A strange bedroom met me on the other side. I frowned at the star elf in the long white coat. He looked almost like a doctor. My gaze moved from his grave face to the person sleeping on the bed. Shade. My heart sank. He hadn’t made it out. In my head, I still tried to process the scene. What was he doing all the way over here? And why was he sleeping?
Queen Nimlithil placed a light hand on my back and steered me towards him. “When you tried to escape and you summoned that storm, some terrible things happened. You killed half of my guards in that squad and your friend Shade... he was either struck by a lightning bolt or blasted away by winds. Or hit by the collapsing building. Possibly all three.”
My mouth suddenly felt very dry. I worked my tongue around it before managing to produce any sound. “What are you saying?”
“He has not woken up since.” Her sad eyes turned to me. “The doctors are not sure if he ever will.”
“No.” I shook my head vigorously. “No. This is some kind of trick.”
“I wish it were.” She guided me forward until I was standing right next to his bed. “We have tried everything but I am afraid that he still has not woken up.”
Dropping to my knees next to the bed, I placed a hand on Shade’s chest. It rose and fell slowly.
“Hey,” I said and shook his body. “It’s me. You can stop pretending now.”
The assassin’s body moved in time with my hands but then remained still once I stopped shaking him. Pure terror clawed into my chest and placed its cold hands around my throat.
“Shade, it’s time to come back now,” I pressed out through a constricted throat. Tears welled up in my eyes. “Shade!” I shook him violently again but his beautiful eyes still didn’t flutter open.
Whirling back towards the queen, I stared at her, desperation dancing in my eyes. “What’s wrong with him?”
“We are not sure,” she said in a soft voice. “We think he might have suffered some form of head trauma in the blast.”
The blast that I created. My shallow breath came in fits and starts. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be real. But I could see him, touch him, and I knew that it was happening. Was real. I shook his body again with renewed strength. It rolled limply back and forth but produced no other response.
My breath wheezed in and out of my constricted throat with increasing speed. He had to wake up. He had to.
Soft hands wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me to my feet.
“I am afraid there is more,” the queen said.
“Where’s Elaran?” I blurted out between bursts of air barely bringing oxygen to my lungs.
Queen Nimlithil said nothing as she led me across the room and towards another part of it hidden behind a sheet. Blood rushed in my ears. I worked my tongue around my parched mouth again while my heart continued slamming into my ribcage. The queen pulled the fabric aside and my world shattered.
There on a table lay Elaran. His eyes were closed and his body was completely still. No soft breaths raised his chest. I tried to take a step towards him but my legs refused to obey so I stumbled forwards and tumbled to the floor. Elaran’s arm fell down and swung in front of my eyes. My hand trembled as I reached out to touch his wrist.
Cold skin met me as I put my fingers where his pulse should have been. Nothing. I let out a wail so raw it almost broke every window in the room. My whole reality crashed down around me like a smashed glass tower. Another howl ripped from my throat. My trembling hand that had confirmed my worst nightmare collapsed to the floor along with the rest of me. An unending flood of tears streamed down my face.
I felt hands around my arms and heard distraught voices call out but they might as well have been on another continent. Thrashing against their hands, I tried to claw my way back to Elaran but it was like trying to fight the tide.
The white corridor appeared briefly in front of my drowning vision again before I was dumped in another room. Someone said something but I couldn’t hear past the deafening ringing in my ears. As soon as the hands left my shoulders, I collapsed on the floor.
It was as if a bottomless pit had opened up inside me and I just kept falling further down into the darkness. Shade was in a coma and Elaran... Searing pain ripped my heart to shreds as my mind tried to finish the thought. Elaran was dead.
He was dead! I slammed my fists into the smooth floor with enough force to shatter bones. He would never again draw his eyebrows down and cross his arms with a scowl on his face. Never again call me a pregnant moose or a cockroach. Sharp rocks ground my heart into dust. He would never again back me up without question. Never again smile at a stupid joke. Never fight to protect the ones he loved. Never love. Never live.
The tightly wound cord that had kept my sanity in check snapped. I shot to my feet and grabbed the first object I could reach. Glass shattered and white flowers sailed through the air as I hurled the vase into the wall. A feral cry tore from my throat. I snatched up the bedside table and smashed it into the wall. Chips of wood flew across the room as it crashed into the unyielding wall of frosted glass. The chair was next. And after that the desk. Then the bed. Broken boards and glass whirled across the room as I destroyed everything I could get my hands on.
Strength drained from me like life from a corpse and I collapsed to the floor again. I didn’t even bother pushing the fragments of ruined furniture out of the way as I curled into a ball and pulled my knees up to my chest. Wrapping my arms around my legs as if it was the only thing tethering me to this world, I broke into hopeless sobs.
Elaran was dead. I had killed him. A pitiful cry like that from a wounded animal made it past the choked moans spilling from my throat. How could I have let this happen? I pounded a hand to the floor until it throbbed. By all the gods, I had created a blast strong enough to destroy a building. Of course people would get hurt by it! How could I have been so careless?
