Page 17

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With Eamon gone for a few phases now, I fast learn the reality of truly being on my own.

It is revealing. As it turns out, I have a habit of sneaking luxuries I shouldn’t.

I start the third Warmth with a coffee I can’t afford from the bakery downstairs, then guzzle every last drop before I even make it to the tavern to finish the sanding of the tables. The clean-up is the most work, moving chairs and crates and sofas by myself.

Hedda is no help.

She follows me around like a shadow.

I’ve tripped over her three times this phase already, and she has puddled urine on the floorboards behind the bar; a sharp stench that takes me a while to clean.

Then the Breeze passes, and I work into the First Wind. I spend much of that time upstairs in the dwelling above the tavern.

If we can get it to a liveable state, we can save ourselves the cost of more coin on the other dwelling. But it is work, and a lot of it.

To start, there is no furniture in the upstairs dwelling, none at all. But there are plenty of dust balls to take up space.

The washtub is blackened with age and soot from the unshielded hearth, and so when winds have come in from the chimney, ash has blown all over. Not to mention the inconvenience of even having a washtub in the same room as the lounge. That will need screens to separate it when the time comes, and the coin is greater.

Eamon had plans to open the tavern the phase after the Sabbat, one week from now.

I find that a week is too soon and the work is too great. All First Wind, Hedda and I are slaving away in the dwelling upstairs. I dust and sweep and clean out the hearth. Hedda decides she is now helpful, and she hunts rodents.

Then my fingers creak with movement, and my knees crackle as I stand, and so I decide my body has had enough.

Without Eamon’s nagging on our monies, I let myself venture to the nicer streets of Kithe for better ham cuts and some fresher potatoes. Maybe I splurge a tad and get the already peeled and boiled potatoes, because cooking is not my ally—and I still haven’t quite figured out how long to cook them to point of soft but not mush. Also washing potatoes is such a dull chore.

My phase’s expenses are stacked in the netted bag pulled over my shoulder; it weighs down on my muscles and blossoms an early ache before I even reach the streets of Cheapside.

I shouldn’t.

Without an escort, Eamon still gone, Hedda a mere pup galloping around my boots, and no allies in these streets, I shouldn’t take the shortcut to Cheapside, those little lanes and alleyways.

I shouldn’t, but I do.

Maybe it’s that the bag is weighing down too much too soon on my shoulder, and I’m sure I’m going to bruise, or that I’m already exhausted from my phase at the tavern and I just want to be by the fireplace, a cooked meal on a plate, and the warmth of Hedda curled up at my side, and that the shortcut saves me close to half an hour.

Whatever it is, I risk it when I shouldn’t. I take the shortcut in the Quiet, and I am a fool for it.

Hedda is content.

She knows not the danger I put us in.

Clumsy limbs galloping around my every step, her hunting instincts playfully tuned to the legs of my overalls that she pounces on every other moment.

I’m halfway down the final lane to my street when that whisper returns.

“ Nari .”

A breath shudders my chest.

The whisper came from the dark behind me—a whisper I have not heard since I saw Daxeel phases ago. I thought it gone.

Foolish me.

Loosening a steadying breath, I push forward and keep on my way. But I hardly make it three steps before Hedda grunts an excited sound and shoots past me.

I frown down at her, neck twisting to follow her back up the way we came…

Towards Daxeel.

I whirl around to face the shadows thicker in this lane than out in the street where there are glowjars and lantern lights.

I wait for him to step into the faint light that flickers down on me from the window above, orange flames burning in a hearth.

He does. And at his boots, Hedda paws at him.

The cerulean gleam of his eyes is fixed on me.

I adjust the strap of my bag. “What are you doing out here?”

He lifts his gaze over my head.

I trace it across the street—and up to the double paned windows of my dwelling.

My face smooths and I turn a flat look on him. “You came to watch me again.”

“Yes.”

I huff an exhausted sound and tug the strap off my shoulder. The bag thuds to the ground, and I’m glad for all the vegetables and meats being wrapped in parchments.

“Why?” I aim my stony look at him, a mask I keep tugged over the doubt aching to break through, the thickening of my throat that itches to choke my words at the sight of him.

As put together as he always is, there’s something off about him. Somehow, the distressed grey sweater he wears is no longer effortlessly refined and wealthy; the kohl shadows that border his brilliant blue eyes, they seem more like dark circles now; and the sag of his muscular shoulders wears too much defeat for a male who won all he set out to achieve.

He stands before me as a male who has lost everything and wanders the shadier parts of dim taverns and grim brothels.

That is what I see on him.

Ruin.

He steps closer, one determined step but cautious, too, like he’s afraid to spook me. “You asked me a long time ago— who are you ?”

