Page 6

DAXEEL

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Dark lashes border the faint light of the bedchamber.

Curtains are drawn on the luminescent trees outside the window; the only warmth to flicker over the cerulean walls and white trimmed ceiling is the collective, scattered glow of jars filled with fireflies.

Tick, tick, tick.

The fireflies hit into their glass walls, their prisons, too stupid to know they can’t escape through the invisible walls that contain them, too determined to give up.

Tick, tick, tick.

The fine weight of a silk sheet drapes over his hand.

The Warmth has come, and so the furs that pinned him down the last time he woke from the black powder slumber, are gone. Fresh sheets glide over him now.

Daxeel slips his hand out from under the silk and brings it to his face.

Fingertips graze the thick, dewy texture of black bandages pasted to his head. Old and sweaty.

Tris will come soon to change them again. The others, too; the bandages wrapped around his middle, the moss that runs down the length of his spine.

He briefly woke to the healer pasting the moss over his back. The memory stirs, but it comes in fragments. His cheek pressed to a pillow, the silhouette of his mother in a housecloak drifting in and out of view as she loitered around his bedchamber; the frosty presence of Samick sitting in the chair at the wall, and he merely stared out of the window when the curtains weren’t drawn; Eamon’s face warping in and out of view, his hand reaching into the nightstand drawer, luring out a velvet pouch of spare coin—and then gone, because Daxeel blinked, and in that blink, the black powder dragged him down to peaceful nothingness, and when he opened his eyes again, that moment is now, and he is on his back and the bedchamber is empty.

Daxeel lets his hand fall to the pillow beside his head. Lines crease his forehead as he stares at the ceiling, the trim flickering with eager firefly light. But the black powder keeps his mind hollow.

Hollow…

That rings through him.

A thought tugging at his mind.

The frown fades, his face smoothens out like once-crinkled paper before a yawn splits him.

In a mere click of the fingers, he throws the sheets of his body and runs his hands over his tired face.

Without a look down at his healing wounds, the bruises smeared with moss, the salves and balms eased into his skin, the pasted bandages, he kicks his legs over the side of the bed. His feet flatten on the soft rug.

For a beat, he just sits there.

Tick, tick, tick.

His mind rings, a plucked harp string, and he rides it out, waits for the emptiness to return.

Residue of black powder, the recovery alone, slows the mind in these ways, makes it harder to control one’s thoughts.

Thoughts …

Hollow.

Daxeel throws his gaze up to the jar on the dresser.

Tick, tick, tick.

Those fucking fireflies…

Now that he has noticed the sound, their incessant attempts to be free, it claws at him, nails scraping down bone. His upper lip twitches, too tired to reveal his irritability, but agitated all the same.

A sigh slumps him before he shoves up from the edge of the bed. In three stomped steps, he reaches the dresser—and plucks the lid off the jar.

Tick, tick, tick.

It takes a moment.

He expected the fireflies to lift from their prison in a cloud of flickering, glowing excitement—then plague his bedchamber in a scattered frenzy.

But no.

Tick, tick, tick.

Still just hitting into that glass container, over and over, over and over.

Hollow.

His eyes clench shut.

Reaching out for the dresser, he firms a grip on the polished wood to steady himself. It is no wave of dizziness that rinses through him; it is an ache.

A carver has taken a knife to his chest and impressed a void. That is what it feels like, the icy wall around a deep, empty space.

His hand finds the ache, flattens to his chest—and he breathes, steady, calm.

Tick, tick, tick.

He understands it.

He opens his eyes, tired, and his gaze is ice.

Where the bond once resided, there is no echo, no tether. It’s not gone, but it is empty.

Hollow.

“Dax—”

He whirls around.

Unwashed tendrils of damp, wiped-down hair fall over his furrowed brow. Beneath the furrow of his brow, the brightness of his eyes burns like flames.

He swerves his gaze around the bedchamber, expecting to see her tucked away in some shadowy pocket of air. But the room is empty.

Hollow.

Prickles thorn his flesh. Goosepimples cascading down his arms from his shoulders before a tense shudder jolts him only once.

At his sides, his hands have fisted into steel balls. His nails cut into the flesh of his palms, prick him enough to draw tiny droplets of inky blood.

His frown lowers.

He watches the slight trails of darkness seep through the gaps between his clenched fingers.

Daxeel draws in a breath, one deep enough to roll his shoulders back and set his jaw firm. His nostrils flare around it, tick, tick, tick , then he loosens it with a scoff.

It was her voice.

Undeniably her.

Yet she isn’t here.

The room is as hollow as that ache in his chest.

The black powder must not be finished with him.

He turns back for the bed, the crumpled sheets, the stink of his cloth-washed flesh. He returns to slumber.