Page 101 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“This is all my fault.”

She laughed, burying her face in my chest, laughing even more. Then I felt her tears soak my shirt. “I clung to the thing that felt most normal in my life. That isn’t your fault. It isn’t your fault that I am desperate.”

“You were the most extraordinary thing that came into my life, and I boxed you like you’d fallen from the damn skies. Never let anyone see or touch or near you.”

“I was happy in that box. I’m very happy in boxes.”

“It is a cage, sweetheart.”

“It is my cage. I chose to be in it.”

“No one chooses to be in a cage.”

“Perhaps not.” She looked up at me. “But it’s the prettiest cage I’ve been in.”

“You should never let anyone put you in a cage, Thora. Never.”

“Alright.”

“You are not looking at me like you mean that.”

She bit her lower lip and flashed a bright smile, her eyes all big and wide and teary, making her look like a living doll. “Sorry.”

“You don’t look like you meant that either.”

“How do I look?”

“Like you want to lock us up inside that cage and throw away the key.”

“That’s why you were my best friend. You know me so well.”

“That’s why I am your best friend,” I said, trailing a finger down her parted mouth. “Even though you don’t tell me secrets anymore. Even though I have so many of mine to exchange for them.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be your friend anymore.”

“Tough shit.”

The way her eyes gleamed like perfect emerald fallen stars made me hate all ten years I’d spent not looking at them. “What secrets?”

“You think it will be that easy after all this?” I asked, letting my touch roam around her face, watching her lashes flutter fast and her breath hitch. My perfect torment. My biggest and most dooming secret. “When you’re ready to give me yours. The deal is a deal. How about we start with what just happened?”

“But you know this one. You know this secret,” she whispered. “I was just combing my hair. Some nights, I really think I can, you know, without thinking about back then. So I do it more often these days. But then it comes out of nowhere even on the best of days. My limbs just lock. My mind follows. Then I’m back at his mercy. Frozen still. Except that when it happens, Snow isn’t there to drag me out of his hold before he does anything worse or lets Murdoc or Renick continue doing something worse. No one is.” She lifted a hand and wiped a palm across her face. “It was gone for a while. Unless I can erase it from memory, it will always be there.” She sniffled and reached a hand to my arm, fingers tracing over her tattoos. “How do you do it now?”

“Never as bravely as you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “Don’t pity me. Even if I deserve to be pitied.”

“I am pitiful myself, Rora,” I said, wiping away her tears. “And so ashamed to admit that I think about ways to drown my own memories any way I can every second of the day. I just don’t anymore.”

“How?”

“Spite,” I lied to her for a second time in my life.

A laugh bubbled out of her, and she sniffled. “Yeah?”

“Let us spite the dead fucks.”

Her eyes filled with what looked like liquid guilt for a second before they strayed away from my face where they had been the entire time. She swallowed, opened her mouth to say something and then closed it. An entire too long of a second passed before she gave me a small untrue smile and said, “Lets.”