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I falter, take a step back, lose ground.
And then Farin is upon me, and the scent of cedar and parchment overwhelms my senses. He’s so close now, and his closenessfeelsso much like Nox, and the way he’s looking at me with those snow-white eyes of hislooksso much like Nox, the traitorous part of me speaks next. “There’s a part of me that wishes you’d been more treacherous,” I whisper, tears stinging at my eyes now. “That I’d entered the room and you’d acted as if you were him. That you’d have convinced me that Nox with all his cleverness had found a way to free himself and banish you. I think I might have been easily convinced.”
The admission itself feels like a betrayal, but it’s nothing more than the truth.
It’s not any truer for being spoken aloud.
Grief fills Farin’s eyes—and they’re Nox’s eyes, and it hurts to be gazed upon like this, like my chest is parchment to which Farin has set a flame.
His breathing is labored, and so is mine, his forehead lingering so close to mine our skin almost touches.
He pulls something from his pockets and presses it into my hands. The ribbed hilt of a stake shakes in my unsure grasp. “If you choose to end me, I won’t stand in your way,” he whispers. “I have been dead before, and I can now say with certainty that oblivion is preferable to the hate shimmering in your eyes.”
It’s a fool’s move, but I squeeze my eyes shut, might as well prostrate myself in front of my enemy. In front of the very being who took Nox from me. But I can’t bear to look at him, can’t bear to watch the light fade from Nox’s entrancing eyes as I slaughter him.
It’s that thought that gives me the courage to press the wooden stake to the notch beneath Farin’s ribcage, right at the soft spot of flesh Nox taught me to aim.
He’d been close to me then too, the heat of his body threatening to smother me, and I can feel him as if he’s here. For a moment, it’s not Farin standing before me, trembling as I hold the stake to his chest.
It’s Nox, and we’re in my tiny dank little cell, the first place I’ve truly felt joy since my child was stolen from my womb. It’s just me and Nox, and as long as I close my eyes, it’s so easy to pretend…
Farin makes an incoherent noise, like he’s about to speak, but I shake my head. “Please. Please,” I beg, and I don’t have to specify what exactly I’m begging for, because somehow I know that Farin—twisted, sick Farin—understands.
He of all beings on this earth understands what it is to cling to a world that no longer exists. One that perhaps never has.
It won’t do to dwell on that shared understanding though, not when Farin’s here and Nox isn’t. Hate roils through my chest; it hurts so badly I want to scream, want to shove this stake through his chest and twist until he writhes in agony.
But I don’t.
Instead, I give myself one more moment. One last breath to sense Nox’s heartbeat and pretend it still belongs to him. I open my eyes to peer into his, and the longing, the pain that’s twisting Farin’s face is so familiar, it could have fooled me had I not known better.
“I want him back,” I whisper, my voice trembling, hardly audible.
“I know,” he whispers back. “I don’t feel him anymore. His presence. Before the ritual, when he was lost to the bloodlust, I could always sense him. I…I’m so sorry, Blaise.”
The stake quivers in my hand. The outer rims of my vision redden as my whole body quakes with unshed sobs.
He’s gone; Nox is gone; Nox is gone.
I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t…
I stare into the eyes that aren’t Nox’s, and maybe it’s the fact that I would do anything for those eyes, maybe it’s that I can’t bear to detest anything that resembles the man I love, but I find my hate for Farin is not hate at all.
Because there’s nothing but raw honesty in the pale blue specks lining his eyes.
My hand shakes, and though I press the tip of the stake into his torso, I can’t bring myself to break skin.
When Farin speaks, his voice is dry, raw. “You and I—we’re the same, you know.”
My eyes sting, and I let out the tiniest of sobs. I push on the stake hard enough that Farin sucks in a gasp. “We are not the same.”
“When I was a child,” he says through gritted teeth as I push the stake further into his skin, “I thought Imagination was a spirit, a living being—a Fate, if you will. I spoke to it and about it as if it were a friend. I was born into a world of famine and parched land and creatures of bloodshed, to a father who flayed my back until I learned never to cry out. Never to scream.”
I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear Farin’s sob story, anything to make me pity him, so I exhale and drive the stake deeper. His body lurches, and it’s Nox’s body lurching, and I feel his pain as if it’s my own, exploding in my side until my head is pounding.
“I was the only child in the village. My father made sure of that. I was completely and utterly alone.”
A drip coming from the attic ceiling. A pile of letters clutched to my chest. A knot on the wall that sometimes looks like a dog, at other times a dragon.
