‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙
It had been a day and a half since Sable left. And I hadn't stopped worrying. I hated how I worried, really, really hated it. I should have been happy he wasn't at House Vellichor. I should've been rejoicing at the fact that I had a room to myself, that I didn't have to feel his eyes on me everywhere I went. But I...I couldn't stop fucking worrying. I thought about him almost constantly. His stupid face was everywhere, I couldn't get it out of my head. If he died, the last thing he'd think of me was that I was some bitch. And I didn't know why I wasn't okay with that.
I pressed a breath out of my lungs, touching my finger to a glass of water. I watched as the liquid turned to a solid. I removed my finger and retracted the ice, putting it back into a liquid form. I tried moving the water but it didn't budge. So I could only control ice, it appeared. I should've figured, I had tried it ten times now.
There was a meow to my left. "Oh don't look at me like that. I bet you're worried about your daddy coming home too," I muttered, falling back in my seat. I had played two games of chess...against myself, I had sifted through Sable's things, tried on some of his clothes, and yet the clock still kept on ticking, and Sable did not come back.
"I don't even know why I'm worried," I said. "I should've never asked about his stupid truama. Because now I know he has reasons for being such a jerk and now...now I'm the jerk." I turned to Darcy to see she was playing with a ball of yarn.
"And I'm a psychopath too. Talking to a damn cat," I let out a frustrated groan, thunking my head against the table. I had spent the day training with Caspian. He had tried teaching me how to use ninja stars, but I had ended up poking myself more with the blade than the actual target.
I hadn't seen Nazira since the incident in the breakfast parlor the other day. I still remembered the burning fear I felt as that fire washed over me. Ice and fire did not mix. Nazira and I did not mix. And yet...yet I still liked her. She had become my friend the past few weeks that I had been at Vellichor. I didn't hate her for the outburst or the vile things she had said to me. I couldn't hate her for any of those things. I tried seeking her out a couple times, but when Nazira wanted to disappear, she disappeared. Caspian had told me as much when I asked him about it. Even he couldn't find her. So now two members of the cadre were gone and I was worried over the both of them.
"Well it's a good thing I already have white hair or else the grays would show up," I muttered. "Speaking of Gray..." I stood and walked over to the balcony, throwing open the doors. The night air kissed my skin and I sighed, tilting my head up to look at the stars. After a moment of bliss, I went over to the railing, leaning over it as I tried to force my gaze over the side of the mountain to see the palace.
Gray didn't have access to House Vellichor, no one outside of the cadre did. Servants came once a month to clean, but that was it. The cadre liked their privacy, not to mention it kept a sense of mystery to them. I certainly didn't know much about the infamous cadre before coming. I thought they were bloodthirsty maniacs. I certainly hadn't thought they'd throw food at each other during breakfast or drink till the morning hours or laugh so hard water came out of their nose. Ayaz did that last one at lunch today. The image was permanently embedded into my mind.
The thing was, I knew my life sucked. I really did. I wasn't blind, I still saw that it was a shattered mess around me. I had lost everything. And it still hurt, it hurt like hell. Sometimes, the pain would become too much that I'd just have to pause and take a breath and try to hold myself together so I wouldn't fall apart. The pain would hit at random times, so swift and strong it'd take my breath away.
The numbness hadn't gone away either. I still felt...strange at times. Dissociated. My appetite hadn't come back, I had trouble sleeping and had more frequent nightmares, I'd awake to my bottom lip being bitten raw, an anxiety tic I had had for years. But...but the cadre helped to distract me. Of course they couldn't completely distract me from the pain, but they helped.
"I miss you," I whispered. "And I wish I could cry over you." I still had yet to cry over Tellie since that day I had been thrown into a cell at Verglas. After that, after the numbness kicked in, I hadn't shed a single tear. I didn't know if that made me a monster. I already knew I was a monster, in one way or another. Sometimes I didn't know how I kept moving. Sometimes, all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and will the world to go away. Why wouldn't it go away? All the pain, all the heartache...what good was it for? Why did the gods do this to me? What did I do wrong?
