Page 39 of Sharpen Your Claws

He hadn’t received attention like Nicholas gave since, well, Nicholas. He found a partner here or there, those curious about his affliction. They were less interested in him than the questions they could ask. To be admired so openly, he missed it, though knew not what to do with it.

“You ask too much of me.” Nicholas stepped around him toward the road. “How about I make us even instead?”

Nicholas fell into the puddle, resembling a child playing in the snow. He rolled, then hopped to his feet, now equally drenched and grinning impishly.

“There, we match,” he declared.

William bit back a laugh when a clattering noise nearby frightened him. He pivoted, attention darting about, searching for a threat. A black cat leapt out of an alley with a rat in its jaws.

“You remain jumpy, even full of alcohol,” Nicholas said. He followed, though William knew not where they were heading. He walked with no destination.

“We’re in dangerous territory now that a shadowed disciple is involved,” he countered.

“That isn’t it though, is it?” Nicholas challenged. “You have a knife secured beneath your desk.”

He took a corner too quickly, resulting in his elbow scuffing against a building. “I have much in my office of monetary value that someone may steal.”

“Yes, you do, and you refuse to let me turn a corner before you.”

His teeth ached from how hard he was grinding them. “You may miss something I would notice.”

“You’re making a lot of excuses trying to hide what I have already guessed.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Why?” asked Nicholas.

He took a long swig of his drink, then spat, “Because it won’t change anything.”

“Does that matter? I want to listen.”

“I’ve told people before.”

“Have you?” Nicholas challenged, taking a step ahead, so William saw the accusation in his eyes long before he said it aloud. “Or did you sit at Charmaine’s side in silence because you knew she went through the same? Did you lie to your parents about what you went through and tell yourself it was fine? Who truly knows all you have done and all you are feeling now?”

Himself alone because—he couldn’t explain why.

Matilda and Robert were his parents. He wanted them to be proud. Arthur, Richard, and Henry were his brothers. He didn’t want to worry them. Charmaine was his best friend. She shouldn’t have to take care of him. His doctor tried to see through him, but even he knew so little about the new sciences of the mind, picking and prodding and sometimes making William feel worse.

So he smoked, and he drank and he worked and he ignored because nothing more could be done. But there Nicholas waited, a bottomless pit to fill, and he saw William in ways others didn’t. In ways, he couldn’t deny or continue pretending it wasn’t true.

“I’m a black mood no one can dispel, an anger that cannot be doused, a fear that cannot be quenched. My eyes and thoughts deceive me. I see Fearworn with my waking eyes and I hear him call my name. He’s dead, and I’m home, but I’ve never felt so far away, and I don’t know how to change that,” William growled, for his sorrow sounded of anger always, as if that emotion alone had wound tight around his heart and mind, refusing to let go.

“I don’t know what to do when I am not busy because when my mind is quiet, I think horrible thoughts. Sometimes, the castle burns with the king inside and I savor the thought of his screams. Sometimes, I take a blade to end it all and think of how simple it would be to sleep.” And he couldn’t breathe a word of that to his family, who waited so long for him to return. He knew the pain that would leave upon them, but they didn’t understand the pain he felt every day.

“What is wrong with me?” he whispered as his footsteps echoed through the sleeping city. Windows and doors had shut, and the residents slept. Flames flickered upon lanterns lining the streets leading to Brandy Bridge ahead, where the water roared.

“You are William Vandervult, the man I love, that your family loves, a doctor, a soldier, a great many things, none of which define you entirely, so this,” Nicholas laid a hand over William’s heart, “these feelings do not define you, either, even when they burden you.”

He knocked the hand away and walked faster, as if he could outrun Nicholas. “But all I feel is burden.”

“Then perhaps you should ease that burden, as you are now. Is there anything you wish to tell someone other than me?”

“My father,” he answered immediately. He recalled how his father couldn’t meet his eyes, how they tiptoed around one another. “He blames himself for my enlistment. He struggles to look at me, for I am not the son he wanted to return home.”

“Did he say that or do you believe it?” asked Nicholas. He rolled his eyes, but Nicholas caught up and held a finger to his lips. “He did not say so, therefore you do not know.”

“But what if I’m right? I don’t want to hear it. I can’t.”

---