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Chapter Forty: Rhea

I stand at the end of the hallway, the small wooden door before me illuminated only by the spelled flames in glass bowls attached to the wall.

It’s the middle of the night, tortuous dreams once more keeping me from sleep. Tomorrow, Nox will resume his meetings with the council, giving them the manufactured story of what he found in the Mortal Kingdom, how we met, and why he is not going to entertain the idea of a betrothal to Haylee. And I will be left on my own for the first time in this kingdom.

My fingers curl into my palms at my sides as I work my bottom lip between my teeth, my attention falling again to the hidden door in front of me. Stepping forward, I push on the gray striated stone, a creaking sound echoing out. My shoulders rise towards my ears, and though it is impossible, as I stare down into the dark expanse of the winding stone staircase in front of me, I swear that I can hear King Dolian’s voice. I can feel his fists meeting my body in heavy swings, my chest rising and falling with the anticipation of the next hit.

“This isn’t the tower,” I whisper to myself, but I can’t get my feet to move. Squeezing my eyes shut, I shake my head like the movement is enough to banish his presence in my mind.

You will earn your title. You are mine.

The pain is piercing when I bite through my lip, the sting jolting me out of the spiral. Gasping, I take a step back and shut the door before leaning my forehead against it.

I had failed earlier when Nox took me on an outing to the city center. It was beautiful and lively, and Nox had done his best to keep us to the outskirts of the busy shopping plaza. As he held my hand tightly, offering kind nods and smiles to the people who passed us, he explained how this place compared to Vitour. While he talked of their differences, I reflected on the fact that he had been desperate to go home, and yet for three months, he delayed leaving because of me. Eventually, the smell of something sweet had drawn us into a confectionery shop. A bell chimed as we stepped in, and the sugary citrus scent that hung heavy in the air began to feel stifling. It reminded me of a lemon loaf, and as I stared down at the glass case full of chocolate candies, my hands trembling, I was abruptly pelted with memories of Alexi.

Chocolate creams. Two hands of cards on a chipped white table. This place, this prison, is not where your journey is to end, Little One. Icy metal stairs biting into my feet as I followed my uncle down them. Alexi kneeling, beaten between golden guards. And blood—so much blood.

Crying and desperate pleading with my magic to save him. Save him. Save him. Cradling his head in my lap and his blood pooling around me, cooling as it soaked into my nightgown. My hair. Never-ending screams wrenched from my throat until no further sound would come.

Nox had recognized what was happening and helped guide me out of the shop and into the forest for privacy. He held me to him, murmuring that it was okay if I needed to fall apart. That he would always be there to help me when I did. His voice to anyone else would sound whisper-soft, but to me, it was a shout down into the void of anguish I was stuck in. In his gentle tone, I heard the guilt that ravaged him.

I had felt fine, and then I wasn’t. But I shouldn’t be falling apart anymore. I am no longer in the tower, no longer in that kingdom. I am safer than I have ever been, and it has been months since Alexi’s death. Weeks since we ran. Shouldn’t time have been a balm to the wounds by now?

I had failed in the city center just as I am failing now. I fail every time I wake Nox up with my nightmares and have to watch as his guilt is laid bare on his face before he remembers to hide it from me. I fail when I don’t live the kind of life I had lost so much to gain.

“Rhea?”

I lift my head up as Nox makes his way towards me, only dressed in his gray sleeping pants. His eyes immediately fall to my lip, the wound already closing but the evidence of what I’ve done to myself present. He looks to the hidden door next as understanding flattens his mouth and makes him exhale roughly. His hand reaches out to gently tilt my chin up so the light of the flame falls over my face. I look away, shame and defeat making my cheeks burn bright.

“Look at me,” he commands, gingerly caressing his thumb over my bottom lip. A tear traces down my cheek, my lashes growing wet, as I slowly force my gaze back to his. “I love you.”

“Why?”

His shoulders droop with the question, but his focus never strays from me.