I blink, confused. “What?”

“I walked you home from the High Court, and you asked me, who are you .”

My frown is glued in place. “Ok?”

“I think about that sometimes. I should have been the one to ask you that,” he says, and his voice is smoothed into a pained whisper to match the hollow look in his eyes. “I should have seen that you didn’t know yourself better than you knew your next step in a mapped-out life.”

I look down at Hedda.

She is on her back now, chewing on the laces of his boot.

“I have made many mistakes. Many errors.” He lures my gaze back to him. “All in pursuit of what I thought I knew, what I thought was best. But what I did was bring about my own curse. Of all the errors I committed, my first and perhaps gravest one, was to assume you knew yourself. That you had power over your own life and path. In thinking that of you, I held you responsible for too much. I put my pride before you.”

“I can’t do this right now. I am starving, I am drained, and I am so fucking tired of this…” I flurry my hand between us. I have no snark, no hate to give. I am simply exhausted. “As much as I appreciate this bottled speech, I hear nothing.”

Daxeel moves for me in swift steps.

Hedda snarls at the sudden loss of her chew-toy, his boot laces, then chases after him.

Daxeel steals the bag strap from the ground, lures it into his fist, then scoops Hedda into his other arm.

He rises to tower over me, but his eyes, like his voice, are soft. “Let me help.”

I rinse him over with an unkind look. “Can you even cook?”

His smile is small and quick to fade. “I am a trained warrior…”

I arch a brow, a look dripping with ‘ so what ?’

“Yes, I can cook.”

Without a word, I turn my back on him—and let him carry the load as he follows me home.

The embrace of the armchair is plush around me. I sink into it, the heat of the lit hearth scorching one side of my body.

I tuck my knees to my chest and watch Hedda gnaw on the bone we picked up at the butchers. She is sprawled over the dusty rug, and no one can accuse her of quiet eating, not with the grunts and gurgles and snorts that come from her every other second.

The clink of a pan draws in my hooded gaze.

With only the middle bench between us, I watch as Daxeel sets out the pan on the countertop, then tosses into it the washed and chopped onion, tomato, spinach, and nuts. He throws in a dollop of whipped butter before passing off the pan to the stove.

“Cooking me a meal does nothing, you know,” I tell him. “It changes nothing.”

Daxeel stiffens. Hands hovering over the strips of ox meat, he lifts his gaze to me. A hue of red surrounds the gloss of his cobalt eyes.

“There is nothing in this life I can do to repair the damage I caused,” he says, soft. “There is nothing I can offer you that you need, because you need for nothing and no one. I am proud of you, Nari. If you tell me to leave, I will.” He forces a hard swallow. “Tell me to abandon my unit, and I will. Tell me to kneel at your feet every phase—and I will. And I will do it knowing it is not enough.”

I consider him. “If I tell you to leave, will you really leave, or will you find a spot outside to watch my window?”

“I would watch your window.” There is no shame in the way he looks at me, no embarrassment in blush of his cheeks. “Eamon is not here. I do not trust that you are wholly safe.”

I scoff. “And how you love to keep me safe.”

His mouth turns down at the corners.

The Mountain of Slumber flashes in his mind, as it does mine. There was no greater danger he could have thrown me into.

And yet he did.

My stare is blank. “Cook.”

He does.

He sears the wild ox strips in the seasoned buttered pan, then lets the cubed potatoes simmer in the flavouring, then pours a freshly brewed tea, and cuts a slice of bread. He plates it all up, then brings it to the sidetable tucked against the arm of my chair.

I eat.

Daxeel lowers himself onto the armchair opposite mine, and he watches me. Silent. Patient.

“Did you buy the tavern for Eamon?”

My question startles him.

His lashes flutter before he arches his brows. “I did.”

“Is it your tavern?”

“I own a share.”

He doesn’t tell me how big that share is.

I chew on the soft, melting meat, then swallow. “Did you give him the gold—for him… or for me?”

“Both.”

Hedda has sniffed out my meal. Abandoning her bone, she pounces onto my lap and sits, ready, drooling.

I shoo her off.

She grumbles but obeys, and sits primly at my feet.

“Do you want for anything more?” Daxeel’s voice is too soft, too broken. “Anything at all.”

He lures in my gaze—and I want for more.

I want the impossible.

I want his apology, his undiluted love, his knees on the ground at my feet, his salty tears spilling for me, his blood staining my teeth, his heart beating in my hand.

I want too much.

And most of all, I want him to hurt.

“Yes.”

He stills, waiting.

I could speak a wish and he would fulfil it.

I know that.

I could use it. But the thirst for vengeance is too strong.

“I want, from the deepest parts of my soul, for you to find another love,” I say, and his face shutters, “and for her to sacrifice you to her god.”

