Everything was black and charred.
The clinic was no more than ash. The taste of smoke lingered in the air, like it had been permanently seared into the atmosphere.
Everything was gone.
The fire had spread quickly. The flames had roared from the main room, rising fast toward the bedrooms upstairs where patients and aides slept. Privya had roused everyone and seen to it that each person in her care made it safely outside.
Then she’d gone back in.
Nina and Corin had begged her not to, but Privya had darted into the flame-ridden building. She’d emerged moments later with an armful of notebooks—two decades’ worth of research. She’d barely passed the stack of papers into Corin’s arms before hurrying back inside. This time, she returned with a basketful of elixirs. Corin had tried to block her from going in again,physically barricading the door. But Privya was determined to save her life’s work.
Corin and Nina waited, huddled together. Corin had said a prayer for the first time in fifteen years. The clinic kept burning and burning, the smoke covering the sky, the wood crumbling away.
Privya never emerged.
Finally, Nina went in after her, ducking low to avoid the acrid smoke. She carried Privya’s limp body outside, and Corin tried to resuscitate her.
Tried, but did not succeed.
The fire eventually burned itself out, starved for fuel after devouring every crevice of the clinic. Their pain, however, lingered on. Countless voices cried into the night, grieving for the woman who had given them a new life.
That sorrow did not fade as they said a prayer to bless Privya’s soul. Nor when they laid her in a hand-dug grave at the edge of the forest. Nor when they left to find shelter.
Elyse knelt at that grave. Her stomach was twisted with the chaos of too many emotions. Sadness, anger, horror. She wrapped her arms around her middle, holding herself tight, as if she could smother the pain. The greatest emotion of all, though, was the one that had a sob tearing from her throat. It was guilt—guilt for the agony she had brought upon her friends. For she knew without a doubt who had done this, and why.
Killian knew, too. He stood behind Elyse, his hand on her shoulder, tears on his cheeks. His pain was double-edged. He grieved for himself and the loss of a loving friend, but he alsogrieved for Elyse. He knew the weight of her guilt as it crushed her down into the soot-covered ground.
It was difficult to comfort someone when your own heart was breaking, a lesson Killian was already familiar with. But he would try.
Behind them, Nina and Corin held one another. The confidence Privya had given them had been torn away, a new trauma now piled onto their battered hearts. This time, though, they had each other. This time it would be okay. That’s what they told themselves.
Elyse was not ready when she rose from that grave. She might have waited one hundred years, and she still would not have been ready. But goodbyes were not patient, nor merciful. So,l when her anguish turned to a dull throbbing in her core, she pulled her friends close and left the clinic—left Privya—for the last time.
31
Elyse
Elyse sat in the study, a book propped open on the table before her. The grand room was silent save for the soft flick of a page turning every few moments. Manny and Sera sat across from her, hunched in their oversized chairs. The two of them looked so small, like the stack of books surrounding them would swallow them whole at any moment. Dark circles lined both of their eyes, their lips drooping in matching frowns. Elyse wondered if she looked as awful as them—or worse.
Killian came bursting through the doors of the study. His eyes were also encircled with a purple hue, but he smiled—or tried to. “We’re researching outside today,” Killian announced as he strode for the table. “The rain cooled everything off, and it’s a beautiful day.”
Elyse stifled the groan rising in her throat. She didn’t want to be researching at all, let alone be forced to move to a differentlocation. Yesterday, her anger and pain had fueled her, a sense of vengeance lighting her brain, consuming her with the need to find something that would destroy Lazarus. Now, she was tired. A numbness had encapsulated her. It weighed her down, and she had to physically fight to stay upright, to keep from trudging to her bedroom and slamming the door on everyone.
But Killian was only trying to help, and she knew that. He stared at her, his golden eyes studying her, conveying that his demand didn’thaveto be a demand. That if she said the word, they would stay inside. Or abandon their research altogether.
“If it’s unbearable, we can come back inside,” she relented as she scooped three books into her arms.
Manny and Sera said nothing; they would do whatever Elyse and Killian needed, no questions asked. They gathered their own materials, and the foursome headed downstairs.
Killian was right; it was a stunning day, full of pale sunshine and mellow breezes. Elyse felt a tiny spark of happiness blooming through her numb state as she followed him into the garden. It diminished quickly, followed by a pang of guilt and a swirl of turmoil.
You are allowed to feel happiness, a tiny voice crooned inside her.
She shoved it away, not yet ready to face the complexity of her emotions.
No one spoke as they read, but it wasn’t the same sort of tense silence that had captivated them the day before. This was more peaceful, languid even. Somewhere in the garden, a bird chirped ceaselessly. It was the sort of the thing that would normally annoy Elyse to no end, but she let the sound settle into thebackground, like a tiny symphony made for them. Feeling less on edge, she lifted the book off the table and sank deeper into her chair.
After an hour or so, a servant with a wide-brimmed hat came bustling into the gardens.
