Page 25 of At The End There Was You

“Why are you never angry at me?”

“Why would I be angry at you?”

“Many are.” He reached to push a strand of wild hair behind her ear. “So you’ve been sad before.”

She shrugged and then bit her lip, forgetting he’d told her not to.

“The Mage was your father,” he said matter of factly.

“He was.”

“And your mother died after he did.”

She took a deep breath. “She did.”

“And you?”

Her eyes found his, as if looking for her answers there. “What about me?”

“Where were you left in this negative equation?”

“Here,” she replied meekly.

“Here,” he repeated like he always did. She often wondered if it was because he truly could’t grasp the meaning of the word. “Where is it that you want to be?”

“I don’t know. No one ever told me anything. For as long as I lived, I followed their orders. Ate when they asked me to eat, slept when they asked me to sleep, only cried when they’d let me cry, laughed only when it was appropriate to laugh. Then they left and I didn’t know who to ask and no one would tell me anything.”

“Is this why you joined the congregation?”

She pointed to the ceiling and asked in a hushed voice, “Would he turn me into a cockroach if I said it out loud?”

Azriel shrugged. He shrugged.

“Yes,” she whispered. “After they passed, the first time I felt relief was when I came here. It is ridiculous, I know.”

“Wanting to find purpose is not ridiculous, Winter. What’s ridiculous is the fact that you were ripped of the choice.”

“My parents were of high status, mingled with the rich and the powerful, sat high in the ladder of faculty, so anything I did wrong, they did wrong. They didn’t rip me of the choice. I chose to obey them.” Because she didn’t want to disappoint or fail them, Winter omitted from her answer.

“Choose and force do not share a meaning.”

“They did not force me.”

“No, maybe not, but taking away your ability to even have other choices isn’t exactly so far off.”

Winter’s lips parted, ready to answer, but the answer did not come. He was right. “And you?”

“What about me?”

“Did you have choices?”

His smirk was almost wicked. “Many.”

“Coming here to look for a way to fight off Death, was that a choice you made?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t look too pleased and it is not that you are trying hard enough to match the severity of what is asked of you.”