholly as they always have. Where I can swear I smell autumn woods and his voice is a pleasurable thrum along my skin. Then he’s ripped away again when my eyes open, and the surroundings of my room remind me where I am.
And yet when my eyes finally fall closed and I sink deeper into the bed, my mind goes right to him. A beacon of my heart, his face is all I can see. All I want to see. I tumble further, escaping to a world where it’s only him and I. Together in a field, his lips on mine. Wrapped up in a bed, limbs tangled and breaths shared. And, gods, I miss him so much that I don’t care that as soon as the sun hits my face through the window in the morning, the illusion will be shattered. That the sharp pain of his loss will roll in anew, a wound healed and then cut over and over and over again.
Chapter Thirty-Six: Bahira
Sweatslidesdownmyback as I arc my spear from left to right, forcing Haylee to retreat a few steps. She grips her sword tightly in both hands, her keen gray eyes studying me as she bounces on her toes on the soft grass of the training field. I had been surprised when she offered to meet me here, but maybe the fury that contorted my expression when I ran into her near the palace entrance had been enough for her to realize I needed to blow off some steam.
What I really need is to wrap my hands around my brother’s neck.
Haylee lunges forward, the tip of her blade aiming towards my middle before I block it. “Stop holding back.”
Her chest heaves, the sunlight shining over her dark blonde hair, the strands braided into a coronet around her head. “Not all of us want to spar to the point of maiming, Bahira.”
I slice an upward motion, metal hitting metal when she lifts her sword to block. A frown tugs on her lips when she’s forced to retreat as I come at her again. And again. My anger feeds my movements, making our surroundings disappear until I’m no longer on the training grounds but somewhere new altogether. I’m no longer fighting Haylee but a faceless entity in the form of everything that threatens to unravel me. Wood and metal bite into my palms, the reverberation of each of Haylee’s countermoves traveling down my arms and settling between my shoulder blades. Yes,this. The physical pain of a well-fought match. In sparring, there is nothing left up to hypotheticals. Nothing left to the hypotheses of experiments that have yet to yield meaningful results. There is only steel and flesh and will.
I spin my spear and lunge towards her, a growl vibrating deep in my throat.
“Gods above!” she shouts, dodging to the left as she rolls onto the ground, landing on her knees. I’m already there, the tip of my spear beneath her chin, the sun highlighting me from behind. “I surrender.” Her sword falls to the grass, and her hands lift in front of her. “Don’t kill me, please.”
I snort, lowering my spear as I suck in a deep breath and reach a hand down to help her up. “I wouldn’t kill you without a reason,” I tease, pulling her up and then bending over to pick up her sword. It’s the same weapon all the guards of our kingdom have, a beautifully crafted silver blade set into a black hilt with a sun and moon carved into the front.
“You had a murderous look in your eyes. One I’ve only ever seen you give to Gosston or, occasionally, Daje,” she says, grabbing the sword. “Speaking of which—”
“No,” I interrupt, twirling my spear until the tip is pointed down and stabbing it into the ground. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
