“I… wasn’t sure if…” he panted, clearly still out of breath.
I decided to put him out of his misery. “Another time,” I assured him. It wasn’t exactly the highest priority right now.
My mother ran back in with some water and helped Tristan to sit up, handing him the glass. At the same time, I heard a smaller pair of footsteps approach the door, and turned to see Azrael rubbing his eyes before peering into the room.
“Azrael!” I called out. “Why are you up?”
“I heard yelling,” he groaned in a soft, tired voice. “Is Mr. Tristan okay?”
I gave Tristan one more glance before making my way to Azrael and picking him up. His head instantly fell to my shoulder as he slumped over in my hold. “He’s alright now. Let’s get you back to bed.”
As I walked away with him, I heard Tristan whisper in the back of my mind.
Thank you, Morrigan.
I tried my best to ignore the lingering heat on my palm where our skin had connected.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there with Azrael.
Eventually, he fell asleep on my lap, and I didn’t have the heart to move him.
I heard a soft knock on the door, then my mother stepped inside. Her eyes lowered to Azrael snoring on my legs, and a small smile pulled at her lips. “I can take over if you’d?—”
“No,” I said a bit too loudly. Azrael stirred, and I began humming to him quietly once more until his breathing deepened again. “I… I’d rather be here.”
With an eerie kind of grace, my mother moved toward the bed and sat down beside me. It was hard to see her as a… whatever you would call it. Ghost? Soul? To me, she was just…her. Her skin may have been a few shades paler. The brown in her hair may have faded slightly. But she was still the beautifulLady Guineverethat I had spent my entire life adoring.
“You haven’t forgotten my song,” she mused, almost as if saying it to herself instead of me.
I wanted to respond to that, but it reminded me of every nightmare she held me through. Every bad night with Maeryn… Yes, my mother did what she could to soothe me. To protect me at the risk of being removed from my life. But as I looked down at Azrael, I wondered what exactly it was thatIcould offer him. Between trying to be at his side every day, and battling my own nightmares, I had barely rested. If it wasn’t for my mother taking him in the mornings, I would be running on fumes alone.
How would I protect him?
“Morrigan,” she whispered, and her cold hand touched my cheek. I felt her wipe away something wet just below my eye, and I didn’t even know that I had been crying. “What’s wrong, flower?”
My bottom lip quivered, and I bit down on it as I tried to find the words. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to dothis.” I gestured toAzrael with my chin. “What if I fail? What if he gets hurt because of me? What if, after everything I’ve done, we go home and he—” I had to stop myself and take in a shaky breath. “What do Ido?”
Her smile widened into a warm one as she scooted herself closer to me. “Your best,” she answered simply. “You do your best.”
I had to fight for control, trying to prevent my shaking from waking Azrael. “He has no one, Mom. He doesn’t have a father… a mother…”
“He hasyou.” Her fingers threaded through my hair as she held the both of us at her side.
“I don’t want to fail him,” I whispered, the confession heavy in my chest and weighing my heart down like a mountain of stone.
“My sweet girl,” she sighed, pulling me closer. “Look at him.”
When I lowered my eyes, Azrael’s fingers dug into the fabric of my pants, but his face relaxed with a sense of ease. He never looked this peaceful in the tunnels—there was no peace there. But here, he barely went a single second without smiling during the day, and it had barely been a week.
My mother’s fingers gripped my chin before lifting my face to meet her gaze. “Morrigan… I spent years praying to the gods for them to give me the strength to even achieve half of what you have accomplished for that boy.” Then, her eyes glistened a little against the light of the candles hanging around us. “One wall.”
“What?” I asked, not understanding what she meant.
“You spent your entire life trapped by a single wall. And I’m asking you to let it down. Protect yourself. Protect Azrael. But find that crack again, and slip through it. Take your freedom.Unburdenyourself. No one will hurt you here. Ineedyou to believe that.”
I stared into her eyes for a long time, neither of us saying a word.Unburden yourself.How could I?
“I don’t want to be weak anymore,” I admitted to her. “I feel like a ragdoll. A toy. Some moments, I have a small amount of clarity, but at night,in the dark, it’s like I’m drowning. And I’mscared. I’m scared that if I even acknowledge that feeling, then I won’t make it back to the surface again.”
