Cassiel pressed a fist over his heart. “Does that feeling ever go away?”
“I am the wrong person to ask.”
His madness may be gone now, but he still grieved. Perhaps he always would.
“I think I will carry the weight of my guilt with me everywhere,” Cassiel said, his voice breaking. “That death was mine. I should have died that day, not him. I don’t think I can forgive myself.” The page crinkled in his fist. “What am I to do with that? Where do we put our regrets? They are not small enough to fit on this paper.”
A burning rushed up the back of Zev’s eyes. “We don’t put them anywhere,” he said as the embers faded into the clouds. “We carry them with us until we are ready to let them go. There will be days you will doubt you can do it. The journey is exhausting. You will pretend to be all right while the rest of the world moves on and leaves you behind to sit in the hole you fell in. But I climbed out of it, and I believe you will, too.”
Cassiel pressed a shaking fist to his chest. “It’s agony to remember.”
It certainly was.
Twilight arrived with the breeze, casting soft ripples across the pond. The last of the sun’s gleam turned the surface gold. It reminded Zev of the many times he used to camp at Lake Nayim with his father. And those wonderful memories hurt as much as the bad ones.
“I’m scarred, Zev. I don’t mean the mark on my back. I mean those other scars you can’t see but feel them there inside. That day cut out parts of me, and other parts I cut out myself. Those holes run sodeep there’s no ridding myself of them. I wish I could take it back. I would give anything to go back to who we were, to the morning before I ruined everything.”
It was difficult to hear that from Cassiel. Zev recognized that familiar pain, because it had plagued him for so long, too.
The day he lost his father was the day he lost himself.
Zev traced the scars on his arms, left by his own grief. “We can look at scars as evidence of our pain, or we can look at them and see healing. I think we all wish to go back and change the past at some point. But there is no going back, and the fear of moving forward will plant you in the ground.” A gentle breeze passed over them, and he breathed in the scent of spring that always came after a harsh winter. From the bushes came a white butterfly. It briefly landed on Cassiel’s finger, then flew away into the open sky. “Perhaps the most difficult thing about saying goodbye is having to say it every day. Because it means that life is fleeting, and our time in the world is short. To honor them, we can’t hide from life. Eventually you must live it.”
Cassiel shut his tired eyes and simply breathed. Sadness hovered over him like a storm, but Zev hoped he understood they would part one day.
When Cassiel looked at him again, his gray eyes looked lighter. “I’m sorry I left.”
There was a time Zev wouldn’t have been able to hear that, but he wasn’t angry anymore.
“We all do things we regret, Cassiel. Sometimes it’s done out of fear or ignorance. Sometimes out of anger and resentment. We can’t take those things back, but we can learn from them.” Zev leaned forward on his folded knees as he took in the knolls of Sellav. “So don’t hurt her anymore, not even with lies. Because those wounds hurt the most.”
Cassiel looked back at the estate where the other half of him waited. And Zev could see no matter how much it pained him, he wouldn’t let himself stay stuck anymore.
Zev was ready for that, too.
So he decided to let go of his fear of the Other and to forgive himself for the past. It would take time to heal. But they would walk through the journey of living with scars together.
Taking a breath, Cassiel lifted his page in his palm. Small petals of Seraph fire unfurled in the center. Zev added his page on top and theywatched them blacken and burn away. The embers left behind were carried by the next breeze, rising into the sky like wishes in the clouds.
“If I made you feel as though our friendship didn’t hold any value,” Cassiel murmured. “I want you to know it means a lot to me, and so do you.”
Grinning, Zev laid his head on Cassiel’s shoulder. “I know. I’ve always sensed you were secretly in love with me.”
Cassiel groaned and shoved him off. “I take it back.”
“No, I consider that a confession. Don’t worry though. I won’t tell Dyna.”
“Oh, sod off!”
He laughed, then they said no more. Nothing else needed to be said. Being here was enough. Because when grief had broken Zev, all he had wanted was for someone to sit with him. To understand his pain and tell him it wouldn’t hurt this much forever.
What better place to be than with his brother?
CHAPTER 96
Cassiel
Cassiel studied his reflection in the mirror, and the velvet patterns of his new black coat. He stretched out his right wing, still feeling the phantom sensation of where the left one used to be. Like a missing limb. Two months had passed in Sellav, yet he still felt off balance. But Cassiel was at peace with that, because the alternative was so much worse.
