Page 48

Brynla

The moon is keeping me awake. Rotund and tinged with blue, it sits in the dark sky just above the castle spires, slicing through the half-closed curtain.

The light illuminates Lemi as he sleeps curled up beside the bed, turning his black coat into shades of indigo.

I would get up and close the curtain but I couldn’t move, even if I wanted to.

My body feels depleted, my soul outside myself.

The longer I stare at the moon, the more hollow I feel, as if it’s shining a light on my loss.

My loss.

This morning Andor told me it had been a week since I lost my aunt, a fact that still seems less of a fact and more of a notion.

An awful, terrible, impossible notion, about two things that couldn’t be true.

One is that my aunt is dead. Two, that time has passed.

Because how can time just…pass? How can it move on past her death?

How come the world didn’t stop when she died? Because my world stopped when she died.

Though, looking back on our conversation, I should have told him I didn’t lose her. To lose someone is to admit fault on your behalf. To lose someone is to imagine that one day they’ll return, back in the place you last left them.

I didn’t lose my aunt in that sense. She wasn’t misplaced, she didn’t wander off. She won’t someday come back and we’ll be happily reunited. She was instead brutally murdered and died in front of my eyes.

And loss is too pithy of a word; it doesn’t reflect at all the magnitude of having someone you love more than anything, the only solid, real family you have left in the world, ripped from your life.

It doesn’t even begin to describe the hole gouged in you with tainted claws, creating a wound that not only won’t heal but will fester and infect the rest of you, spreading right into your very soul.

But perhaps it was my fault. I may not have lost her like I’ve lost my coin purse before, but it was my responsibility.

It all happened because I came back to the Dark City and put her life in danger.

I had Steiner send the message via raven.

I am the one who put all these events in motion.

Yes, I could blame Andor. I do blame Andor, since he was the one who put me in this horrible position.

But in the end I’m still the one who decided getting my aunt out of the Banished Land was more important than anything else.

And that was selfish of me, there’s no getting around it.

I wanted her out because I wanted her with me, because I thought I knew what was best for her.

How na?ve and foolish I was. I don’t know what’s best for anyone, let alone myself. My ego, my need to save my aunt when she didn’t need saving, is what cost her her life.

And I don’t know how I will ever recover from this.

I wish Andor had left me behind in the city to grieve.

I wish he had left me behind to die.

In the background, there’s a faint knock at the door. I don’t even lift my head to look. Usually it’s either Solla, bringing food I won’t eat but which Lemi happily laps up, or it’s Andor. Given that the moon is high, I’m guessing it’s Andor.

I hear the door creak open. Flickering candlelight spills across the room, competing with the moon.

Lemi’s tail thumps against the floor and for a moment I feel betrayed by my hound.

Why did Lemi let Andor leave with my unconscious body?

Why didn’t he stop him? Even now he seems happy to have Andor around, oblivious to my feelings.

Then again, I think I’m oblivious to them.

“Are you awake?” Andor asks softly.

I clear my throat. “Yes,” I whisper.

“Can I come in?”

I usually tell him to go. Or I let him stay for a few moments as he tries to talk to me, tries to reach me through my grief, searches for the person I was before this all happened. He can’t find her. Neither can I.

But tonight, with that cold, cold moon peering into the room, making the shadows darker while illuminating my pain, I don’t think I want to send Andor away. For once, I don’t want to be alone. I want to forget.

“Yes,” I tell him again, and he’s closing the door softly behind him.

I reposition myself on the bed to make room for him, watching as he moves across the room, his tall, muscled body moving with such grace that it makes my heart trip.

Funny how my body still has the capacity for lust, for desire, for physical need, even when it’s absolutely breaking inside.

Lemi lifts his head and Andor crouches down to stroke the dog, scratching behind the ears. “Be a good boy and give us some privacy,” he says.

Lemi understands. In a flash he disappears and reappears on the balcony, sitting with his back to us.

Andor lets out a quiet chuckle. “He’s awfully considerate, isn’t he?”