"You look like you're about to fling yourself over," a voice said, startling me out of my reverie. I whirled around, ice already forming at my fingers when I saw none other than Nazira leaning against the door frame. She looked...tired. Her hair was a halo of curls around her, and she had terrible dark circles under her eyes. I had never seen her look so exhausted.
"Something like that," I muttered, letting out a wry chuckle. She sent me a tiny grin and I sighed. "Let's not do this. Are you alright?"
"Wow, jumping straight into it, aren't you?" she muttered, grinning
"I've dealt with trauma before. I've got a handful of it myself," I said, spinning my finger in a little loop.
"We all do, don't we?" Nazira said, coming up to my side. She put her arms on the balcony, leaning forward. Wind blew her hair back from her face, the stars were twinkling in her large eyes. She had to have been the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. If I could have, I would've painted a portrait of her, right in that moment.
"Eira," she said, turning to me. She took my hands in hers. Her skin was burning compared to mine, which was cold as ever. "I am so incredibly sorry about what happened in the breakfast parlor. You have to believe that I was distracted and-"
"You don't have to explain it to me," I said, giving her hands a pulse. "And you don't have to apologize, because I have nothing to forgive you for. I really like you, Nazira. You've only ever been kind to me and hating you because of one incident...one slip up from something you can't even blame yourself for? I'd feel horrible."
"I feel horrible," she said.
"Don't," I said. She gave me a stern look. "Really. I'm fine. My opinion of you has not changed. Your reaction just showed how much you love Sable, and that's...admirable," the taste of his name on my tongue brought a sour feeling to my stomach so I shut down any thoughts of him before my mind was whisked away once again. Sable was on my mind too much for my own good.
"If you won't let me apologize, at least let me explain?" she asked.
"Only if you want to. I don't need to know anything. Don't feel forced to tell me anything just because you want to be redeemed or something like that," I said.
She laughed, looking out to the sky. "No, no, it's nothing like that. I want to tell you." I nodded slowly and she sucked in a sharp breath.
"I was born a little over two hundred years ago," Nazira started. I let out a breath. So everyone here was ancient, it seemed. "My parents were the unlucky ones, trapped in Mirk with nowhere to go. It was bad enough when they were alone, but then there came me and my...my sister," she glanced down at the railing, her fingers wrapped tightly around the banister.
"You have a sister?" I asked gently. She nodded slowly. I wonder what happened to her. I had little doubt that I wouldn't be finding out tonight.
"Mirk has been fighting against Hiraeth for a very long time, you know this," she said. I nodded as if I had been living with Hiraeth's war for my entire life. I had been living with war my entire life, only the one concerning human lives, not fae. "Mirk is filled with...deadly magic. Witches turned dark, demons, nasty...vile things. The whole place is like a wasteland. I still remember it, I lived there for sixteen years."
"Why did you stay?" I asked.
"We couldn't leave," Nazira said. "For the entire sixteen years I was there, I lived in hiding. I had barely seen the light of day and I was sick and hungry and sad all the time. My parents tried to make it better, but it wasn't like they had any hope left either."
"Why does Mirk hate fae?" I asked.
"The same reason the fae hate half-fae," she said. "It's just another thing to control. Power scares people, especially people with power themselves. Because it can get taken away so easily. They see us as a threat. Once upon a time, all the different species and people of magic lived together. Peacefully. But then things changed. Now, people just see each other's differences, not their similarities." I felt my heart squeeze painfully and I nodded. If I were to tell anyone about my being a spy, I'd tell Nazira. I knew now that she'd hear me out, that she'd probably believe that what I was doing was for a good cause. But I could never do that to her. Dragging her into my shit would just be selfish.
