The air stirs. It tugs at the tips of my hair as, slowly, the East Wind turns to face me. “Excuse me?”
There is a fire in me. I see it now: spark to coal to licking flame. “You heard m-me.”
“No, I don’t think I did—”
“You are obsessed with revenge!” I scream, and by the Mother, does it feel good to rid my body of this poison, this festering resentment. “You will go to any l-l-lengths to get it—and then what? Have you asked yourself what will come after, wh-when the council is dead and you are free to return h-home? Have you considered the damage you will have wrought in your quest for vengeance? What of the lives y-you have destroyed, the families you have broken, the dreams you have ruined?”
My breaths come short. My skin, singed by the fury eating at my veins, feels feverish to the touch. Rage? No. That is too simple anemotion. “Have you asked yourself that?” I press. “Have you asked yourself at wh-what cost your revenge will come? You think things will change for y-you, Eurus, but the truth is, even if you kill the council and return home, you will still be the s-s-same person. You will continue to hold on to mistrust and judgment. You will live out your eternal life m-miserable and alone because you cannot find it in y-your heart to forgive yourself for what occurred.”
“Forgivemyself?” It emerges too quiet. A low, chilling hiss.
“Yes.” I cannot—will not—waver. “Whatever torture you endured when you were younger… it’s not y-your fault. Your father’s abuse is not your fault. The council turning a blind eye—”
“You know nothing of my situation!” he roars, wings snapping open. A brute wind rocks the room. Books are flung from their shelves, and chairs topple onto their sides.
The door to my bedroom lies open, offering sanctuary. Although some small part of me longs to quail, retreat, hide, I do not. Eurus needs to hear this. He needs to know what I have only recently discovered for myself—that change is not dependent on external forces. It comes from within.
“Think of wh-what this is doing to you,” I murmur. “Winning won’t heal you. It won’t change the injustices that have been d-done—”
“As if you have the right to speak of things like change.”
A blink, and he is before me, looming, enormous, all-powerful. My back hits the wall. I’ve nowhere else to go.
“Before I took you away, you were a lowly apprentice, treated no better than vermin,” he murmurs, head dipping low. “Two hands to stir brews, two legs to run errands. That’s all you were to your old employer: disposable.”
I flinch, a hand lifted to ward off the blow. It’s not true. Her ladyship needs me. I have been diligent all these years. One day, she will see me as I am. She will understand what I have sacrificed.
But the East Wind goes on, each snarling insult cutting into me. “You allow that witch to abuse you mercilessly, yet daily you crawled toher, begging for whatever scraps she tossed your way. Did you expect her toloveyou?”
“I-I…” My airway cinches shut.Disposable.“I-I-I—”
“Have you no pride, bird?” He shakes his head pityingly. “Have you no self-respect?”
His derision carves deep, through skin and muscle, down to where my heart’s rhythm flags. I feel old in this moment. Old and fatigued. For what I have fought is a long, arduous battle, and I now stand on the killing fields, bleeding out, alone.
“M-maybe I have l-l-lacked self-respect in the past,” I whisper, each word a distinct ache, “but I gain more and m-m-more each day. And I n-n-never pretended to be st-st-strong. I’m mortal. We are m-messy and naive and f-f-foolish. We l-live and d-die, create and d-destroy.”
My voice fades. I might stop there. I might leave my thought unfinished. I might hand to him victory in silence. Might… but won’t.
“At least at the end of the d-d-day,” I go on, face lifted toward his hood, “I can s-say that I’m t-t-trying. I’m able to s-s-see those bright places in the dark. I still search for them. I always w-w-will.” Tears—they wend down my cheeks, drip from my chin. I let them come. It is a relief to oust the pain and know that I have not allowed suffering to harden me. “That you p-pity me matters n-n-not. Because I pityyou, Eurus. I pity y-y-your callous nature, your single ambition to end the ones who have h-h-hurt you. But m-most of all, I pity y-your heart, for it is empty, and selfish, and cold. And it is the only company y-y-you will keep in your long, lonely life.”
With those parting words, I brush past him, shutting the bedroom door soundly at my back.
Flinging myself onto the bed, I release a soul-wrenching sob, an outpouring of shame and fury-stricken grief. Eurus is right and he is wrong. I have distanced myself from Lady Clarisse, yet a part of me still craves her approval. I fear Eurus sees what I have spent the better part of my life trying to bury. That I am weak and unwanted. That I am asuseless as her ladyship so gleefully claims. No matter my efforts, I will never be enough.
Later, my limbs strewn across the mattress like a collection of limp cuttings, my every emotion wrung dry, the soft creak of hinges reaches me. I tense, for the East Wind’s tread is as familiar as it is unwelcome.
“Bird.”
“Go away,” I whisper brokenly.
His footsteps cease. Still, I sense his presence. “There are things I wish to say to you.”
“I don’t w-w-want to talk to y-you, or look at y-you, or be anywhere n-n-near y-you,” I cry hoarsely. “So please, for once, w-will you do as I ask and let m-me be?”
Shoving my face deeper into the pillow, I purge this heat and bitterness, the weight encasing my heart and lungs, until my sobs disintegrate into pitiful mewls of pain. Clutching at the blankets with clawed fingers, I wish for healing, I wish for peace.
Predictably, the East Wind does not depart at my request. He nears, for the brine feathering his skin is so much more potent now. “I will go,” he says, and this might be the first that I have heard sadness bleeding through his tone. “But before I do, I want to apologize.”
