I swallowed hard and looked away. His words inspiring both rage and fear, but also shame. Overwhelmingly, I was ashamed of what had just happened. Not because I took the pleasure from him that I’d desired in the moment, absolutely not. Regret over something that comes as naturally as sexuality was pointless. I could be disappointed in myself for succumbing, yes, but my shame lay in another direction.
I looked out the window at the bland city passing me by. He was partially right, a part of me did want him. Cyrus was beautiful and powerful—who wouldn’t desire someone like that?
But I knew what he was—malicious, diabolic, nefarious, so many words, and I still couldn’t find one to encompass the vile underbelly Cyrus hid behind a veneer of charm. The same man who—I drew in a shaky breath as I thought of what he’d forced me to watch today. What he had done, condemning an innocent to a hard, brutal death—and sending another to a brothel against her will. At that rotten, pitiable heart of his, he was a true monster.
I held myself shakily together until we finally arrived back at the palace. I had to stay three steps behind Cyrus as normal, when all I wanted to do was run as fast as I could away from him. When we reached his rooms, I escaped into mine as fast as I could.
I collapsed against my bed, grabbing my pillow and muffling my sobs into it. I’d let rage guide me for so long. Didn’t let myself get close to people so I couldn’t be hurt later. It was all for nothing. I felttoo much.
The rigid ice I’d built around my heart cracked in an explosive rupture, sending shards of it spiraling out to cleave and slice into me. Care and desperation sunk into me. I worried desperately about Emmie. About Priscilla. About Eris, even, no matter how prickly she was.
Cyrus’s actions today showed me that I was playing a game I had no chance of winning, not as things stood now. I was too inexperienced, too naïve, and had none of the resources that Cyrus had at his disposal. I worried for all of those I came to care about, as the reality of what my plans meant for them if I was discovered hit home.
Tavarius was a sweet man, and his death cut through me like a sharpened blade. He had deserved a better life, one where he could live long, free, and happily. Instead, he had died brutally. And the man responsible? I’d just let him touch me, and I felt the need to bathe and scrub my skin raw to wash his vileness away.
I couldn’t comprehend his actions. What he’d done was so horrendous, I had never imagined a person could be capable of such evil. My soul felt battered and bruised from witnessing it—like an innocent layer I hadn’t realized was there had been severed from my soul against my will.
I thought that I couldn’t let myself care about others, but I did anyway—those around me had snuck into the cracks in my armor and settled there. It was dangerous, it could get me killed, but I didn’t know how to turn it off. I thought that Soren proved that I couldn’t love. He loved me, but I wasn’t able to return his feelings.
Maybe that just meant I wasn’t in love with Soren, not that I couldn’t love at all.
Old Gods, love felt like much too dangerous an emotion.
My emotions ran rampant, a tempestuous tumult within me. My moods tended towards extremes from time to time, but they now plummeted me down farther than ever before into a blackhole of depression. I felt…lost. Lost and unsure, my anger so far out my grasp, the only thing I could find now was desolation.
I fell intoa fitful sleep, my emotions pinging all over the place as I tried to sort out what had happened today in my mind. As I flew up among the stars, Luna greeted me, her shining scales glowing as she danced around me. I skimmed my fingers down her scales before she flew back to her spot. My brows creased as I looked over at her. She normally spent more time with me, and right now—I needed her calming presence more than I could express.
Tingles broke out over my skin, and the feeling of another presence impressed itself upon me. I turned, facing the dark expanse of night.
I gasped as I sensed the darkness reaching for me. I lifted my now glowing fingers, ignoring their iridescence, and tried to grasp the incorporeal. I could tell we were so close, mere inches between us as fingers of darkness became clear when my own hand neared them. My skin lit up the space before me and separated the regular darkness of night from this strange dark presence.
A bright wave of emotions filled me, coming from an external source. It’s desperation to reach me, sadness, an undercurrent of love, promise and devotion. I could even feel the inexplicable desire to makemefeel better. The ethereal darkness somehow knew the despondency I had fallen into after the harrowing events I’d witnessed.
We could not get any closer to each other, the barrier between us was still firmly intact, making me want to cry with frustration—but I had cried until I had no more tears left to shed before I even fell asleep. I yearned for the darkness to wrap me up andtake away all of my pain—to make everything that had happened since I came to Dusk nothing more than a terrible dream.
The dark hand banged on the barrier, and the reverberation of it spread out in ripples across the star flecked sky. We both paused, watching for a moment as the barrier shook. Another bang and then—
A loud, shrill noise broke through the peaceful dark, causing me to gasp as the intrusion tore me from my dream in an instant. I groggily looked around, upset that I had been awoken right when progress was being made—that I had been taken away from the darkness offering me solace I could never find in my waking life. I threw my blanket off, rolled out of bed—and came to a dead stop.
The hawk I’d seen flying around before was standing on my balcony, where I hadn’t bothered to shut the doors, allowing the calm winds to snake through and kiss my skin with a light, cool breeze. The hawk was standing right at the entrance to my room, staring directly at me with an uncanny level of intention.
It cocked its head, trilling slightly in what I could only interpret as a question—making me wonder if I was losing my mind. I didn’t understand what made me so certain, but I couldn’t shake the surety that the hawk was trying to communicate with me.
When I didn’t answer immediately, the hawk began walking slowly into my room, as if it didn’t want to spookme. I shook my head as if it would shake away the surreal image in front of me and replace it with the reality that I was alone, but the hawk was still there. It stopped when it was right in front of me and bopped its head into my hand. I blinked slowly, and brought my hand up, petting the hawk cautiously.
It trilled sadly, looking at me like it knew the emotions that whirled through me until I was left numb from the onslaught—a shell of myself all that was left in their wake.
“I’ll be okay, I think.” I told the hawk with a tremulous smile, my voice soft and weary, like all life had been leached from me.
The hawk made a soft noise, and I wondered at what insanity had led to me confessing everything to a hawk of all things, but I told it of all the events that occurred yesterday, and how my plans for freedom felt hopeless when up against such vile and ruthless Fae.
Tears rained down my cheeks, causing the hawk to burrow into me.
“Thank you, hawk. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m very grateful.” I laughed wetly as I pet its head.
It made a soft noise in response, but the sound of a door opening and people murmuring made the hawk pull away and stand up, fully alert. It looked back at me once more, trilling at me, before it flew off. Its abrupt departure left me to wonder if I had still been dreaming during that encounter, and only now was I actually waking up.
A soft knock was all that announced Priscilla before she opened my door and walked into the room, coming to a standstill when she saw me on the ground leaning against my bed, disheveled, and with the residue of tear tracks down my cheeks. She immediately knelt down next to me, taking me into her arms as she softly petted my hair back.