"My family became desperate. Mirk was being relentless on the fae, hundreds of killings were happening every day and we couldn't go out for weeks. My sister was only thirteen when it got really bad, I gave her all the food I could find. I'd give her everything if it meant she'd survive," I nodded, my own heart twisting in empathy. Tellie did the same for me.
"One day, my dad finally caved," she said, running her hands over her arms. Goosebumps covered her skin. "He ran out of the alley we were hiding in, desperate for food. He'd barely gotten a few feet before we heard the sound of a sword scaping its scabbard and the sound of his gasp as it went and his exhale as it came out." Her muscles tensed and her eyes flashed orange. I stayed silent.
"The guards found us moments later, they were ruthless as they forced us into a train of women all going to one place. A work camp." She moved her hands from the banister, leaving charred marks behind. "Mirk didn't kill all of us. The one's they thought were capable enough they sent to camps where we did the grueling work none of them wanted to do. My sister, mom, and I went to a place where they made clothes. We were clapped in iron chains, iron was put into our food and into the water supply. Half the fae died from the iron poisoning, the other half were severely weakened.
"We were sent to work from before the sun rose to hours after it set. It was grueling work, sewing until our fingers bled, dying clothes until not an inch of skin was free of dye, cutting and measuring until our hands felt like they were going to fall. There were kids there, though they hardly cared, they sent them to work too." Nazira sucked in a breath and I fought down my own icy anger. "They treated us like animals. They whipped, pulled our hair, slapped us. They took away...everything about us that made us ourselves, until we just felt like...shells of who we used to be." I inched closer to her, soothing the fire that pulsed from her with a breeze of cold. She smiled sadly at me in thanks.
"My sister was taken close to a year after we arrived there. She was fourteen, then, still just a little slip of a thing. She had the curliest hair and the biggest eyes. She was beautiful. Her beauty was the reason he took her." Nazira's voice turned hot, blazing even. I saw the veins under the skin of her arms start to glow orange, similar to when mine turned blue.
"He was some noble from a visiting country. An ally of Mirk's. He was a pig, took one look at my sister and grinned. I watched as he muttered something to the man next to him and guards were on her in an instant, pulling her away from me. I fought harder then than I ever had in my entire life. I kicked and screamed, begging them not to take her. But my pleas fell on ears that would not listen.
"They took her and beat me until I was nothing but bruises and tears. I watched as my sister was dragged away and I've never seen her again. The last thing she screamed was my name. I still hear it, I'll never forget it.
"After that, I don't remember much," Nazira said, her voice rough. "Two months passed in a blur. I worked, and ate, and slept, but didn't so much as cry. I felt nothing but...anger. It was bottling up inside of me. Collecting. I still remember the taste of it in my mouth. Like ashes."
"That was your fire?" She nodded, keeping her eyes trained on the star-filled horizon.
"I remember the day I broke like it was yesterday. The sky was gray, depressing. People were shuffling around the camp, heads bowed, broken. I had been just like them, moving along without really moving. I had been folding a shirt when I heard the scream." She laced her fingers together. "I turned just in time to see my mothers head whipping to the side and the officer's beating rod moving in the same direction. Her body collapsed, bones breaking. Crimson blood leaked out of her head and onto the ground. And yet...no one moved. No one but me.
"I rushed to her, got onto my knees and picked up her body. I was shaking so hard I think everyone was too scared to touch me. Her blood was everywhere, hot and sticky as it stuck to me. She barely cracked open her eyes and reached a hand up and touched my cheek." She placed a hand on her cheek now, her eyes filling with tears that reflected the stars above us.
"'Be a fire they won't be able to put out, Naza,' was the last thing she had ever said to me. When her eyes closed...I shattered. All the anger, the fury, the raw, unending pain that had been festering inside of me exploded. More fire than I had ever used before burst out of me like a tidal wave. I don't remember how long I burned for, but when I awoke, everything around me was black, and ash was floating in the air around me. Everything but me and my mother was burned to soot." I sucked in a breath, worrying my lip between my teeth.
