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My mind often wanders to Cora. In moments of relaxation or silence, my memories of her resurface—good memories, bad memories, memories of our time together before we both became someone else. My sister, a queen, is bridging the gap between monster and man, and I am something different from before. I don’t know what I am anymore, but clearly, I’m not as powerless as I thought. It’s strange that it took me being surrounded by monsters to realize that.
Now, I play with my power. It’s still weak, as if it directly correlates with the speed of healing. Perhaps, the stronger I become against my darkness, the stronger my powers will be. Right now, I don’t know much about them other than the fact that the lightning comes to life in moments of passion. I don’t exactly know what the power can do, so I start to focus on trying to bring it out. When Rook suggested meditation, I went with it. That’s how I find myself sitting outside in the grass with my eyes closed.
The grass beneath me is soft and lush, cushioning me as I sit cross-legged with my back straight. My hands rest on my kneesas I focus on my breathing—breathe in for six seconds, breathe out for three, repeat.
Rook sits opposite me, his shadows trailing along the grass around him. He’s mediating too, though what he practices, I don’t know. I’m just happy he decided to do it with me.
“When you feel at ease,” he murmurs, his voice gentle so as not to startle me. “I want you to focus on your power. Study it, feel it, and coax it to come out.”
I nod despite neither one of us having our eyes open. Rook’s shadows dance around me, caressing me as they move. They make it damn difficult to focus on anything else. After a few minutes of trying to ignore them, I simply accept the touch and try to focus on my power instead.
“Good girl,” Rook purrs. His pride echoes in his voice, and it makes something inside me swell. I straighten further, my pulse fluttering.
The lightning awakens beneath my skin, but I don’t crack my eyes open. Instead, I focus on the feeling of it, on the way it dances beneath my skin and manifests on the outside of it. I do as Rook asks. I coax it to react, to manifest as I wish it to. I push it over to Rook to dance it over his skin, but it doesn’t listen. In my ease, the lightning latches onto something stronger than my desire—my love for Cora.
The thoughts that plague me are prevalent in my mind. I miss her, but there’s still guilt when I think of her. I still can’t stomach the look on her face as I’d fallen from the castle. The memory is no longer shrouded by the shadows in my mind, so I see it as clearly as if I were standing before her again. She’d held no anger toward me, and she didn’t blame me, but the pain I’ve caused her . . .
I crack my eyes open and stare at the strange-looking glass my lightning formed between Rook and me. The pictures dance across it, blurry at first before my memories sharpen and appearfor the both of us to watch. Cora stands before me, her monsters by her side. Her hand is outstretched as she asks me to take it, and I feel my pain at the realization I’m no longer the woman I was, that I was too broken to stay with her. Then, there is the moment I stepped back and tumbled over the edge.
Rook’s shadows sharpen as they caress me, stroking along my skin. “How can you not be angry?” he asks, his voice thick with emotion at the memories that begin to flash. The recollections the king is in are muted, the memories beginning to blur because I don’t want to see them again, but I also don’t want Rook to witness that. Despite the blur, he can garner enough from them. “How can you not want to rip that world to shreds?”
I smile at him, at the way he absorbs my past and doesn’t judge me for it. “That’s an easy answer,” I murmur. “Because Cora is a part of that world, and I would never want to do anything to hurt her.”
Even though I’ve hurt her the most.
Rook looks up from the portal into my past and meets my eyes. “You underestimate yourself, little oblivion. If you wanted to make him pay—”
“He has,” I interrupt. “The man who broke me died by my sister’s hands, but if he were still alive, I would make the monsters look harmless.”
Rook’s shadows stroke along my body. “Did you get a taste for blood while you were licking your wounds, little oblivion?” he purrs. “Did the darkness forge you into a dagger?”
I meet his eyes. “Maybe it did. Maybe I’m no longer Kai Black of the Shadow Lands. Maybe I’m something else.”
His shadows stroke along my jaw, enveloping me. “You’re still Kai Black,” he murmurs. “You’re still Cora’s sister.”
“And if I’m not?” I ask, looking down. “If I’m a monster now?”
His shadows tug my chin back up, forcing my eyes to his. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, his voice steady. “You’re still ours, and if you think a sister who loves you enough to take your place in a strangled Dead Lands would ever turn you away, then you’re not looking close enough, little oblivion.”
The pulse in my neck flutters as his shadows swirl around me, driving me mad. The memories on the glass created by my lightning grow sharper, brighter, as they show memories of Cora and me in the Shadow Lands, of us giggling and sneaking out. Merryl flashes across it, but the image of him only makes me angry so it flicker away before being replaced by Cora’s laughing face and the memories of her mischievousness.
I see the moment she looked back at me as the wall closed around her.
I thought that would be the last time I’d ever see my sister. No hunt ever survived, but it doesn’t surprise me that Cora would be the one who did. They threw her to the monsters, and she came back leading them. The monsters at her side loved her. Even in my brokenness, I’d seen the clear adoration on their faces as they looked at her. They would happily walk into fire to save her. Together, they brought down the wall, joined all three lands back together, and overthrew the king. Cora was always the strong one. She was always the best of us.
“You share her fierce eyes,” Rook comments, his gaze on the glass between us. The memory of Cora stepping through the wall repeats over and over again. The next time I saw her was in the Gilded Lands in an alley, when I was already broken.
I find myself falling into the darker memories again, the images blurring. When Rook’s shadows circle me once more, I finally realize what I’m doing. I blink, and the glass begins to fade away, my lightning still dancing in the air between us. It doesn’t disappear, simply changes direction to focus on Rook. My gaze lingers on his as the lightning begins to dance alonghis skin. I watch his muscles jump beneath it, his dark eyes reflecting the light back to me.
“I can see the darkness in your eyes, little oblivion,” Rook rasps, his attention completely on me. “I can feel your urge to push away affection.”
I take a deep, stuttering breath. “Sometimes, being offered tenderness in the darkness feels like proof that you’ve been ruined.” My voice is a whisper, as if I don’t dare to speak the words any louder. All this time, I’ve felt undeserving of their affections, and while I’m overcoming that, there’s still this guilt in my soul—guilt that they have to take care of me and that I wasn’t whole to begin with.
“Not ruined,” Rook says, leaning closer. “Forged.” His smile is broken by his sharp teeth. “And what a marvelous weapon you’ll be when you stand up to your demons.”
When his breath suddenly fans across my cheeks, I can barely convince myself to fill my lungs with air. “A weapon or a trinket?”
“A weapon,” he assures me. “You’ve always been stronger than you think you are, little oblivion. I saw it in your memories. I see you now.” His clawed hand comes up to caress my jaw. “And you’ll shake the world with your reckoning.”
