“I cannot be responsible for everything that she decides to do,” I spat back. “I can do my best to guide her, control her when she gets out of hand, but I can’t take the blame when she decides to do something this radical!”
You fail to understand the kind of sway you have over her. These sick ideas that originate in her head don’t just pop up without being coerced, and she wouldn’t have done this if you hadn’t forced her hand.
“Of course you’re going to take Ava’s side.” I hugged my arms around myself and turned my back to him. “After all, she’s your favorite, right?”
Oh, fuck you, Charlie. Oberi’s livid voice rang out louder than I’d ever heard it before. I think you fail to see the obvious, for I am certainly being punished for my heart going one way instead of another. Because for the love of the gods and all that is holy, when our bond was broken, I remained tied to you.
Oberi gave a wail. And now my Ava is gone. Taken away from me, never again to be reunited with my beloved. She cannot hear me, she cannot feel my presence. I have become nothing to her, and the part of her within our soul is lost. I cannot take any of Ava’s soul forms— the unicorn, the phoenix, the narwhal, they are all gone to me now. I am bonded to you only, to the pieces of you that live inside of me, and the pieces of her are gone. Who am I now, except a being cleaved in two?
“We could’ve prevented this,” I argued. Goddammit, I was crying again. The tears just wouldn’t stop.
We could’ve, but you did not desire to. You didn’t take the prophecy seriously. None of us did. So now, we must deal with its outcome.
I didn’t bother giving him a response. Either because I was weeping so hard or because I was just so upset with him, I couldn’t tell.
Hours passed. I sat on my bed, and Oberi laid on the other side of the room ignoring me. We sat there in silence, ignoring each other’s presence while we waited for Ava to return from wherever she was.
As the time passed, my mind wandered. Whatever my friends said about Ava taking responsibility, I still felt like this was all my fault. I’d driven Ava to want to end the world, and I was the one who’d broken our bond. I was a fool to think that I could end suffering, because now I was the one suffering, and worse yet, so was she… suffering beyond explanation.
I supposed I would just have to be the villain forever, because that's what I'd become. And if there wasn’t any way to mend this, then I guessed I’d just die, because everything else felt just as pointless.
Even so, I kept telling myself that this situation wasn’t hopeless. I knew I could get Ava back, and there were no limits on what I’d do to prove to her that I’d made a mistake and I needed to make it up to her. No matter what my grandfather had said, I’d find a way to restore our bond eventually, and repair our magical connection. Then, she’d forgive me, and we could move on. I knew we could work through this. Nothing had kept us apart before, so why would this?
I’d do anything to get her back. Anything.
The door to my room opened. I immediately stood, bracing myself. “Who’s there?”
There was an infinite pause that dragged out the endlessness of time and space. Oberi held a breath, and I realized then who exactly had entered… my wife.
Something inside of me fractured and tore once again, cutting my heart to shreds. I’d never had to ask if Ava was around before. I felt her presence through the bond, and always knew where she was because of her connection to me. If she was far away, or close… I automatically knew. I didn’t have to place her in my world like I did other people, because she always was.
Ava had become one of those outliers for me. A person in my world that I couldn’t place.
A longing piece of me withered up and died inside. It was like losing myself all over again. I knew the bond was broken, and I felt the empty pit inside of me where that bond once connected us. But it was one thing to know it and another entirely to experience it like this. The emptiness was all-encompassing, to the point where I wasn’t even sure Ava was here at all, and I’d only imagined she’d entered the room. She might as well be a figment of my imagination, because none of this felt real. How could Ava and I exist without one another? It seemed to defy all laws of nature.
Again, I was reminded that I was the one who did this to us.
I fell on my knees before her, crawling and begging. “Ava, please,” I pleaded. “I’m so sorry. I never should’ve done this. If I could take it all back, I would. You were right. I never should’ve locked you up, never broken?—”
I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence, because she whacked me hard in the chest with something that crumpled on impact and made a crinkling noise. I caught whatever she was holding, and found that it was a stack of papers.
“What… what’s this?” I asked breathlessly, catching the papers and holding them in my hands.
Ava’s response was distant. Her following words disintegrated everything that was still hanging on inside my chest, imploding any future we may still have.
“Divorce papers,” she snarled. “Sign them.”
Chapter Two
AVA-MARIE
I wished, with everything that I still desperately managed to hold on to, that I could gain some semblance of silence. Of quiet. Of peace.
No. Never. All that was within was inconceivably, unavoidably loud.
The voices. The voices were screaming at me, echoing with harbored rage. I could hardly think straight. I wasn’t able to see what was in front of me or decipher words that didn’t come from them. They thrummed on and on, crying out in despair, in suffering, driving me mad.
Charlie was so stunned he couldn’t speak, clutching the divorce papers to his chest with a stricken, stupid look on his face.