“You could be with anyone— love anyone. It doesn’t make sense—”

“Rhea,” he interjects, sliding his hand until it cradles the back of my head. “There is only you. There will only ever be you. From this day until I draw in my last breath, my heart beats for you and you alone.”

“What if I can’t be enough?” I ask, the rasp of my voice harsh. “For you. For them . For myself. What if this version of me is all I’ll ever be?” Nothing but a barely held together mosaic of grief and despair. That fear is an anxious whisper in the back of my mind that has grown louder since I woke up from the Middle. What if healing—whatever that looks like—isn’t something that is possible for me?

Nox takes my hand into his and flattens my palm onto his chest directly over where his heart beats in a steady rhythm. “You are enough. You could never change from this exact moment, or you could morph into something new every single night, and you would be enough . I would still ache to be at your side. Any and every version of you is one that I want.”

My next inhale feels like it hits my lungs more deeply, the vibration of his heartbeat beneath my palm urging my own into a similar cadence. “I want to be worthy of you,” I whisper to him, closing my eyes when he wraps his arms around me.

“You are. You always have been, and you always will be. To me and to them.” He says it with so much confidence that it’s hard not to let myself feel like maybe it’s the truth. “But I can’t make you feel it about yourself. Only you can do that.”

I deflate against him, my cheek resting on his chest. “I don’t know how to do that.”

He holds me as seconds turn into minutes, his hands stroking in a soothing pattern over my back. Finally, he says in a soft murmur, “I think that all you can do is try.”

Our love story allegedly began in a small town near the Mortal Kingdom’s border called Santor. At least, that is what Nox told the council. As for the magical burst they could feel from here, he told them it was a spelled crystal in King Dolian’s possession and that he decided it would be safer to destroy it. He left out everything about the King’s Guard attacking us at the border, about how my uncle likely assumes him to be mage. I suppose the council would have no way of knowing those things anyway.

The first morning he left to meet with them, I kept to his room, reading and writing in my journal. He came back in the afternoon, and after he had relayed what he told them, we spent the rest of the day in his bed together. It was a fantastic distraction.

The second morning, I attempted, and failed again, to go down the passageway to his secret garden, returning once more to his room where I curled up with a book. Nox led me on a tour around the palace when he returned later that day, his fingers firmly laced with mine as we explored the home he grew up in. I didn’t know if it was luck or by design that we hadn’t run into any of the council members while out.

Our evenings were spent training with one half of my magic, the darker half constantly pushing against the invisible barrier I was trying to build to snuff it out. Nox was patient in his instruction, my fear of accidentally losing control and letting the shadows out again one that he delicately worked around. I had even tried manipulating an element for the first time, attempting to lift water from a small stream that runs through the forest behind the palace. Controlling my magic so precisely was a struggle, and I’m not entirely sure more than a few droplets of water rose from my efforts.

Nox at least lets me keep the pendant on when we are outside, his gentle words coaxing me to take it off once we enter his room again. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the importance of learning to control at least part of this magic without the safety of his blanketing me. It was that I felt so disconnected from that side of me as a whole that I didn’t like feeling it so strongly.

I can also admit that I am frightened by it—by its strength and the way it seems to grow stronger with each passing day. I fear the darkness that lurks within me and how it might seep out when my guard is down. Despite Nox’s warning, this is one subject I refuse to yield on. Maybe once I had more control, I would tackle learning how to wield that death magic. So each day he leaves to visit the council, I practice using my light magic while he’s gone.

Despite the way tension lingers on him when he returns from the meetings, he is sweet in his encouragement of me, reminding me that with the dragon pendant on, I can explore anywhere I want without drawing attention to myself. That everyone knows who I am to him and this knowledge brings its own level of protection for me.

I am no longer confined to a prison of stone or behind guards with blood oaths. The only person stopping me from living a life I want is myself, but I can’t seem to get out of my own way. Each attempt I make at stepping past the threshold of Nox’s room is met with my breath seizing in my chest and my hands growing clammy.

