Page 46 of Antiletum (The Nocturne #1)

Do you mind? I’m in the bath

Delaney

N othing feels real.

The simple visual of my hand in front of my face when I sink against the closed door of my room produces such a shocking sense of existential dread, bile crawls up my throat. I barely manage to swallow it down. The horror of simply being alive and knowing that I am is too much to handle.

The relatively calm shock that I experienced reading the letter informing me of the carriage robbery that ended Tabitha’s life is falling away like autumn leaves into a barren, colorless winter. Bitter with cold.

My previously hot fury directed at Val is now ice.

Immediately, I knew he was behind Tabitha’s death.

But I no longer have the energy within me to fight with Val.

To be angry. To let myself feel anything at all.

I don’t know how I can continue to smile at him in a crowd, pretending to be something we’re not.

My arm looped through his. The heat of his body caressing mine.

Reluctantly, I peel myself from the door, not knowing what to do next. A few meandering circles are trekked through my room until I sit at my vanity before I fall out on the floor. Too dizzy. Too hot and cold. Too empty and flayed.

The ornate mirror catches my eye, and I can’t help but stare into the face of the person reflected back at me, taking in the tear tracked face and wild, messy hair. Rabid. A feral woman ravaged by grief.

All because of Val.

The luxurious thread stitched into my dress laughs in my face, the beautiful image of a barn owl. A symbol I have only just begun to wear, marking me as his.

His Lady. His wife.

Frantic, I grab my skirt, tearing, trying to pull the owl away. Eviscerate anything that reminds me of him. I yank until the seams give. My breaths are labored in my effort as the jagged piece of fabric flutters to the floor, a piece of broken wing still sitting just below my hip.

The light of a gas lamp sconce catches on my ear: a soft, cheery little glimmer taunts me through my reflection—the three diamond earrings Val personally placed in my flesh.

I willingly tilted my head for him to make me bleed.

Happy for the barest, most fleeting second, dreaming of what all we might be.

Completely delusional. Just like him, but in a different way.

Because I am a stupid, stupid girl.

These earrings mean a lot to Val. The intimacy of us choosing to mark each other in this way.

A step beyond the public claiming of the garb we wear to match the other, or our vinculum bands.

The one decorating my finger that can never be removed.

An urge to try overtakes me, despite knowing the failure I would find.

Instead of the futile attempt to remove my wedding ring, I target another piece of Val decorating my body.

Impulsively, I rip a diamond out of my ear, not bothering to remove the backing first. The sting is incredibly welcome.

Physical pain briefly overrides the bruising anguish swimming around that I can’t yank out, more embedded into my soul than it is my body.

“Delaney!” I hear Val call, catching up with the situation. Scared. No— Terrified. Almost like he can sense what I’m doing in here, setting myself free in the only way I know how.

Still, I don’t fear him. I should, knowing the unprovoked violence he’s capable of. But no matter what Val does, no matter the amount of blood he sheds, I can’t seem to make myself frightened in his presence.

Not for harm he would cause my body, in any case.

His steps thunder towards my room, denying my need to run away from him this time. Denying me space and the boundary of my closed bedroom door. His desperation has reached new heights.

It’s satisfying and infuriating both, hearing him run after me. Not letting me go. The only thing in the world that matters. His love to my detriment.

It has left a hollow void in my chest, born from far more than mourning my loved ones. I want to pluck away those shards of truth that Val has forced me to see—that all the people he’s killed wouldn’t hurt for my absence the way I do theirs.

Even more than I want to free myself from the loss of the people in my life who never loved or wanted me at all, I want Val out.

I want him out of my mind and the damaged little chambers of my heart that he’s managed to crawl through with his attention, his devotion, his unfailing insistence that he cares, even if only in the deranged ways he knows how.

In my effort to need a piece of him gone from where he’s integrated himself where he doesn’t belong, I pull free a second piece of his jewelry, creating another bleeding hole to leave me empty and exposed.

“Delaney,” Val says again, swinging my door wide as I pull the third and final earring free, letting it fall on my vanity with a clatter. He’s out of breath, like he just ran the length of The Citadel and not the short distance between the foyer and my room.

Manic.

