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The light breeze that lifted the hair from the nape of his neck. The sting of the magic-infused rope cutting into his wrists, breaking open the scabs from only a few days ago.
A dark shadow emerges from the crowd. Up until that moment, Valerian has felt nothing. His emotions schooled into a hard wall of granite, unbreakable.
The coldness, the emptiness . . . it’s horrible. An all-consuming ache of nothingness.
But the second his grandfather stalks toward him, Valerian goes rigid. Desperate for anything to block the swell of emotion raging inside him, he shoves his face into the ragged ashwood post he’s tied to, the one embedded with shards of iron.
Two mortal poisons—iron and ash. Both meant to hurt him. Break him open.
Splinters of the lethal wood cut into his cheek. White-hot pain flares. He shudders, welcoming the feeling. Grasping onto it. Trying to drive it deeper inside him to purge his emotions.
But he fails, and a tiny sliver of fear pierces his heart. He recoils from the feeling, but he knows—he knows his grandfather has felt it.
Just like all the other times, he tries to force the word down into his chest. Tries to choke on it rather than let it escape his lips.
If he could, he would rip out his own throat rather than say it.
“Mother. Please, Mother.”
Three words. Three fricking words that undo me. He’s never talked about his mom. Not once. And yet the ferocity with which he longs for her in this dark moment . . .
She isn’t coming. She never does. And the betrayal of it wounds him to the very core. Not the end of the whip. Not the ash splinters or the iron fragments that tear at his flesh.
The pain from his mother’s absence is the torture he can’t endure—the weapon he can’t fight.
I want to scream, to punch someone as I feel him sag against the ashwood pole, defeated. Rage like I’ve never felt before splits me open, matching the agony that crashes over him as the wood burns every inch of flesh it touches.
His heart stutters into a weak, unsustainable rhythm; the air wheezes in his throat.
The poison from the ashwood and the iron is slowly killing him. And still. Still. He thrusts his body against it, giving the poison more and more access. Using it to drive his mother from his heart.
The pain becomes a touchstone. A fiery inferno that eats away at every part of him, so that when the first strike of the whip cracks open the skin of his back—it’s swallowed by the miasma of writhing agony claiming every cell in his body.
Willingly inflicted agony.
Bile tickles my throat. He was twelve. Twelve. And he purposefully brought himself to the brink of death as a giant eff you to his grandfather, King Oberon.
I press my knuckles into my damp temples, trying to chase away an oncoming headache. Not for the first time, it comes to me that there is so much more to Valerian than what he reveals to me. Maybe he’s smart to hide the darker side of himself.
Because, quite frankly, that part of him terrifies me.
I kick off the light gray sheets, slide from bed, and cross the floor, desperate to purge the memory from my brain. Phantom needles of pain still prick my skin. As unnerving as the memory-dreams are, once my horror fades, the pity takes hold.
If Valerian knew I was reliving his most painful memories every night, he would feel violated. I still haven’t figured out if we’re actually sharing a dream, which is just another layer of fuckery in this whole effed up situation—because that would mean he also relives that agony every night—or if I’m somehow receiving his memories.
Wonderful. I’m a radio set to the Valerian’s Soul-Crushing Memories frequency.
Same as the last few nights, I pluck my phone from where it’s charging on the dresser, check the screen for a text from him, and sigh.
Nothing.
My blurry-eyed focus slides to the date on the glowing screen. Three days—it’s been three days since Hellebore announced the gauntlets, and I don’t feel any more prepared than I did then.
Maybe less, considering the nightmares and my lack of sleep.
After school combat training doesn’t start until week two. Meanwhile, Eclipsa canceled our last few morning training sessions.
I double-check our text chat, relieved to see this morning’s session in four hours is still on.
