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It was all my fault.
Something inside me rose, different from the normal entity that niggled at the back of my mind.Brie wouldn’t want Ness to die.
No, she wouldn’t, would she?
“I’m sorry,” I said to Sister Brie, the tears that ran down my cheeks clouding my last vision of her. She who had raised me. She who had cared for me. She who had coached me through hiding my powers so no one else would find me.
She who had loved me as her child, rather than abandoning me as my own mother had.
She wouldn’t want Ness to die.
And I knew looking at Brie’s resigned face she wouldn’t.
Without further thought, I stretched out my void, drawing in all of the essences from the world around me. No mental connection was left to Ness, so I couldn’t heal her as I normally would. Her life force had completely leached away.
But there was another source of life there in that field with us. I tugged at it, pulling it away from its host in a way that reminded me of when the older students waxed their legs.
But at least it was quick.
I shoved the life force into Ness quickly and followed the connection. It took all my willpower to hold it in place as I worked, tugging at the mangled bits of good skin to form new connections. The blood had been the hardest to replace, forcing her body to work overtime under my will to rebuild its waning supplies.
But I had done it. As I pulled back from Ness’ psyche she gasped and sputtered, drawing in lung fulls of the warm autumn air. Tears leaked from her eyes, the green now glowing with hints of turquoise around the outside. She was completely depleted of greed as I had used every vestige of the essences around her to heal her, but sloth had seeped in to replace it.
Sister Brie’s sloth.
“Ryn, what happened?” she gasped out, sitting up to lift her hand to her throat. That’s when she noticed Sister Brie’s lifeless form lying a dozen or so meters from us.
Ness looked at me, her eyes going wide.
“What did you do?” The words echoed what Sister Brie had said just minutes before. I didn’t answer, the shadows from earlier creeping up to steal me from Ness’ side. This time I landed next to Sister Brie, tugging her lifeless form up into my arms.
The tears from earlier ran in rivulets down my face. Blood pooled at the edges of Brie’s mouth, her once glowing olive skin now a mottled yellow tinged with blue like a bruise. Her bright turquoise eyes were vacant, the unusual black ring around her irises that I’d seen only on her now containing only white.
I’d killed her. I’d killed my mentor. I’d done this.
I looked back at Ness who had run to us, tears running down her own cheeks in great rivers that soaked the front of her blood-stained white blouse.
Dear Gods, I killed her. I didn’t know how I’d done it, but I did. I’d stolen everything that was Brie and given it to Ness.
I closed my eyes, clutching Brie tighter to my chest. Blackness wrapped around me like a blanket, casting the world into shadows. Ness’ face disappeared into the haze, and Brie’s weight lifted from my lap.
I pulled my legs up, putting my forehead down onto my knees as I wept. There was a gaping hole in my chest a mile wide, a hole that Sister Brie had always filled. I’d patched it the best I could, drawing on my connections to Ness, Zane, and Sabina to cover it much like using duct tape over a cracked window. The crack was still there even if the rain no longer came in.
But tonight, the tape had been pulled free. I thought to the empty room, my psyche vibrating with a rawness that echoed my inner turmoil. Gods, it hurt.
Desperation clung to me as I hugged my knees closer to myself, my body shaking with the force of my sobs. I screamed into the blackness surrounding me, the sound piercing the air, a tangible manifestation of my anguish. "I want to escape," I whimpered, the plea barely a breath as it left my lips. "I need to escape."
Tears stung my eyes, blurring my vision as I buried my face into the crook of my arm. My voice was a strained whisper now, the words seeping out from the depths of the despair eating at me. "I need to get out of this pain."
The last of my strength deserted me as I slumped against the cold floor, my words a mere echo in the chilling silence. "I have to get out of this pain."
Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more of it the blackness faded, the world of before coming back. Ness stood back in the clearing, her voice calling to me to leave.
I was back again. I watched the scene play out before me again, powerless to change anything. Every time the hole in my chest splintered a little wider, the pain became more and more acute at each pass through the memory.
Each time I wanted to die instead, I couldn't handle the agony. And with it came more memories.
The way Brie had touched my cheek as a child to wipe away my tears. The way she had held me as I sobbed out my frustrations about being a freak. The way she had given me a gift each Yule morning, even knowing it was forbidden for the sisters to do so.
