Page 39 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

That’s all I had done.

Watched.

Neo had watched me, too. He’d seen me as he’d held her, and he’d still held her.

My last words echoed around my head as Visha’s magic cast out, disappearing. As the memory flared away, realisation set in. It had not been a dream, not a hallucination. She’d been there that night. I had not imagined her.

“I’m going to kill him,” I said, standing.

Cai blocked my path, his hand on my shoulder. “For caring about her?”

“Care?” I barked a laugh. “That idiot saw me. He knew what he was doing.”

“And what was he doing, Mal? What did he know?” He let go of me and stepped back. “Have your old room back. Don’t go to her tonight. Not like this. She won’t talk to you like this.”

“Then I'll wait until she wants to, but I won’t stay away. I didn’t return to stay away. I didn’t fight to come back to this world to stay away. I’m done staying away.”

I’d waited in her room for almost all night. At one point, I'd considered showing up at Neo’s house and dragging her back here, but I didn’t want to even consider the possibility that she had gone to him. Then I’d felt her around Tenebrose, I’d felt her shadows move, she’d not gone to him. So, I’d settled to laying down. Only I had not considered falling asleep.

Something had gripped my ability to breathe. Like a heavy weight holding me in place. It wasn’t just anything holding me back, it was black steel chains that brandished my skin the more I struggled, and they were forcing me to watch what laid before me, a tight iron mask over my head, not letting me even turn my head and look away from the view ahead. Snow’s body hung from the ceiling, feverish children lying below her feet, more bodies scattered around. Snakes and shadows and death feasted on their bodies, draining them of blood and of their soul. All faces I knew. Faces I'd let die. Faces of people whose death I’d felt and would never be able to forget. Once you saw and felt the brand of death, you couldn't unsee or unfelt it.

“Weak,” someone hissed on my ear. So many years had passed yet that voice was the one I could never forget or banish away. “So weak, my son,” father continued. “How can you be one with death when you fear it so? How can you be a son of mine when you fear your own heart!” He circled me. “We must do what we have to do. Rip it, break it, drain it. All until it can no longer feel a thing. It is the only way.”

He’d done as he’d said.

And he’d failed.

It would have been easier to not have failed.

At some point, I pretended I had, but I’d been found out soon after, and he’d done it all over again. Failing all over again. Many more times.

Everything before me began vanishing, one after the other they turned into ghosts of black smoke and then faltered in the wind until the dark room of my mind and the echo chamber of memories emptied. The mask slipped from my face, dropping to the ground with a thud. Then the chains slithered off my body as if they had never bound me. The creeping feel of death washed off my skin next, the scent disappearing from my lungs and the thought gone with them, too.

Shhhh, a small voice cooed, humming some intelligible soft lullaby. Gentle cold fingers raking through my hair, making my entire skin rise with chills.

Warm and cold. It had always felt like that.

Her touch had always felt like that.

Thora stood crouched before where I’d laid on the sofa, one arm hugging her knees to her chest and the other reaching towards me. Her hand dropped from my hair to tenderly stroke my arm back and forth. Her head rested on her knees, tilted to the side while her eyes were lost somewhere in the distance of the room. She hummed again, rocking herself back and forth as she ran her fingers over my arm, comforting me. As she always had.

At some point during my staring, her hand stopped moving and so did her humming. For a small moment, she remained frozen before her head slowly turned in my direction. When she noticed I was awake, she quickly pulled her hand back, staggering and trying to move away from me. Her back hit the small table behind and she winced.

I chuckled. “Too late to make a run for it.”

Rubbing her sore back, she stood and made to head back to her bed, stopping when I said, “I’ve always been awake every time you’ve done it.”

Every night.

Every single night I’d feel her hands on me.

Some nights, I had even wished for nightmares only so she could be there to draw me out of them.

She whipped around so fast she got dizzy. “What?”

“You used to talk to me as well.” The world went so quiet after I left, and I wondered if it had always been so quiet. I wondered how I had ignored the quiet so much. She left a void that couldn’t be filled with anything. No drink, no noise, no other person could fill. While I’d fought one addiction, I’d fallen into another. Every night, I'd torture myself with thoughts of her. And my mind was ever so obedient to that torture. “You’d say so many things.”

Stunned, she looked at me. “You never said anything.”