Page 24 of At The End There Was You

“Why are we?”

“Any objections?”

Still dazed, she answered, “None.”

“Winter,” he called to her, and she snapped back to attention. “You were about to take us somewhere.”

“Right.” She closed her fingers around his hand and pulled him out of the library and towards her room to fetch a blanket.

Azriel stood like an anomaly in the middle of her room, observing the hollow space made of four walls, one small window, a bed and a small table. It had surprised her the same when she’d seen it for the first time. How much she had left behind in her old life made of rosy walls and fresh flowers on every nook her mother could fit. She’d been sheltered within those same rosy walls which had been covered in tar from the outside.

“They lock you in here?” he asked her.

Her laugh was half uneasy and half embarrassed. “No, they do not lock me.”

“Looks like a prison cell.”

“I’m sure even prisoners are grateful to have a warm bed.”

“Yes, but you aren’t a prisoner, are you?”

At times, she thought. “I do not ask for more. It satisfies me.”

“Satisfies,” he hummed her words as he studied the small objects on the odd table where she had her meals or sat to read and write. Picking up the book resting there, he turned to face her. “You said tales are useless.”

“It is said that they are useless, I do not think it.”

“Did you find this in the library?”

“No. It belonged—” She stopped herself at that. “It was…uhm, my mother bought it.” Only bought it, she’d never read it to Winter. In fact, she wasn’t entirely sure if her mother had even bought it for her on her seventh birthday. Her mother had seemed surprised at the book when she’d unwrapped it, and then had sent a scathing and disapproving look towards the maids. But she liked to think and pretend her mother had chosen it for her.

“So it was your mother’s.”

Her lips quivered when she forced them to whisper the word, “Yes.”

He cracked the book open and began flipping through the pages of the only possession from her old life that she’d kept. “The mention of her saddens you.”

She fiddled with the side of her robe, picking at the threads. “I’m not certain if it does.”

Azriel looked up from the page and pinned a strange look on her. “Grief is a given when you lose someone you care for, is it not?”

“I did not lose my mother. You cannot lose someone who did not want to be here. Especially someone who did not care to stay behind for me.” Winter was not sure if her mother had even considered her at all when she’d taken her own life right next to her room, just one wall away. She’d not considered that her daughter would find her first, and that she’d be the one to not feel her pulse or hear her breathe. Her mother had never considered that Winter’s white slippers would never be white again after they’d soaked in her blood, or that Winter would never forget the exact colour of blood or the exact way her mother’s eyes had sunk to a bottomless pit of grief.

“So, the memory of her angers you.”

She shook her head, and Azriel narrowed his eyes on her. “No, I’m not angry at her either.” Winter couldn’t be. Not after—no, she couldn’t be at all because she’d also been selfish before and she understood how needy that feeling was.

“Then what are you, Winter?”

“Neither sad nor angry. That is all I know.”

“Could it be because you know how to be neither of those?”

Her fingers froze at her side, letting go of the thread she’d pulled. “I know how to be angry.”

“Not at yourself, at others.”

“That, too.”