And then, when the magic of my own ritual surges, I’m not thinking at all.
CHAPTER 48
BLAISE
It only takes me two nights of sleeping in caves during the daylight hours to reach Othian from Ermengarde. I find my body is swift and graceful, bounding with renewed energy that propels my legs as long as I stop to hunt game every few hours.
Othian has changed in the months I’ve been away, though I’m not sure why I was expecting anything else. In a city of humans constantly striving to keep pace with immortals, pivoting their ideals and fashions and beliefs based on the whims of the fae nobility, change is inevitable.
Many of the humans who walk the streets of Othian have bandages over their ears. It’s not uncommon to behold, because many elect to have their ears surgically carved into points like the fae, but the more closely I look, the more I see scars on rounded ears.
Evidence of the humans having had the procedures reversed, probably in an attempt to mimic their new princess.
I see Ellie everywhere.
I see her in the way no one wears crystal or jewels anymore, but earrings and baubles made of glass. I see her in their glass slippers that clink against the pavement, in the stained windows that decorate the faces of storefronts.
It’s night in Othian, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing as well as I might during the day.
It doesn’t stop me from missing the day.
I remember now how I used to sleep through most of it, how I spent all hours of the night getting into trouble around town, drowning the past in the attention of boys, sneaking up to the windows of noblemen and women in the hopes I might catch the glimpse of a child and see my smile reflected in their face.
I wish I had spent more time awake during the day when I had the chance. My skin is cold, and it misses the sun’s comforting rays.
I keep my hood drawn as I glide through town.
I am a wanted criminal after all.
But then I reach the corner I’ve been dreading since the moment I left Mystral, and I find my feet halting in place.
If Nox were here, his hands would find mine, and even though in my daydreams the shadows of his hood are cast over his face, I can see his blue eyes fixated on me like I’m the only thing worth looking at.
There was a time that daydreams like this would have made my heart skip a beat, and perhaps tomorrow it will, but tonight it hurts.
It hurts sometimes, to love and to be loved in return.
It feels a bit like being stabbed in the heart with the gentlest of knives.
“We don’t have to do this, you know,” he would say if he were here, brushing his thumb over the back of my mind.
“I thought I told you not to try and talk me out of it,” I imagine telling him.
“I’m not,” he says. “If this is what you want, I’ll be by your side for every moment of it.”
Tears sting at my eyes. There are plenty of things that are different about this new body of mine, but it can still cry.
It’s not the type of thing I would have expected to be grateful for, but it is.
“This is what I want,” I say, and in my mind, Nox squeezes my hand and pulls me around the corner.
The manor is in disarray.
Ivy snakes up the brown brick, and though I used to find it lovely and whimsical, now it’s overcome the gutters and blocked the windows. Sludge stains sections of the walls toward the ground, and my heart gives a violent lurch to find my father’s prized home so unkept.
I reach the door, and if Nox were here, he’d take one last look at me, a question in his glowing eyes.
I close my own, squeezing back the tears, trying my best to swallow the dread, the anxious energy that’s welled up inside me during my journey, but it won’t be forced down, it won’t be tucked away.
I suppose this is the type of thing I’ll have to go through with regardless of how ill it makes me.
The latch doesn’t fight me, which I assume means it’s broken and there’s no money left to repair it.
The door creaks open, and I step into the foyer.
There used to be a portrait of my father and mother to the right, above a fine cedar table.
It appears both have been sold.
There’s a line of weathered wallpaper on the wall where my father used to look down upon me with a smile.
The snarl that escapes my lips echoes through the empty space.
When I was human, I might have assumed the manor was empty, abandoned.
But I am not human, and I can sense her heart pounding.
I follow the panicked trail through the empty halls, the servantless corridors, and up the stairs.