"I laid my mothers body on the floor and burned it slowly, letting the ashes rise up into the air and out of that damn cape where she belonged," Nazira said, her voice cracking. "I don't know how long I had been curled in on myself, but I only looked up when I saw a pair of black boots in front of me.
"Sable Deidre stood before me. He had only been nineteen, he hadn't hit his peak and had only been a few weeks into his title of the King's Killer. He didn't look afraid when he saw me, didn't bawk at the ash or the tears on my face. He simply extended a gloved hand to me.
"I'm like you, he had said. Shadows flickered around him at that. I come from a place where they don't hate you for what you are. I want to take you there. Take my hand and you'll never have to see this place again. And I was desperate, and I knew if I didn't take his hand I'd be dead in hours. So...I placed my hand in his and he transported us to the king. He asked me to display my power and I accidentally set his rug on fire." I laughed.
"After that, Sable and I trained and my power grew stronger and more controlled. We worked as a pair until Ayaz came along, then Caspian. After that we became the cadre." She turned towards me. "I hope you...understand me now."
"Nazira, of course I-" She interrupted me by wrapping her arms around my shoulders. She smelt of jasmine, and her hair was soft as it tickled my cheek.
"I never wanted to hurt you," she said, pulling away from me. "We haven't known each other long, but I can tell you're already going to be an essential part of this team. I really think you're going to change things here, Eira." For better or for worse though? That was the question.
"Thank you for telling me," I said. She nodded.
"Now you get to tell me your trauma another time," she said, bumping her elbow with mine.
"Of course," I muttered. Now did she want the trauma with or without all my secrets and lies?
The sound of water running pulled me out of a light sleep. Darcy was curled against my neck, purring into my shoulder. I blinked up at the ceiling, trying to gather my thoughts. There was a crash and suddenly I was jerked back into full consciousness.
I sat up, practically flinging Darcy off of me. "Shit," I breathed, looking down at her. But she curled right back up into a ball and went to sleep, purring away to her heart's content. I pushed the covers off of myself and slowly stood. I was wearing one of Sable's shirts, a shorter one that just barely hit the middle of my thighs. I hadn't been expecting company. And I certainly hadn't been expecting anyone in the shower.
I squinted, glancing at the clock mounted on the wall. It was three in the morning. Who was showering at three in the morning? Alarm bells went off inside my head and my hands dropped to my sides, ice whirling around them. A blue glow from my palms softly lit the room.
I crept forward, the temperature dropping in the room. I heard Darcy hiss behind me at the change in temperature. I tip-toed over to the door, listening to the sound of the water streaming. There were no more crashes only...only...sobbing?
I felt my heart practically cease beating in my chest. Someone was sobbing in Sable's bathroom. A man was sobbing in Sable's bathroom. What in the hells? I put my hand on the knob, ice forming where I touched, but I hardly cared. I pushed it open, staring at what I saw.
Dark armor, black as night, was on the floor, dropped at random. And blood...blood was everywhere. Blood coated the armor, the floor, the counter, the glass of the frosted shower wall. And behind that frosted glass was a silhouette. A dark, massive silhouette. One I'd recognize anywhere, if only just an outline.
"Sable," I breathed. He was...sobbing. Sable Deidre, the king's killer, was crying. I rushed forward, slipping on blood as I yanked open the shower door. Steam wafted up to greet my face and I grimaced, hating the heat. But it didn't matter. It didn't matter.
Sable was on his knees, his head bowed. Naked. His skin was matted with blood, his hair was coated with it too. It was under his fingernails and on his collarbones. Everywhere. His shoulders shook as he cried, his muscles tensing. He didn't even look at me. It was as if he didn't even know I was there.
"Sable," I said, going onto my knees. The water poured over me, soaking me down to the bone. I kneeled in front of him, placing my hand on his arm. "Sable, look at me." He had his hands over his face, his breath wheezing with every inhale and exhale.