My tongue is on fire.

It burns, it burns.

The lie is for Daxeel to find another love. I know that the moment I say it. The mere thought of it churns my insides.

“I never sacrificed you, Nari,” he breathes his words sheathed in pain. “I sacrificed the bond between us.”

My smile is ugly. “Was that a last-minute decision?”

His jaw tenses and, slowly, he shakes his head. “Nari, please understand… You were my evate, but I was never yours,” he says it with a touch of sorrow, then looks away. “You think you know how I felt every moment of every phase, awake or asleep. How you consumed me. What you felt then was love, yes. But what I felt…? Your moans were symphonies, your tears were water from the eternal fountain, your face was art, your body a sculpture, your words poetry. You were my only weakness. You were the target on my back. And you betrayed me.”

He turns his cheek to me. He watches the flames flicker in the hearth.

I watch him.

The guilt gathers in his cobalt eyes like an early storm’s mist. He knows what he has done to me is wretched, unforgivable.

I lift my chin and let the bitter smile settle on my face. “Bet you thought you could sever the bond, and you wouldn’t love me anymore. Bet you feel it now more than ever, the emptiness you will live with for the rest of your lonely life.”

His lashes lower, and I am staring at the profile of sorrow.

My whisper is nothing short of cruel, “I know because I hear you.”

A tear falls down his cheek.

I trace it with my gaze, all the way down to the curve of his jaw. There, it gathers for a moment, dangling, then it falls and lands on his sweater.

I smile.

But that smile is wiped off my face the moment he confesses, “I hear you, too. I hear you say my name, but you aren’t there when I look. You have haunted me since the summit—and all I wanted was to be rid of you. Now… the rage in me is gone with the bond.”

My smile might be lost, but the mockery in my voice is not, “You punished me enough and now you are content? I must have you back now, because you will it?”

His frown tugs down his face. “No, Nari. The rage was the bond.” He turns his anguished face to me. “The rage touched the bond—and infected it. I didn’t understand it at the time… I blamed you for so much. I fought for the control—but the bond was what controlled me. And it was poisoned. I am free of that now, but in the remnants of my own wrongdoings. Mother’s last laugh is that I suffer the consequences while free of the bond. Your soul calls to me. That is a haunting that will follow me to the grave. I thought I knew pain before…” He shakes his head. “Without the rage, it is misery that fills me. Misery is the curse.”

I stab my fork into the last potato chunk. “Then pray that it stays with you, because I will not.”

His smile is pained, his eyes wet.

For a while, he just sits there with that wretched look on his face. Then, a broken hitch to his gravelly voice, “The humour of fate, Nari, is that I still love you more than I love anything in this world. I love you to the gods and beyond. I love you to the pit of my soul.”

Silent, I watch a tear escape his glazed gaze and roll down his cheek.

I fight the ache that spreads through my chest.

I bite the potato with a bared-teeth grin. “You have no soul.”

His answer is a whisper, “Then why does it hear yours?”

My answer is a thought, We thought we could best Mother.

It was subconscious then, the trick beneath the sincerity of our desperation. Daxeel offered me as his evate, the ultimate betrayal—and yet the dagger he used was a dupe. He mocked Mother with that offer.

We thought we could force her hand.

But it was me who offered the least. I offered what I didn’t want, and Mother knew that. So she tested me, kill Daxeel .

I tried. I did try.

I didn’t succeed.

Yet, the darkness is out there, but the whisper of her voice Four , Five , it’s an answer. One I don’t understand.

This was Mother’s last laugh before she drifted back to sleep. Her revenge for the bother. Our souls drifting through the veils, searching for their other half, his calling to me, mine calling to him—and we will hear those tortured whispers for the rest of our lives.

Daxeel knows it. The acceptance of it is in the despair of his gaze as he pushes up from the armchair.

He moves for me.

His steps are a slow advance that should be predatory, calculated, intimidating. I see none of that in him now.

I see a broken male, and I think it is art.

Slow, he drops to his knees.

I look down my nose at him.

His hand flexes once, nervous, before he reaches out for my feet tucked onto the edge of the armchair. His grip is cold around my ankle before he lures it closer to him.

A frown tugs my brow.

I could reel my foot back now and crack him on the nose—but I watch, entranced, as he brings it closer to him… then lowers, bows , his head.

He kisses my foot. “Sleep easy, Nari.” He lifts his reddened gaze to me. “I will keep watch until Eamon returns.”

I say nothing as he pushes up from the floor.

He spares me a single look of pure longing, of pain, a tapestry of regret.

I stare at him as though he is nothing.

He leaves.

It is only then, when the door clicks shut, and the bolt latches, that my mouth trembles.