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Lonan
When I got back to our room a short while later, Ash still wasn’t there.
I ate dinner alone, in silence, then undressed and got into bed, the conversation with Sanya spinning around and around in my mind.
It was time. I could feel it. I’d faltered before. I’d been afraid, I’d been unsure, I’d been unwilling to take on the monumental role waiting for me. But something had changed in me now, and I wasn’t sure what.
Perhaps I was simply so easily swayed by a few choice words from another. My brother’s words kept returning to me too, in moments when I let my thoughts stray.
“You’re too young and naïve to even realise how conditioned you are. You have been trained to obey.”
The fact that Balor’s voice was still ringing in my head made me sick, but I couldn’t get rid of it—I couldn’t stop hearing the words. And every time I did, I was filled with overwhelming restless energy. Like insects swarming in my belly. Like ice splintering into my limbs, urging me to move. To do something.
To stop simply sitting here on seelie land like a lump of clay, unmoulded and useless until someone else shaped me into whatever suited them.
It could have been minutes or hours later when I heard the bedroom door softly open. And I despised myself for it, but I slammed my eyes shut and evened out my breaths, pretending to be asleep. I just couldn’t handle speaking to Ash in that moment, not with my heart pounding at the thought of the conversation I planned to have with him.
I listened to the sounds of him moving around our bedroom. He kept his steps as quiet as possible, but my ears still picked up the exhausted drag of them. The despondent sigh he let out as he got undressed. The brief pause, the rasp of skin rubbing against skin as he scrubbed a hand over his face. Then the pad of bare feet going into the bathroom.
My throat closed up at the thought of leaving him.
When he got into bed a short while later, he immediately shuffled as close to me as possible and pressed a kiss to my chest before resting his head there. His body sagged against mine as he let out a long, weary breath, and I felt the whisper-soft flutter of his eyelashes against my skin as he blinked a few times before finally letting his eyes close.
It didn’t take long at all for him to fall asleep. It never did. He was always exhausted.
I tried to clear my mind and relax my body, but it was impossible with Ash pressed against me in sleep. His skin grew so hot. Unbearably hot. But I couldn’t bring myself to pull away from him, even as the air in the room began to smother me.
I stared into the darkness as my skin grew slick where it was pressed against his. A long leg was slung over my thighs, his head was still on my chest, his forearm resting on my belly. Deep, even breaths heated my skin. Sweat dampened the sheet beneath me. My hairline prickled, scalp already damp.
I couldn’t stand it.
Moving gently, wanting to squirm with guilt, I manoeuvred Ash until I could slide out from beneath him. He didn’t wake. I stopped and stared down at him in the dark for a second, slowly reaching out to tuck a stray curl behind his ear. Even in sleep, he looked tired. Strained. There was still tension around his eyes, and his jaw was clenched like he was gritting his teeth.
My poor Ash.
I dressed in trousers and a loose shirt, leaving it untucked, then silently eased our bedroom door open to leave our quarters. There had already been many nights when I’d left our room to go for a walk, unable to sleep, so I’d found a route that stopped me having to interact with the guards at the front doors in the great hall.
I followed the empty corridors until I reached the rose garden. Even at night, the cloying scent of the flowers was overpowering, so I walked quickly down the paths until I reached the hidden gap in the wall—a section of old stone that had crumbled away, covered by a rose bush. Thorns tugged at my shirt as I slipped through, and then I was striding across the palace’s perfectly manicured lawns, sticking to the shadows, until I was venturing into the empty, sprawling fields of seelie, away from the palace and town and all the life.
I felt like I was going mad. The heat was a tangible thing, a thick quilt trying to smother me, following me everywhere I went to trap me beneath it. I couldn’t escape. I just needed to escape it for a second. Just a second.
The Woods of Orna would be cooler. Not as cool as I needed, not as cool as unseelie, but blessedly cooler. I strode with purpose through meadows and over gently rolling hills, along the bank of the rushing river, until the treeline appeared up ahead.
But as I reached the edge of seelie land and paused, my feet suddenly felt glued to the grass. I stared into the trees, into the darkness, willing myself to take those last few steps and cross over. Just for a moment, just to escape the heat and allow myself a few moments to think clearly. Not to leave. I hadn’t spoken to Ash yet, and I wouldn’t leave without telling him first. I just wanted to escape seelie’s oppressive heat for a minute. Thirty seconds. A few moments. Anything.
I couldn’t.
For an instant, I thought I was going to cry. Balor was right. I was nothing more than a trained dog. Conditioned to obey. Aimless when I wasn’t being told what to do.
I couldn’t betray Ash by leaving seelie land for even a second. I just couldn’t do it.
“Don’t let all those years of training go to waste. Don’t let yourself rot away to nothing here, becoming soft and lazy and degrading yourself as the seelie king’s pampered pet.”
I had never loathed myself more than I did in that moment. My bare feet stuck to seelie ground, my body unwilling to let me take a single step forward for myself, my sadistic brother’s calculating words spinning in my head.
Something’s wrong with you. I didn’t know whose voice it was in my head this time. My own? My mother’s? Balor’s? Happiness isn’t something you can have. Accept it.
My chin trembled. But I wanted it. I wanted to be happy. I deserved it, didn’t I? Didn’t everyone?
