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Chapter 34
Then
No no no no no.
Calomyr couldn’t be dead. Because that would mean that every single person who meant something to me, aside from my mother, had been ripped from my life. Because even a world devoid of Saints, devoid of a higher power, devoid of a universal truth, couldn’t support a world with so much pain, so much devastation. My grief was heavy enough to fracture the world beneath it.
“Petra, I’m so sorry,” my mother whispered.
Before I could ask how, my legs began to move. I bolted out the door, past Tyrak, the air closing in around me as I sprinted through the streets. Shabby buildings flew past me as my feet carried me to the water, then west to the only place I could think to go.
My lungs burned as I reached the cliffs, shuffling along the small ledge, willing my eyes to stay clear until I turned the last corner.
My feet hit the cave floor and I crumbled to the ground, wishing the walls would collapse over me, crush me into the oblivion that held Larka, and Da, and now, Calomyr.
Fists and feet and knees and elbows connected with stone, blood beginning to run down my limbs. My knuckles split and I welcomed the pain, anything,anythingto distract me from the gaping wound in my chest.
Calomyr was dead. The man I loved was dead. My future was dead.
I laid back, staring at the dark crystals on the ceiling of the cave, and willed death to find me, too.
???
Inkwell was empty, its residents having flooded the other districts to try to steal a look at the King as he and the rest of the High Royal Court left the city for some foreign business. The King’s bedroom would be empty, then, just as I was. I relished the silence that so rarely found its way into Inkwell, the empty streets leaving room for my grief.
I laid in front of the fireplace that raged despite the warm summer day. The suffocating heat against my skin was the only reminder that I was alive. I shouldn’t be this close to the flames — I knew that had I not been consumed by grief, the heat would burn. But I didn’t think I could be in any more pain than I was right now.
Castemont told me they buried Cal in the Royal Cemetery, in a section designated for fallen guards. He told me I wasn’t allowed in the castle, and I wanted to scream at him and tell him I’d already been to the castle, but I’d promised Cal I’d keep it a secret. And I was afraid. Afraid that if I saw Cal’s lifeless form nestled in the dirt, I’d throw myself in with him. Afraid of what the sight would rip open within me. So while his funeral was attended by the guards and royals he knew and the rest of the city tried to catch a glimpse of its Invisible King, I inched closer and closer to the fire.
A training exercise had gone wrong. That’s all it was. A demonstration for new recruits had somehow ended with a sword in his abdomen. That was all Castemont knew.
It was all I could think about.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his, the blue and green burning my insides just as the fire should have burned my outsides, the light leaving them as he fell to the ground, blood pouring from his wound. I could picture his hands flying to his stomach, the same hands that had held me.
My mother set plates of food down on the wooden floor near where I lay. I didn’t touch any of it. How could I? She eventually coaxed me to chew and swallow a few bits of bread, but they quickly came back up in a fit of vomit and tears. She stopped trying after that.
Day turned to night and night to day as every bit of the future that I’d briefly dreamed of turned to cinders in my hands.
???
Four months had passed by the time I looked in the mirror again. I couldn’t stand the thought of staring at my reflection, at the face that he had stared into. When I finally mustered up the courage to look, my cheekbones were protruding from my face in a way that made me look thoroughly Inkwellian. My hips were sharp. My wrists were like twigs.
Solise funneled tinctures and tonics down my throat, assuring me that they’d keep me healthy while I wasted away. I didn’t have the energy to fight her. “You are strong, child. You are loved. You were never a victim, always a warrior,” she’d whisper to me as I wept, running her hands over my back. “Fire burned and ocean tumbled.”
With Larka and Da, I hadn’t had the luxury of grieving, because without me, we’d have starved. At first I thought that was why Cal’s death hurt me so much, because I had the time to hurt, the time to grieve. But somewhere between the flames and smoke, I realized that he was the only person who made me feel alive, who made me feel like life was for more than simply surviving, that I couldlive.And now, he was gone.
Now, in our little house, with our stack of firewood and cupboard of food, I could grieve the loss of the other half of my soul.
???
Lord Castemont proposed to my mother the same day I was able to feed myself for the first time, to lift a spoon to my mouth. The ring was exquisite, and even in my vegetative state, even though the color hurt me to even think about, I could tell that the emerald that sat atop the gold band was beautiful.
But no. It had been four months since Calomyr left me. Only a year since Larka. And seven months since my father.Seven months.
My mother could not marry Lord Castemont. Somewhere in the haze of my grief, my mother had bloomed again, the sweet, delicate bits of her personality opening their petals to the world, petals I’d never seen before. But each time her laugh floated through the cottage, each time Lord Castemont placed a hand over hers, I swelled with such rage that I felt I may explode.
Howcould she disrespect Da like that? Why did she get to be happy while I was shattered once again?
