City of Shadows

Chapter 7: Lady of Roses

"Ember? What have you done?"

He doubled over, and Ember scrambled forward to catch him.

It was the same nightmare over and over again. Find him, embrace him, kill him, cry. She had no control over it now. It simply happened, like a horror movie on repeat, like a broken record, and she could no longer control what she said or did.

"As long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west." Jacob's bloodstained hand fell from her cheek to lie limply on the shore of the Lake. She felt the warmth of his smeared blood on her cheek, like a brand.

"Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa."

MY FAULT. The words appeared behind her eyelids like a tattoo engraved into her mind as she wept. MY MOST GRIEVOUS FAULT.

"No!"

Ember shot up in bed. Her vision was blurry with fear, and her hair stuck to the back of her neck. Sweat shone on her forehead, her neck, and she kicked off the covers, relishing the feel of cool air licking her skin. She clambered over to the foot of the bed, choosing to settle down in her corner. She pressed her hand against her chest, right above her erratic heart, to calm her ragged breaths and smother the tight, unpleasant feeling of heaviness growing in her chest.

Her eyes moved in the bathroom's direction when her vision, which had been previously blurred with fright, cleared and sharpened back to normality, and she walked in the darkness in its direction. She flicked the light switch on, groaning as the light stabbed through her still-sensitive eyes, and took the time to splash cold water over her face and neck, cooling her feverish skin. She rinsed her mouth, then opted to brush her teeth instead when the water was not enough to mask the bitter, dry taste of fear. When she decided that she was finished, she headed back to her room, her hand drifting over the light switch.

She froze, however, when she found Jonathan had awoken.

He had pushed himself halfway to a sitting position and had propped himself on his elbows. He looked up at her through half-blind eyes, took one look at the paleness of her face, the tight lines around her mouth, the puffy redness around her eyes, and asked softly, "Again?"

Her hand fell from the light switch, opting to not turn it off, and she walked across the room without uttering a response. She pulled open her dresser, fully knowing she was not going back to sleep, nor did she want to try. She didn't want to risk seeing Jacob in her dreams, didn't want to see his blood over her hands, didn't want to hear him whisper the damned words, so she might as well start her day, and she knew the first thing she was going to do.

She pulled out the first articles of clothing her fingertips brushed against, not even bothering to check if they matched or not. She felt Jonathan's eyes follow her as she flitted from one side of the room to the other.

"Where are you going?" he asked again, his voice husky from sleepiness, and averted his eyes as she removed his shirt from her body and donned the new clothes she had picked.

She remained silent, choosing to not answer, and pulled on a pair of black platform ankle boots, quickly zipping and lacing them up.

She heard him collapse back onto the bed, pressing the bottoms of his palms onto his eyes in frustration at her reluctance to answer, and after lying in silence for half a minute, sat up, hunched over the side of the bed, his elbows resting on his knees, and he ran his fingers through his hair. He sighed, then reached down to a heap lying next to the bed. They were the clothes he had worn the night before, and he donned them again today.

Ember watched him briefly in the light that came from the bathroom. Her fingers twitched on her boot laces as she saw the wrinkles on his shirt, his pants, and she wanted nothing more than to iron them out, make them flat and creaseless and perfect. "What are you doing?" Her voice was strangely monotone, and she couldn't tell if it was to mask her retreating fear or because she felt numb now that it was going away. "Stay and rest. I can go by myself."