Even now, I stand in front of his door with my fingers reaching towards the handle, unable to close the distance. Dropping my hand back to my side, I huff out a breath and tilt my head back to look up towards the ceiling. Try . It’s a word I keep coming back to, one that Selene said to me in the Middle, that Nox had said might be the only way forward. Just try. Such an annoyingly simple thing that felt unfathomably difficult to do.

Grinding my teeth, I lower my gaze back to the door. “Try,” I whisper to myself. “For them. For Nox.” Reaching for the handle again, my fingers grip and twist it, the door opening as I pull it towards myself. “For them. For Nox.”

My heartbeat quickens, rattling around my ribcage as I force myself to move. One step. Then two. I practically leap past the threshold, quickly shutting the door. The gold of my bracelet glints beneath a spelled flame, catching my eye. For Alexi. With my stomach in knots, I take another step, the soles of my flats quiet against the rug that runs the entire length of the hallway.

Rooms filled with elegant furniture that look like they are meant for friends to gather in glide by in my periphery, but I don’t stop to truly look at them. I’m afraid that if I do, I might not be able to keep going.

There’s a guard who stands at the end of the hall whose name I had learned is Barron. “Hello, Lady Rhea,” he says, dipping his head as his hands clasp behind his back. “Can I assist you with anything today?” His light gray eyes look kind, and the dark brown skin around them crinkles when he smiles.

“I don’t know,” I reply, clearing my throat when he cocks his head to the side. “I mean, I think I’m going to just go for a walk around the palace.”

He surprises me when he asks, “Do you need a guide?” Shifting his position so that his body isn’t blocking the stairs anymore, his dark leather armor creaks quietly with the movement.

A guide would be nice, and it would ensure that I don’t get lost, but I know that I need to do this alone. Nox said my healing wouldn’t be a linear thing, that I might take one step forward and three steps back, over and over again. Eventually, I have to hope that the steps forward will outnumber the steps back. I have to keep trying.

“No, thank you,” I answer, tucking the loose strands from my ponytail back behind my ears.

“Then I hope you have fun. Should you ever need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask,” he replies, stepping back a little more to give me space to pass.

I study Barron’s features more thoroughly, noting the small strands of gray that are woven into his braids, white also showing in the short beard on his broad jaw. He’s an older guard, perhaps somewhere around Alexi’s age. I swallow against the sudden burning in my throat. Noting my hesitancy, he holds his hand out, an offer to help me get to the first step. It eases a little of that churning anguish within me. Feeling a little more settled, I continue down the stairs, another guard stationed at its base offering me a tight-lipped smile when I pass.

The foyer to the palace is bustling, and I watch as mages carry trays of fresh food or folded laundry to one of the many other corridors. Others hold conversations with each other while some disappear around corners that Nox had shown me—but that I’m sure I cannot navigate again on my own.

My steps are tentative as I grip onto the light green-colored fabric of my dress, the wide doors of the palace entrance growing larger as I near them. I hadn’t studied the carvings on them before, and without any sort of plan now that I’m out of Nox’s room, I let my gaze roam over their details.

A tree is depicted, the middle of it perfectly split where the doors open. The tree’s trunk is wide and nearly limbless, except for at the very top where branches stretch out in all directions. The roots mirror the branches, growing near the base of the doors and out to their hinges.

Above the canopy of the tree, the carvings look like small “x”s stacked on top of each other in opposite directions. No… Not “x”s. Stars. They are carved stars, big and small, made to look like they are flickering. My eyes track to the top right, where a crescent moon is depicted, and then to the left, where a sun with wavy flares sits in exact opposition.

A chill blooms across my skin as I suck in a sharp inhale. “Look to the east and trust the stars over the ancient trees,” I murmur to myself.

It is no coincidence that I am here, in this kingdom specifically. Selene couldn’t alter my fate, but I realize that she tried to guide me in her own way. I was always meant to be here, perhaps even meant to be with Nox. My fingers ease their hold on my dress as the notion that I’m right where I’m supposed to be begins to etch its way into my mind.

With my confidence now higher than when I stepped off of the stairs, I turn and make my way to the one place where I might already have a new friend waiting for me.

I go to see Elora in the palace library.