That was the only conclusion I could come to as I followed Calia’s scent up the stairs. It lingered outside her old bedroom, and I pushed open the door and leaned against the frame.
She stood near the back wall, staring out a window at the Odesza below. Her shoulders tensed as she sensed my presence, but did not move from her spot.
“I don’t want to fight, Rion,” she said with a heavy voice. “So, if that’s what you’ve come to do?—”
“No,” I said quickly, pushing aside her assumptions. “I do not wish to fight any more than you do.”
The thought alone was abhorrent, and I did not have the mental capability to engage with her in that manner. Not anymore. Not now.
And perhaps that was more heartbreaking than anything. Was this what giving up felt like? A string of hopeless and pitiful emotions paired with the exhaustion of a fight lost?
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Then why are you here?”
I tucked my hands into my pockets. “Honestly? I have no idea.”
Her chuckle was soft, and she shook her head. “I don’t know why I came in here, either. I guess I wanted to see what had happened for myself.”
“What do you mean?”
She took in a deep breath, shifting on her feet. “Rowena told me what happened… after,” she whispered, faltering over the last word. “No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sleep. This”—she gestured up and down her body with both hands—“strange electricity buzzed through me, like pent-up, restless energy I couldn’t get rid of. I couldn’t bring myself to come in here. I guess I was scared of what I might find—so I found my way outside to the atrium and lost myself in the silence. For some reason, I found it calming. Like wrapping myself in my favorite worn blanket.”
“Comforting,” I agreed. “I feel the same when I hold my father’s glasses. They ground me.”
She nodded. “Rowena found me shortly after, and for the longest time, we only sat together and listened to the outside world come to life. Though we hardly knew each other then, I didn’t feel pressured to make conversation. But when she finally spoke, I listened to her.”
I cleared my throat, terrified of what my sister might have told her. My history was as vast as it was bloody. While I would have happily detailed every aspect of my life before Calia, I did not know what it looked like from an outsider’s perspective. “What did she say?”
Calia turned to look at me, her silhouette haloed by the sun setting just outside the glass. The skyline was a myriad of reds and deep purples. Only small splotches of pink and orange remained of the day. Her hair looked almost copper, drawing my attention as she tucked a strand behind her ear. The restcascaded down her shoulder and past her breasts, stealing the air from my lungs. It was like the first ray of light peeking through a blockade of storm clouds, a single bastion of hope that the storm was at its end.
My hands clenched at my sides, jaw ticking as I fought every instinct to go to her, to kneel and bow before her, to kiss her feet and worship her. As she glanced away, tugging at the cream sweater falling off her shoulder, I knew she had shut down.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “It doesn’t change anything.”
I ran my tongue along the front of my teeth, giving a terse nod. “Of course. Why would it?”
“Don’t do that, Rion. We promised not to fight,” she warned, but there was no bite behind her words. They were soft, resigned.
“I know,” I said quietly. “But I cannot help but hope you will change your mind. Not to fight with me, but against yourself long enough to hear me out.”
She caught her lip between her teeth, biting so hard I was sure she would pierce the soft flesh. “Why did you destroy my room?”
I ran my hand along my chin, the scruff along my jaw grating against my skin. There was so much I had not come to terms with; hazy memories of those perilous moments flitted through my mind before I could fully grasp them. The way blood stuck to my body like a second skin, the way my teeth ached, and I yearned to feel bone crush beneath my fingers. I still craved that kind of violence, the kind that saw sinew ripping from corded muscle and bone.
“I do not have many memories after Castor ripped your limp body from my arms,” I said, swallowing thickly. “I remember the screams of those around me, the partygoers that lingered in the foyer hoping to glimpse the commotion as they were quicklyushered out of the manor.” I raised my hand, examining it as though I could still see the havoc I had wrought. Would Calia run when she heard? When I told her what I was capable of and how I had lost myself to the monster under my skin?
“I remember finding Senna smirking in the corner, raising a glass of champagne in celebration before I ripped it from her grasp. Shards of glass scattered at our feet, and yet her smile grew. The noise in my mind was so great that I did not understand what I was doing or what was happening. Her perfume was cloying, the alcohol on her breath heavy as she told me how happy she was that you—my filthy fae wife who never deserved me—were dead, and how we could finally be together as my mother had promised her.” Calia’s hand came up to her throat, her lips pursed in shock at the confession she knew I was readying myself to make. I met her gaze, allowing her to see the depth of my depravity.
“I remember the way she fought and clawed as I curled my hand around her throat, slamming her body to the marble below with a shattering blow. How, even in the face of certain demise, she continued to curse your name and call out for your death as though she was proud of herself for the role she played.”
“Rion...” Calia whispered, but I was not done. There was so much more I needed to get off my chest.
“I remember using my claws to slowly dig into her chest and grasp her heart, taking pleasure in the knowledge of what it felt like to hold it in my hands and know her end was imminent. I remember the taste of her flesh as I bent down and ripped her fucking throat open, watching her cold, dark, blood bubble to the surface and spill onto the ground below. She died slowly, painfully, and when she used her last breath to at last beg for forgiveness, I squeezed the hardly beating organ between my fingers and felt the satisfied pop as it was rendered to nothing more than pulp.” The confessions poured from my lips, knowingCalia was the only one who could salvage what was left of my soul—I bared it to her. Despite what I had told her, it was the next memory I feared more than anything. “And I remember accepting my fate, stumbling out the doors as I closed my eyes and thought of you.”
A tear slipped free, falling down Calia’s cheeks as she shook her head furiously. “Why would you do that?”
“The world did not seem like a place worth living if you were no longer in it,” I said, voice breaking. “I hoped to see your face just one more time in passing, before I was sentenced to whatever existence awaited me after this life. Because there was no happy ending for someone like me.”
And then I told her I heard Jasper and Rowena behind me, cutting through the voices in my mind which howled of my worthlessness. How I welcomed the impending pain, praying for a swift release, though I did not deserve one. How they found me and had to drag me back to the manor as the sun began its ascent, and how I had crawled up the stairs to her room and shut myself inside until Jasper delivered Castor’s letter.