Water gathered in a pool underneath my cheek. I squeezed my eyes shut. The door must have opened because strong arms suddenly lifted me from the floor. I was only vaguely aware of the white armor against my body as someone carried me through the halls. My mind was too far gone to care about what was happening.
I had played with forces beyond my control and my friends had paid the price. A choked sob bubbled from my chest. The armor disappeared from underneath me and a soft mattress took its place. Elaran dead. Shade in a coma. I buried my face in the pillow. How could I go on living after this?
26.
Decades might have passed for all I cared. Lying on my side with my knees pulled up to my chest, I watched the light against the wall dim and then return again. Light to darkness. Darkness to light.
Servants brought in food. I wasn’t sure if they did it once a day or several times a day but it sat untouched on my desk until they came and removed it again. After all, I didn’t really need the sustenance. All I did was lie in that bed, staring unseeing at the light and darkness that rose and fell across the wall. But the star elves seemed to disagree because after a while, they started forcing me to eat. Everything tasted like ash but I chewed and swallowed anyway.
Sometimes, I would roll off the bed and curl up on the floor instead. The mattress was too soft and too high up. I needed the grounding feeling that the cool hard floor provided to stop my sanity from blowing out the damn window they kept opening. Whenever they found me there, they returned me to the bed.
Every day was the same. An endless sea of pain drowning me in glass shards and black despair. I wanted to shove a hand in my chest and rip my heart out so I wouldn’t have to feel anything ever again.
Time blurred together but did nothing to heal the abyss inside me. Instead, one life-draining monster fed off the other until all the pain I had experienced in my life ate at me from all sides. Everything I touched died. It really was true that the only things I was good at were to hurt and destroy and burn things to the ground. And memories of it haunted me day and night.
Blood bubbles popping and light disappearing from viv
id brown eyes in an alley where I had gotten Rain killed.
A red stain spreading across Liam’s chest when I had left him to die alone after he got shot in King Adrian’s tent.
Elaran giving up years of his life to undo that mistake.
Queen Charlotte dying in the Silver Keep because I hadn’t warned them in time.
The torrent of pain in Shade’s eyes as his little brother was forced to banish him because I had made an enemy of the Fahr brothers.
Liam leaving me and the Underworld behind because all I ever did was bring violence and bloodshed to the people around me.
Shade’s unresponsive body in that awful white room.
The cold skin of Elaran’s limp hand swinging from the table.
Everything that had happened, everything I had been through, had chipped away at me for years. A caring bit here. An understanding bit there. Cutting off pieces of my soul and snuffing out the lingering specks of light until there was nothing left but cracked stone walls splattered with blood from the death of my heart.
But time kept moving on, indifferent to the hollow husk I had become. A new dawn still rose every day. Even though the world had already ended.
I wasn’t sure when it started, but at some point Niadhir appeared in the chair by the desk. His talking was just background noise to me because I couldn’t bring myself to care about what he said, but he kept coming back anyway.
“I don’t care about what kind of food they’re bringing tomorrow,” I muttered one day.
“Oh by the Stars!” Niadhir shot up from the chair. “You responded.”
Heaving a deep sigh, I rolled over on my back. The scholar dragged over the chair and sat down right next to my bed. I could feel his concerned gaze looking for eye contact but I didn’t want to meet it.
He placed a hand on my arm. “How do you feel?”
How do you feel? That had to have been the most superfluous question of the century. How did he think I felt? I blew out an irritated sigh.
“It is only, you have been unresponsive for weeks.” He gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “I was worried.”
Weeks? So that was how long I had been lost to the never-ending nightmare. But then maybe...? A brief glimmer of hope flickered to life.
“Shade?” I asked.
“Still no change. I am sorry.”
And just like that, the tiny spark suffocated under the oppressive darkness that came rushing back. I flipped over on my side and turned my back on the concerned scholar.
He was back in that chair the next day anyway. Sometimes he read, but mostly he talked. In the beginning, it was just light subjects like what he was currently reading or something that had happened in the castle. I only replied occasionally. As the days passed and I started responding more often, he brought up more serious topics.
“There is something I have to warn you about,” Niadhir said one day. “Or rather, someone.”
Lately, I had managed to sit up when he visited so I drew my knees up and leaned back against the headboard. “Who?”
The scholar snapped his book shut and placed it on the bedside table between us before turning to me with grave eyes. “Princess Illeasia. Apparently, she was...” He cleared his throat as if he was too embarrassed to continue. “Apparently, Princess Illeasia was in love with Elaran.”
Simply hearing that name sent a wave of pain crashing over me but at least my mind didn’t shut down again. “I know.”
“Ah, I see.” He coughed again. “Well, I fear I have to warn you to stay away from her. The princess is beside herself with grief and... rage. She blames you for Elaran’s death–”
“As she should,” I stated in a flat voice while guilt ripped its claws into my chest.
“Unfortunately,” Niadhir continued as if I hadn’t interrupted, “it has gone so far that she wants you dead.”
“As she should,” I repeated.
“Queen Nimlithil has been trying to change her mind and has kept her from you but...” The concerned scholar trailed off when I sank into the mattress and turned my back on him again.
