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He’scrying.
We lock gazes and the shame I see in him upends me.
“FUUUCCKKKKK!” Leon roars. “GET HER AWAY FROM ME!”
My teeth chatter and my whole body begins to tremble, but for some unfathomable reason I can’t move. It’s like my feet are fixed to the stone, and my heart… It thrashes inside my chest, beating wildly for a man I should hate. That Idohate. Except right now, at his most dangerous, all I feel is a deep sense of sadness for everything he’s lost, and I know that if I don’t leave right now, this will be the end of me. This, right here, is my death. I will die at the hands of a man who is crying, raging, violent, because I made himfeel.
Because I held up the mirror and made him see.
“Get. The. Fuck. Away,” Jakub says through gritted teeth.
“He’s hurting,” I reply, my hand reaching up to his mother’s necklace. “I want to help him.” I don’t know why at that moment, as I rest my fingertips against the cool metal, I decide to say those specific words, but I do. They feel both right and wholly wrong. He doesn’t deserve my empathy, but he gets it regardless.
I should be gleeful. I should behappyLeon’s in pain.
But I’m not.
Right at this momentI’m not.
Jakub winces as he stares at me. “Go! Now!”
“But—”
“If you want to help my brother, then get the fuck away from here. RIGHT NOW!” Konrad yells, his gaze cutting into my chest, ripping out my damn empathy, and smearing it all over the pretty dress I’m wearing, making me filthy with it. We lock gazes and I see the love he has for his brother as plain as day. “Please,” he adds through gritted teeth.
With one firm nod of my head, I turn on my heel and walk away.
Like the confused, fucked-up woman I’ve become, I don’t use this as an opportunity to run. I simply walk back through the castle, past countless rooms, down several corridors and up two flights of stone steps until I reach Thirteen’s room. I’m on autopilot.
My mother’s letter. Leon’s pain. Konrad and Jakub’s love. My empathy. Fate’s fucking decree. It all pinwheels inside my head. Fucking me up.
“Thirteen, please, let me in,” I whisper, my forehead pressed against the wood.
After the third knock, she opens the door, takes one look at my face, and sits me down on the edge of the bed. Removing the jewellery carefully, she places them back in the box, then helps me out of the prettiest dress I’ve ever worn and hands me a loose, pale grey smock dress and a glass of water. I pull on the dress, and drink the water absently, feeling out of sorts. Strange. Unhinged from reality in a way. All I can feel is Leon’s pain, and Jakub’s and Konrad’slove.
It was deep, fierce. It was a… surprise.
All of it was so intense, so overwhelming that instead of using the moment to run, all I could do was return to this room.
All I could do was stay.
Picking up her pad and pencil, Thirteen writes something then hands it to me, tapping the pad so that I stop staring off into the distance and read the words settled on my lap.
You feel it, don’t you? You feel their brokenness and their need. Their love for one another.
I look at her and nod. “Yes, I felt it.”
She nods, writing more words.
That’s whyIstay. That’s why you must stay. I cracked open the floodgates. That was myjob.
“Because of my mother’s letter?”
Partly,she writes.
“And the other part?”
That’s not important. What’s important is that you see. Everything you’ve said about them is right. They are dark men. But there is hope for them now that you’re here. You have a job to do, Christy.
