I think of her attending the audience when Theo is awarded his physician’s medal.
There’s a sadness to the picture, seeing her there all alone in the crowd.
A twinge of pain mingled with the joy.
But the smile that overcomes Blaise’s cheeks is worth the tears that stain them.
So when the magic of the ritual flares, and my torso no longer functions, I hardly feel the fall. Hardly feel it when my skull slams against the marble floor.
I cling to that memory that is not a memory at all, but a hope. To Blaise smiling. To the love of my life moving on.
As the spell heightens, darkness begins to eat at the edges of the image, like fire consuming the edges of a portrait. And where the shadows eat away at Blaise’s happiness, the image is replaced, and Blaise is weeping and heartbroken and distraught.
When the happiness and joy are swept away and only the aching is left, I cling to that version of her too.
CHAPTER 50
BLAISE
“Blaise…”
“Fates above, she’s killed someone.”
“We don’t know it was her—Fates, that’s Clarissa. Oh, Blaise…”
“Who’s Clarissa?”
“Blaise’s stepmother. That’s Blaise’s stepmother.”
“Still think she didn’t kill her?”
“Kiran”—another voice, one I don’t recognize—“why don’t you have a look around and make sure no one else in the house is hurt?”
A shuffling of feet, and it’s as if all the warmth flees the room behind whoever left.
I’m staring at a knot in the wood. Its swivels and swirls haven’t changed with time, but every time I blink, a different picture appears.
A puppy with its tongue lolling.
A dragon breathing fire.
A new picture joins the rotation too: the profile of a face, mouth dripping with blood.
A warm hand ruffles my robes on my shoulder, and at first I think it’s Nox, because he’s been holding me all night, but then I remember that it can’t be him, because I left him behind.
“Blaise? Blaise, it’s Ev—it’s Andy. Can you look at me?”
His voice is soothing, kind. There was a time when it would have melted me.
I’m too cold to be melted by something as inconsequential as a voice now. Andy doesn’t know that it’s useless to try, so he keeps on. “We’re going to get you out of here, okay? You’re safe now.”
The laugh I let out is hysterical, harsh, so much so that Andy flinches.
He steels himself, but not quickly enough.
“Blaise.”
“I used to stare at this wall, you know. Well, I guess you don’t know.” I hiccup, and it almost makes me giggle, because I sound as though I’m drunk. I suppose I am drunk, just on my dead stepmother’s blood. “She kept me up here all that time. Thought if she hid me away, no one would know about the baby. No one would guess that Clarissa’s stepdaughter had whored herself and ruined her family name. I didn’t have much to entertain me, so I’d sit and stare and pretend the wood was magic and that you were sending me secret messages. A cloud meant you were coming through the roof to save me. A mouse meant you would burst through the walls. Turns out nothing meant anything. It was all in my head.” I swivel my neck to the side. “It was always in my head, wasn’t it?”
Fates, he’s as gorgeous as he’s ever been, his sea-green eyes vibrant with concern, his tanned skin drained of color—or perhaps it’s just the cool lantern light.
Evander swallows, his eyes alight with dread as he takes me in. I realize then that even Andy is afraid of me. Even Andy.
He must see in my eyes that I’m a murderer.
He was ready to defend me before, but his eyes drop to my mouth. There was a time I would have interpreted his expression as a longing to kiss me, but I know better now.
There must be blood staining my lips.
“Get Kiran,” is all Evander says, though he doesn’t turn to his companions to say it. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. “You’re safe now,” he says. “We’re going to get you help.”
A pair of feet shuffle away, but Evander and the other presence in the room remain.
“Sometimes I’d pretend it was you,” I whisper, and I don’t know why I’m saying these things. Maybe it’s the blood still swirling through my mind, my hunger satiated but my consciousnesses drowned. It’s like I’ve had my head dunked under water, and the only way to come up for air, the only way to connect me back to the human girl I used to be, is for the truth to spill out. “I don’t know what I would have done without your letters,” I say, and before Evander can remind me how he feels for me, like a sister and nothing more, I ramble on. “I wasn’t going to kill her, even after I knew she let my baby die and lied to me. All those years—all the money I sent, so one day she’d tell me where she sent my baby, where Rose or Theo was growing up—and the whole time my baby was dead.” Evander’s sea-green eyes try to blink back tears, but they fail, and several skitter down his tan cheeks.
“I wasn’t even going to kill her for that,” I say, and now I’ve grabbed Evander’s hand, and I’m squeezing it like somehow that will force him to understand. Surprise washes over his face, and I suppose it’s because of my strength, the type of strength a human shouldn’t possess. “But Andy, she…she…” I’m choking. I’m choking on Clarissa’s blood. Somehow it still fills my mouth, my throat, and I can’t breathe, nor can I swallow.
I can only drown.
Another hand touches my back. Gentle fingers wrap my tangled matted hair into a braid. As soon as they do, a weight is lifted off the back of my neck, and I can’t feel the blood matted within the knots of my hair.
“Evander, give us a moment,” says a voice I swore I thought I’d never hear again. Not with that timbre of gentleness, at least.
I still can’t breathe.
Andy rubs the side of his neck. The pressure of his fingers leaves little white marks on his skin. “We need to get her out of here.”
“She’s not going to move in this state,” she says, with only a hint of matter-of-factness.
Andy looks as though he might not move, but he exchanges looks with the woman behind me, and eventually swallows and nods.
He stops by the woman and whispers something I’m not meant to hear.
I do anyway, of course.
It’s that he’ll be right outside listening. That he’ll protect her at all costs.
I decide I’d rather not be that cost.
