Page 84 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

But he should have been there. In our room. Where he had been every day at that hour. Lounging on his sofa and waiting for me. But he wasn’t today.

It suddenly felt like no time had passed. Like this was just another time I’d gotten too close to him, and he’d finally realised he’d gotten too close to me. It felt like just another time he’d abandoned me to cleanse himself of it. Alcohol, women, drugs. I was wondering what his poison of choice had been this time.

After an hour of tossing and turning, I got up and put a dressing gown on.

Empty.

His room in Adriata was empty. Everywhere he should be was empty. It only meant…it only meant that he was in places he always was where he didn’t want to be where he was supposed to be.

It would never change, would it?

The cycle would never stop.

He wanted me close, just not that close.

I dropped to the floor, grasping at my chest for the lance that had speared through it. Cursing the way I couldn’t so easily sink into my mind and not think at all since he’d returned, I grabbed at my hair, trying to forcibly will my head into obeying. But it wouldn't work. All I could think was him back then. Drunk. Entirely out of his mind in drugs. Women hanging over his arms. Their red lipstick all over him. Their pungent perfumes drowning his.

“You’re an idiot, Thora,” I chastised, pushing to stand up and stopping when I caught something discarded under his bed, hidden from sight. The only thing out of order in his otherwise clean room that looked like no one had slept in for months.

Sketchbooks littered the floor under his bed. The ones I’d gifted him after he’d told me he used to draw. The ones he’d always refused to use because he no longer found anything beautiful enough to draw. But they weren’t brand new like I expected them to be, and when I flipped the cover open, I saw that they weren’t unused either. Charcoal. He’d used charcoal to draw.

He’d drawn a portrait. A woman, long hair bound in a braid, looking ahead. My fingers went to my fringe first and then to the one on the girl’s portrait before sliding to the only thing with colour on the page—on the green he’d used on her eyes. My hand shook when I flipped the page to find the same girl drawn again, her profile this time. Again, and again, the same girl was drawn in the sketchbook. Sat on a bench while reading a book. Crouched between a field of flowers. Sat on a vanity while combing her hair. By the beach, holding a wrap around her shoulders.

Alone.

From afar.

All of the drawings looked like they were sketched from afar because the girl seemed alone.

I drew a sharp breath when the next page showed the girl sleeping on the bed, tears drawn down her face while she clutched in her fist what looked like a ribbon.

The sketchbook fell out of my hand, and I braced myself on the table when the whole world around me began to spin. This is why he wouldn’t apologise for leaving me. He’d never really left me. He’d only ever left my sight while I’d never really left his.

I wasn’t sure how my feet carried me out of his room, but I was finally walking. I was walking away from this entire mess, and I was not going to look back. I’d given up on that once, had I not?

Then there he was. Walking towards me.

It somehow was too late to feel relief.

Malik grasped my arm when I was about to go past him. For a moment, he just looked at me, searching for answers I was not going to give him. The more he looked, the more he frowned. “Don’t make me ask what’s wrong.”

“You just did.” I pushed his hand away.

He had other plans though. Grabbing me by the waist, he put me on a stair step, letting me tower over him while his hands were planted firmly on my hips. “Tell me, Rora, or I swear I will rip an answer from the damn walls if I have to.”

“Those five years when you would visit, why did you never let me see you?”

There was a brief look of surprise on his face. “Heard you were happy.”

“That is such a lie, Malik Castemont. Such a horrible lie for you to say. When did you figure out that I was happy? When you were watching me in my sleep or hidden behind a wall or a tree or a shadow? Did I look happy from afar?”

The loud silence that settled confirmed everything. “Who told you?”

“People knew?” Snow and Kilian had kept this from me?

He looked away for a moment, his gaze jerking back to my hands. His hand wrapped around one of my wrists as he turned my palm and fingers stained from the charcoal. “Were you snooping around my room, little bird?”

“So what?”