"Sable, come on," I said, trying to pry his hands from his face. He didn't budge. Shadows wrapped themselves around me, burying us in a cocoon of darkness. The only thing I could see was him. Was this how it was for him all the time? Always enveloped in darkness?
"Move your hands," I whispered. "Come on, let me in." I placed my other hand on his chest, right above his heart. "You're here. With me. I can feel your heart, it's pounding against my hand strong and sturdy right now. You're with me, Sable."
Slowly, so incredibly slowly, he peeled his hands away from his face. Placing them at his sides. "I killed them," he said, his voice rough. He wasn't looking at me, his eyes were closed, water dripping off of his long eyelashes. I had never seen him look more beautiful. More tragic. More vulnerable.
"I killed them all." Shadow tendrils, soft as feathers, brushed my cheeks, my neck. "I'm a fucking monster." He killed those officials. He killed the people plotting against Hiraeth. I swallowed down the discomfort.
"You're not," I whispered.
"I am," he said, shaking his head. "I kill everyone. I get no break, I kill, and kill, and kill. I'm just...I'm just darkness, Eira. I'm lost, I'm drowning in it. I'm always drowning, and no one's there. No one is pulling me out."
"Sable-"
"I'm a fucking monster," his shoulders started to shake harder, his breathing more rapid. So...I did the one rational thing I could think of. I reached up and I slapped him, hard, in the face. Finally...his eyes met mine.
"You're not a monster," I said firmly. "You've been treated like one and so you think you're one, but you're not. This-" I pressed my hand against his heart harder. "Is not darkness, unless you allow it to be and I don't think you want to."
"Eira-"
"I'm not going to let you drown," I said. He started to look down at the floor again and so I reached up and grabbed his jaw. I brought our forehead together, feeling his warm, damp skin against mine. Leather and embers. It felt like coming home.
"This is me, saying I'm not going to let you drown. This is me saying that I see you. That I see your light." I said. I dragged my hand down till it was at the center of his chest. "Saying that I don't think you're a monster."
"I'm so...I'm so lost," he said, his voice cracking.
"I know," I said gently. "I'm lost too. But we can get out together. I'm not giving up on you. I'm not going to let you break." He brought a hand up to my cheek, his thumb skimming my cheekbone.
"I broke a long time ago, love," he said. Love.
"I did too," I whispered. "But I'm not letting you drown. If you go down, I'm going down too."
"I don't hate you," he said. "I want you to know that." His nose brushed mine and his hand moved to the back of my neck, gripping it firmly as if he needed it to stay grounded. I'd gladly give him my entire being if it meant he'd stay down there with me.
"I know," I said.
"Good," he whispered. There was a share breath between us, a beat. He slumped against me and then I knew he was gone. I let myself stay there for a moment, tucked away in our little cocoon of darkness, lost in his scent. I stayed for only a moment, enjoying it before he awoke and realized his mistake. Because surely he'd think this was a mistake the moment he woke.
I cleaned the blood off of Sable with a washcloth from the hips up. Everything else was up to fate and a prayer. After that, I'd managed to dry him off with a towel, forced him into a pair of pants and shoved him into bed. And then the real work started.
I gathered up his armor and put it all into the shower. Then, I grabbed a sponge from under the sink and got to work on cleaning all the blood from the bathroom. I worked for hours until my muscles ached, my hands were bone dry, and the bathroom smelt only of chemicals.
Then, I cleaned his armor in the shower, dried them, and shoved them under the bed so that he didn't have to see them again any time soon. And then...finally, I took a shower myself. I didn't let myself focus on what had just happened between us, didn't let myself think about how everything had just shifted. I just focused on getting clean.
I brushed my teeth for the second time that night, got into another one of his shirts, burned the one I wore before in the fireplace, and then crawled into bed. And in all of the chaos of the night, from Nazira's talk with me, to Sable coming home...I had forgotten the thing I had been dreading for months. Something that I had tried to keep myself distracted from the entire day.
Tomorrow was Tellie's birthday.