Whatever else he wanted to say, I didn’t want to hear it. This conversation was over. Princess Illeasia was right: I was responsible for Elaran’s death and she should want me dead. Hell, I had wanted me dead too. It had even gone so far one time that I had stared out that open window for hours, contemplating jumping out. But I hadn’t done it because I didn’t deserve a quick death. I deserved to live in this unending agonizing existence.
The door opened and Niadhir strode through. I squinted at the light playing in his silvery white hair. He must have left some time yesterday after I retreated into myself again because the birds mockingly chirping outside the window announced that another damn dawn had broken.
“Storm,” he said and dropped into the chair. The lines on his forehead betrayed that he was irritated. “Enough is enough.”
Drawing myself up against the headboard, I frowned at him.
“It has been weeks. You cannot keep doing this. This is not living!” He blew out a frustrated breath. “Are you really going to disrespect Elaran’s memory by spending the rest of your life as a braindead vegetable?”
I blinked at him as if he had slapped me. “What do you mean? I’m not disrespecting Elaran.”
“Yes, you are. He has been denied life but you still have it. Yet, you choose to spend every day in bed waiting for time to pass.” The chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “That is disrespectful.”
“But how can I continue living after...” My throat constricted and refused to speak the words. “After what I did.”
His pale violet eyes softened and he leaned forward to place a hand on my arm. “It is never too late to turn your life around. No matter what villainous deeds you have done in the past, you can always start anew today. You can always leave the darkness behind and embrace the light.” Placing graceful fingers on my cheek, he turned my head towards him. “And, if you wish, you will always have to option to free yourself from your demonic curse so that you can truly walk unhindered in the light.”
“I... uhm...” I began but then trailed off because I didn’t know how to respond.
A gust of warm summer winds blew in through the window and ruffled the white curtains. Niadhir stood up and ran his hands down the already immaculate shirt to straighten it.
“Now, two ladies will arrive shortly to help you bathe and get dressed.” He gave me a brisk nod. “After that, we are going for a walk.”
Only sputtered protests made it out of my mouth as the scholar turned on his heel and strode out the door. I didn’t want to go for a walk where other people might see me but it appeared as though I had no choice so I tumbled out of bed.
Usually, my body was made up of lean muscles thanks to all the fighting and climbing that came with my job, but those had wasted away after weeks of bedrest and barely eating. Now as I looked in the mirror for the first time in weeks, I found a skinny thing with lifeless eyes staring back at me. I wanted to throw something at the awful reflection.
Though, it forced me to admit that perhaps Niadhir was right. Maybe I had to start using my muscles again before I wasted away into nothingness. And he was right about something else too. If I just remained there in bed, waiting to die, I was disrespecting Elaran’s memory. Pain lashed through my body. And insulting him was the last thing I wanted.
27.
People were staring. A lot. Gripping a fistful of my white dress tightly, I tried to ignore their looks but it was impossible. Their whispers and long glances behind me made my back itch. Niadhir didn’t seem to notice because he just kept leading me downstairs while chatting lightly about his research.
When we at last reached the ground floor, my legs shook with exertion. Man, I really was out of shape.
“Oh,” the scholar said abruptly.
Following his gaze, I saw what had produced the strange reaction in the middle of his lecture on last century’s building practices. Oh, indeed. Queen Nimlithil
and Princess Illeasia were standing further into the hall. Based on the jerky way in which the princess threw out her arms and snapped her head back and forth, she was furious.
“Do you remember what I told you about Princess Illeasia’s state of mind at the moment?” Niadhir said and took a step back.
I retreated a step as well. “Yeah.”
The angry princess threw up her arms and flicked her head to the side. She drew back. Shit. We had been spotted. Illeasia didn’t hesitate a second. Taking a long step forward, she advanced on us. Behind her, the queen snapped her fingers which made an elf in white armor spring forward. Captain Hadraeth skidded to a halt in front of the charging princess and motioned for her to stay back. She stared him down but when he didn’t move aside, she stalked away in the other direction.
“Could you hear what she was saying?” I asked, my eyes still on the billowing skirts of the mad princess.
We watched Queen Nimlithil put a delicate hand to her brows and rub her forehead in silence before the scholar replied.
“Yes. She was once again trying to convince her mother that she should have you executed.” He flinched as if he had just realized what he had said. “I apologize. Perhaps I should not have answered that honestly.”
“It’s alright.” I waved a hand in front of my face. “I wanted to know.”
Niadhir readjusted his position on my arm and turned us around. “We should go.”
Nodding at his statement, I followed him down the corridor in the other direction. We moved through hallways I had never been in before. The only room I had been in here on the ground floor was the large domed one that was used as a banquet hall and ballroom so I had no idea where we were going.
At last, we stopped in front of a big white arch. I peered into the room beyond. Starhaven’s signature scent of jasmine and roses drifted out on humid air. Rippling water echoed from inside.
“What is this?” I asked.
A Storm of Glass and Stars (The Oncoming Storm Book 4) Page 17