Chapter 5
Lucien
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“We should be out therelooking for them.” Pacing the confines of the room, the walls seem to get closer with each pass.
“Where would we even look?” Atlas reclines on the bed, gazing up at the ceiling and tossing a small knife in the air. Each time he catches it, he allows it to get closer to his body before snatching it from the air, playing with fire like hewantsto miss.
“Anywhere, everywhere,” I growl, growing increasingly pissed off at his indifference. “You said she was worse off than I was when you dragged us through that ring.” I have to stop to swallow, forcing myself to voice the nightmare playing on repeat in my head. “What if she’s still unconscious? And someone found her.”
He doesn’t bother looking in my direction, but he does hesitate before his next throw. “So you want to go knocking on every door in Faerie? Demand to search houses in case one of them is holding her captive in their basement?” He flicks that damned blade again, effectively scoffing at the idea. “Good luck with that.”
“How the hell can you not care?” I finally snap, storming across the room and snatching the knife on its descent before he can.
The blade digs into my palm, but I welcome the pain. Of everything that’s screaming in agony right now, this small knick is the least of my concerns. It gives me something to focus on, a problem that actually has a solution, yet the only one that I don’t care about.
Atlas sits up, swinging his legs over the side and resting his arms over his knees casually. “After all of this time, you honestly don’t believe I care about them just as much as you do? That I’m not freaking out too?” He looks me dead in the eye, pinning me with barely veiled fury that I recognize all too well. His eyes might as well be dark green mirrors reflecting my own turmoil. “What happened in that room, Lucien?”
The blood drains from my face, replaying all of it over. The pain, I can deal with; the feeling of the blade twisting in my shoulder, driving through my stomach when Victor snapped. The screams though...the screams, playing on repeat since I woke up.
A part of me wishes that Atlas didn’t come, that he’d left me for this cursed land to devour. At least while blacked out I had peace, a sweet reprieve. The silence in that room nearly broke me, but the screams will be the thing to drive me to insanity.
My voice sounds raw even to my ears. “Maddox was his brother.”
Atlas’ eyes widen and the hostility in them ebbs. “No, you were his brother, blood or not.”
The words just feel so false, so meaningless. I can still picture his face, cold and lifeless. “He was right. His death was as good as my fault.”
Atlas rises to his feet, prying his knife free of my grip and it’s only then that I realize how tightly I was clenching it. “No, it was my father’s and we all know it. Neither of our hands are clean; we can’t shoulder other people’s sins too.”
My stomach churns, causing the wound on my stomach to send a sharp stab of pain through my gut. It’s cauterized, from the ring, supposedly, but far from healed. I earned every one of the strikes and then some, but I have a feeling even death wouldn’t wash away my guilt, balance my cosmic scales.
And now, because of Cambria, I don’t even get death as something to look forward to. Life is only bearable because we know it will end sooner rather than later, forcing us to put one foot in front of another before we’re out of time. The promise of rest, no matter how much we have to suffer before earning it.
“How bad was she?” My voice is hardly more than a whisper. He said she was in a worse state than me, but that’s it. But the way she screamed...
Atlas says nothing, his jaw tightly clenched as his eyes flick away from me.
“Atlas.”
He rakes a hand through his hair, walking away from me to sink into a chair by the table. “I’m surprised she was still breathing, okay? Can we just leave it at that?”
My eyes close as my stomach plummets and I fight the urge to vomit again. But despite Achlys sending fae to stock the house with food, I can’t bring myself to touch any of it. How can I just sit around, eating and lounging while the rest of my family is enduring gods only know what? So my stomach remains empty; a blessing right about now.
“We should check in with Achlys, see if she’s made a decision yet.” I sit across from Atlas, who’s now taken to carving into the table top to keep his hands busy and thoughts distracted.
“Rushing a queen never ends well, no matter who you are. But I wouldn’t hold my breath, Luce. She didn’t send her forces to rescue Cambria when she actually knew where she was. We don’t even have a direction for her this time. The light and shadow court, the wasteland... You heard what she said; a small blip of land on the massive world of Faerie, no different than a continent on Earth. She’s not going to just scatter her forces when she’s scared of the changelings showing up at her door.”
Resting my elbows on the table, I cradle my head in my hands. “Like finding two yellow needles in a haystack the size of Europe.”
Atlas gouges the wood, chipping away at the solid surface. “Give the two of them more credit. Cambria isn’t going down without a fight.”
