We’d escaped, at least, but at what price?
None of this had turned out as it should have.
I should have listened to Auric,I lamented, a statement I’d repeated to myself all day and night.
Because I hadn’t slept.
Of course, no one really had.
And Layla hadn’t said a single fucking word.
Glancing back at her, I found her slumped against the bench. She wouldn’t even sit on it. Instead, she sat on the ground where she continued to mindlessly scratch at the soil. Her graceful fingers were now speckled with dirt, her once polished nails marred beyond recognition.
It was as if she needed her body to reflect the state of her soul.
Damaged.
Broken.
Distant.
She’d been degrading every hour that passed. Any attempt to talk to her only made her retreat into her shell, so I allowed my soul to fracture with hers as I helplessly watched her continue her destructive behavior.
Nothing about this was right.
But what can I do?
Surely there’s something.
I’m a god for crying out loud. Right?
My jaw tightened as I hated myself a little bit more.
Layla seemed completely unaware of my internal struggle. She momentarily paused her digging as if a painful spasm had taken over her body. Her wings shrank to her back as she trembled. Her chest froze for so long that I feared she’d lost the will to breathe.
However, her lips gave into an exhale a half-a-beat later.
Then she began the digging again even though I spotted blood forming around her nails.
I didn’t dare try to stop her. If I managed to make her look at me, I wasn’t sure I could bear the dead look in her eyes staring into my soul, fracturing me even more from within.
My gaze shifted to Novak, her existing mate who might have a better shot at helping her than I would. Layla didn’t know me, didn’t trust me. She wasn’t going to let me in. She also blamed me for grounding her flight. Even though I knew it had saved her life.
I was the last person she wanted to talk to.
Unfortunately, Novak seemed just as broken, in his own way, but the flare of his deadly wings suggested he wasn’t going to give up without a fight.
He kept muttering “Survivor” under his breath, as though he refused to believe Auric was truly dead.
I… I didn’t know what to believe.
Speculation wouldn’t help us, which was why I was waiting for the Noir report from the palace. That would tell us what we needed to know.
The reports would tell us if anyone had survived.
And Vasilios would finally be here tomorrow.
All we could do right now was wait and recuperate.