I smile, just a little, but it’s enough that he notices. His expression softens as he sits on the edge of the bed, staring down at me with liquid eyes. “That’s the first smile I’ve seen in a long time.”

Instinctively I turn it into a frown. He reaches down and runs his thumb over my lip.

“It’s all right,” he says. “You’re allowed to feel some light.

It doesn’t erase the rest of it.” He brings his fingers across my cheek, brushing my messy hair off my forehead.

“I know what it’s like, you know. What you’re going through. ”

“Our families are nothing alike,” I manage to say.

“That might be true, but death still comes for us all. You have lost so much more than I have, Brynla, more than I can even begin to imagine. I have had a life of privilege, a life that you never had. You have had a life of pain, in more ways than one.” He pauses, letting out a shaky breath.

“But I know what it’s like to be so enveloped by your sorrow and grief, the way it consumes you like a ravenous beast. It becomes something physical, something real, something you feel you have to battle because if you give up, if you give in…

you wonder how you’ll ever find yourself again.

But you will find yourself again, lavender girl.

I promise you that. You will find yourself and you’ll pull through and it starts with a smile.

It starts with allowing yourself to see the light on the other side, even when you can’t imagine anything but darkness. ”

The gravity in his words has a way of sinking in, of anchoring me in this place.

I have been in the very darkness he speaks of before.

My father, then my mother. Being in the Daughters of Silence didn’t give you much space for grief.

I had been so focused on just surviving the convent that I didn’t have a lot of time to deal with what I had lost, and yet I was still stumbling in the dark.

In fact, I think I was stumbling until the moment I met him.

For a brief while, despite my fear of the Kolbecks and the circumstances of my being here, I actually had hope for a better life. I had hope for the first time ever.

Andor brought me that light and he’s also brought me this darkness, the very one consuming me with gnashing teeth.

And right now I need him, in all his shades.

“You’re allowed to feel good,” he murmurs, his fingers trailing down my neck, over my collarbones, so gentle that it takes my breath away. “Can I make you feel good?”

I nod, my heart beating faster. I want him to make me feel good, to bring me relief even if it just stays between the sheets, even if just for the night.

He gives me a deliciously wanton grin, golden heat flaring in his eyes. “Good.”

Then he reaches down and grabs me by the hips, yanking me to the side and to the edge of the bed. I gasp and he drops to his knees on the floor, kneeling as he spreads my legs roughly with one hand and pushes up the hem of my nightgown with the other.

Oh.

My cheeks go hot, my breath hitching as I raise my head to watch him. He’s staring between my legs with such hungry intensity that my pulse leaps in my throat. I’ve never been so vulnerable and bare before.

“This is all right?” he asks, his fingers scorching as they push into the soft flesh of my inner thighs as he spreads them wider.

I nod, swallowing hard. “I, uh, have never done…this before.”

He raises a brow. “You’ve never had a man feast on you like he was starved for a meal?”

I shake my head slightly, my fingers curling into the sheets in anticipation. Though I’ve been with my fair share of partners, none of them have done what he’s about to do. Thank the gods I had enough strength today to take a long bath and make sure I was thoroughly clean.

My answer brings a wide grin to his face, a look of absolute pride.

“I’ll try to be gentle, then,” he says, lowering his face until I feel his hot breath tickling, making me squirm. “No promises, though.”

His voice is so dark and raw, his desire for me so apparent that a wave of nerves and anticipation crashes over me, making my stomach flutter.

Andor moves closer, still kneeling between my legs, then presses his mouth against the sensitive skin of my thigh, leaving a warm, damp kiss there. Close, so close. I find myself arching toward him, my nerves screaming for contact.

His hands grip my thighs, pulling me closer, and I can feel the gentle brush of his stubble as he moves toward me, teasingly slow. I’m not sure what to expect, but I know I want whatever he has to give, so I simply let myself fall into his touch, letting him take control.

His tongue flicks out, wet and slick, touching me in places I’ve never been touched by a mouth before.

It’s an entirely new sensation, electric and intense, as if every cell in my body is singing with pleasure.

I moan softly, my hands gripping the sheets beneath me, clutching them so hard my fingers hurt.