Cebrinne
Deimos hadn’t left.
He stayed with me for hours. The sun set, the stars blew over the horizon, and the moon rose through the window. And Deimos stayed.
It’s possible Thaan instructed him not to leave. But if he were still under Thaan’s blood-call, he didn’t show signs of it. His shoulders were slack; his breath came and went as smooth and calm as still water. He’d knelt against the wall, just near enough from where I sat to stay close, but not so near he loomed over me.
And I don’t think he stayed because he enjoyed watching. He flinched every time my knife struck Vouri’s body. Closed his eyes, pursed his mouth. Tiny reactions over the plane of his cheeks and brows. But he didn’t leave.
I couldn’t say the same.
At some point, I made myself forget I was there.Ileft. Abandoned my body. Let the shell of my arms continue their trajectory, while I dug a well and buried myself under ground and water. Where I didn’t have to look at her face, her eyes and mouth, open and unmoving for hours now. Where the puddle of blood didn’t pool around my knees, sitting so long it had begun to dry and harden.
At one point, I tried to turn the knife on myself. My arms and hands were tired. My back ached from the same arched position, my neck and head pounded with disbelief. My legs had gone to sleep. I was ready to just end it here. Beyond ready. Desperate.
But Thaan’s order repeated in my head when I tried.
Strike her again and again. You may not stop until I say.
I had no choice but to obey.
Vouri’s last words danced hideously in my head.No. Wait. Please.
And then, simply,Why?
Thatwhyhad haunted me since I heard it. It flung itself at me even after she’d stopped moving. It hunted me down the well, finding me at the bottom, digging back into my head.
Why? Why? Why?
I almost didn’t hear Thaan when he returned to my thoughts.You’re released,he said, just before Selena burst through the door. She gasped at the sight of me, the sound raising the hairs at the back of my neck. The knife fell from my grip. My arm wanted to continue, as though so trained by muscle memory over the last few hours, but a shake entered my hands that I couldn’t hide.
Blood covered almost every inch of me.
It crusted into my face, my hair, the grooves of my dress, the skin under my nails.
Selena rushed to my side, hauling me to my feet. “Ceba,” she choked out. “Are you hurt?”
I opened my mouth to say no.
Nothing came out.
Nothing would ever come out again.
I just looked at her instead. Alive and whole. Walking, worrying, wrapping me against herself. She brushed sticky hair from my eyes, avoiding the view at our feet. “Ceba, say something. Are you okay?”
I laid my forehead into the groove of her shoulder. She continued to comb my hair with her fingers, leading me away from Vouri. One shaking step after another. Down the hall to our washroom, where she called water into our bathtub, then heated it until it steamed.
“What happened? Did she attack you?”
I stared at the water, too dazed to answer. Too numb. Too gone.
She searched my face and neck for injuries. Rotated my arms. Peeled my clothes away and checked my body. Her throat worked in silence, and her voice broke when she finally instructed softly, “Get in.”
I just stood there. Watching the steam rise. Studying the clean water. How pink it would become once I touched it. I barely processed the quiet click of a door as Deimos returned to his distant rooms, nor the gradually mounting scent of burnt metal as Selena’s gaze continued to trickle over me.
Finally, she stepped in and took my arm, pulling me over the porcelain side and sitting me down with her. Water flowed over my head and shoulders, poured from the pearlescent seashell we used to rinse. I watched as blood descended from my body, unfurling in blooming clouds around me. Selena worked cool suds into my hair, quietly asking me questions. I didn’t answer them.
I waited for the last few hours to sink in. For my fingers to uncurl from the tang of the knife’s handle, and for my thoughts to uncurl with it.
