Page 37 of Where We Belong

“I Turned at thirty-two, so did Aiden and Rhory. That was an interesting year. Your uncle and dad on their fiftieth birthday. It starts off slow for a while, you think you have food poisoning or something, and then it just hits you like a chariot when your body makes the change. Didn’t that happen to you? Maybe your human side interfered in some way.”

“I think— I think it was my thirty-first birthday.” All those times I thought I was going through withdrawals. Lying on my bathroom floor trying to drink the pain away. The headaches. The fevers. The chills. I thought it was my body punishing me for every terrible choice I’d ever made. But it wasn’t punishment. It was my body trying to drag me here long before Kaed ever found me. I thought the worst thing in the world would be dying for these people. Now I’m realising I might survive them instead.

Chapter 35

Ashley

I had a path, a destiny,

a vision for my demise,

Will I ever be able to shake what I’ve been told today? I feel like I’m mourning. Grieving. Forever immortal? I don’t want to die, especially not for their shitty cause, but I don’t want to live forever either. Always caught between two stupid options. Blaming my sadness on what happened to me in the cells is fast becoming a cop-out. Of course, that escalated it, but I think I’ve been this way for a long time. Not having a drink to fall back on is hard, but I can’t believe how reliant I’ve been on it. How often I think of it. I keep saying I want to go home, but to what? That messy little dump, that perfect reflection of my mind? I can’t bring myself to bathe here, but when did I last do it anyway?

Hot, unwelcome tears prick at my eyes as I sit on the edge of the marble tub. My fingers graze the golden taps, and I turn one absentmindedly, feeling the water’s warmth against my fingertips. Lantern light casts reflections across the swirling blue ceiling like ripples on water. And then, the tears come. Another broken promise to myself. My chest heaves, and I slip from the edge of the bath to my knees, sobs rattling through the hollow luxury of the room. Pain claws at every part of me, and the depth of forever presses down until I can’t breathe.

Water sloshes over the rim, soaking my knees, but I can’t move. I just shake while Kaed douses me again and again, reality scattering like broken glass in my mind. I stay there, crumpled until even the rush of water feels like it’s mocking me. I have no control, I never have. Not over my life, my magic, not even my own tears. Everything slips through me like water. How does someone begin to build something out of nothing? How do you break thirty years’ worth of habits? Where do I start?

Chapter 36

Aiden

nothing more than my God and my King,

and heaven as my prize.

I was not prepared when Agni suddenly marched into the dining hall this morning and declared, “I’m coming to your class today.”

My first instinct was to tell her to throw herself off a Cinder Cliff, but I bit my retort, schooling my expression into something more appropriate. “Meet me at the front gates in thirty minutes. And if you will not bathe, at the very least, wear shoes.”

For weeks, I have watched her enter the dining hall each morning. She would stride in, scan the room, and stalk out again without so much as a word. It has become a boring, predictable ritual now. You would think for someone who has been here for over a month, she would have adopted some of our manners. I had always wondered what my half-sister from The Above might be like. What was her name? Did she resemble me? Did we share the same affinity for knowledge? Even long after the news of her death broke, I had imagined every possibility, but nothing could have prepared me for reality. She looks nothing like the ethereal figure woven into our tapestries. She is disheveled to say the least. Her hair is in a tangled ponytail, her clothes stained and stiff, and the smell, by the gods, the smell. I cringe at the thought of introducing her to my students in this state. Oblivious to my discomfort, or anyone else’s it seems, she struts with her head high.

Agni gapes at the wonderful halls lined with art and accolades as we enter. A sense of pride sparks through me, my goodness I simply cannot help myself. “This is the Mordain School. I studied within these halls, as did Rhory and Eira, your Captain and his lieutenants, and many you now see serving at court. Her brows shoot up, lips pulling apart. “Oh wow, so you do know how to speak to me like a human?”

“I am not a human.” I cannot hide my sneer, but in all honesty, I am not trying to. That shall teach me to throw a dog a bone.

“You know what I mean, it’s a figure of speech. It doesn’t even matter.” She sighs.

“It does matter. I am fae, and you should call me such. You might like to read one of the books launching themselves at your bedroom door and learn, instead of assuming we will shape ourselves around your ignorance. Your kind is infamous for this. Do you know how I know that? Because I took the time to learn.” Insolence.

“You keep calling me Agni, when I’ve told you to call me Ashley.” I ignore her glare.

“Because that is your name. It matters not how you feel about it. It is fact. Just like I am fae. Fact.”

“Yeah, but you told me to call you something that I don’t think is important. It’s the same thing. Fact. And you are an asshole. Fact.”

“Perhaps we should agree to disagree. Quietly, please.”

We walk in a delightful silence for a moment that is gone too soon. She glances at me an unnerving number of times before something in her unfortunately resolves. “Did you like school?” It is as if she is actively trying to get to know me. How irritating. I do not wish to engage with another blood relative about to die. Something in my stomach drops at the thought, taking me by surprise but I adjust my crown and put the feeling to the side. I sift through my etiquette training for a rule that might justify pushing her into one of the empty classrooms we pass and locking the door but come up blank. What does surface, however, is: Be a little kinder than you have to be.

“I hated school.” I say with an exaggerated sigh. “My main aim each day was to set everything on fire.”

“I bet you didn’t get in trouble though, perks of being the Prince of the world or whatever,” she says, a small teasing note in her voice that strikes something unfamiliar in me.

We turn a corner, and the hall narrows into a steep flight of stairs made of blueish rock. “It was worse for me. My grandfather ensured it.”

We reach my classroom, the murmur of conversation vanishing as the students rise to their feet. Beautiful obedience. I force a polite smile.

“You may be seated. This is Princess Agnimitra,” I say over the scraping chairs, gesturing toward her. “Daughter of the former Prince Joash and heir to the throne, for now.”