He faces my back. I can see him clearly in my vanity mirror.

His eyes shift to the discarded scrap of dress abandoned on my floor, silver feather threads mocking us both.

He visibly swallows then brings his gaze back to mine.

That beholding gleam that only Val carries when he looks at me is glossed over his black eyes, more defined and prominent tonight, on the verge of tears.

“I love you,” he says, hurried, wide eyed, wasting no time trying to make his point.

Our stares lock through the mirror. Through a non-existent plane because I can’t bring myself to face him.

Not really. I use the distance of reflection to hold him at arm’s length.

To keep him from looking too deep, and likewise seeing too much of him as well.

If I do, I might collapse beneath the weight of his attention.

“Please. I love you.”

Though he’s said it before, the declaration is nothing short of a punch to my heart right now. Battering against the ruined organ, nothing but pulp leftover from his love.

“You are not capable of loving someone, Valledyn. You don’t know how,” I say sadly. Unable to stop myself, I add my own truth, layering it close, right next to his. “Not any more than I do.”

“ I love you , Delaney,” he says again. Aggressive. More urgent. “I can know how. I can! I promise. We are capable. We can learn. Together.”

But how endearing it is, the way Val so terribly struggles to articulate how he feels in those short, choppy sentences. And oh, how I hate it, the way it makes me want to lie to him. Tell him there’s no need to fret, and it will be alright .

“Teach me,” Val pleads. “And I can teach you, if that’s what you need. We can love each other.”

I ignore him, my stare falling away from his in the mirror, shutting my eyes like it would close him out, make him cease to exist.

Val refuses my rebuff. I hear him span the room in just a few wide strides with those long powerful legs.

He turns my wood and velvet wingback chair to face him, legs scraping loud and jostling me in my seat.

Val falls to his knees before me, putting us at eye level.

His gentle fingers hold my chin, tilting my face towards his; his imposing shadow falls over me like a burial shroud.

“I—” Val stops speaking abruptly, his words withering on his tongue.

A hot trickle of warmth falls to my shoulder from where I ripped my skin out of need to get some part of my husband out. To peel him away from where he’s burrowed his way in.

Val cradles my face, turning it to the side to put my ear under the fall of yellow from the gas lamp. The heat of his body washes against mine, pinning me in place. I’m too exhausted to move. To fight. To say or do anything at all. I’m a rag doll in his grasp, limp and pliant. Not living at all.

Even in my husband’s heightened emotion, beneath the shaking of his murderous, artist hands, he treats my skin like its glass. Moving me gently. Languid with his long fingers and strong, attentive touch.

Trying to prove his point that he would never hurt me.

He pushes my hair behind my ear, painfully slow, fully exposing the naked, bleeding flesh. Val pulls in a sharp inhale at the emptiness he sees. Almost a sob.

The moment is silent but for our breathing, intimate in a harrowing way. Quiet in its anguish. In its slow and torturous death. The lack of visuals I allow myself makes the severing that much worse, the sound of our hearts breaking in tandem that much louder.

The threat of Val’s tears after admitting to ending the final person of my past life was enough to make me want to run to him.

Throw my arms around his waist. Wail into his chest, not unlike I cried when I learned he killed Rainah.

Let us wallow in our brokenness together.

Because as I told him, we are both incapable of love.

Giving or receiving, it’s not an instinct we hold.

We cannot fix it. Not together. And certainly not alone.

If I open my eyes, look at him now, I may just fully break.

Val doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. His harsh breaths become louder. More chaotic as he holds my tilted head in his hands, my brown hair sweaty and long and leaning towards the floor. My neck angled like it’s aching for the cinch of a noose.

And I can hear his shattering in each breath. The apology. The terror. The ragged sounds of no going back. Mingled within it is the spike of betrayal he feels from me, the rejection of this particular gift cutting him deeper than any before.

Finally, slowly, he drops my head. Stands. Steps away from me. Reluctant. And only then, does my gaze slide open. Lined on Val’s sickly-pale face is all the misery I expected, folding in on himself completely.

I swallow. Steeling myself past the irrational, naive longings thrashing at my ribs. Hungry for the warmth of his touch to return.