Page 69 of A Song of Air
One she hadn’t been expecting, but one she appreciated just the same.
A Violent Release
The night was lonely. Even as noises of nature consumed her surroundings, Bryson felt an aching, bone-deep sensation of abandonment curdling through her. Even her familiar had flown off with a ruffle of her brown and black feathers, unable to stand Bryson’s somber mood. Malika was off somewhere arguing with her sister and Ev was with Arlo, strategizing and cursing the Resistance, she assumed.
She never realized how alone she actually was until these past few days.
It felt like her entire world had imploded around her. Everything had tilted on an uneven axis, and she was trying to balance herself and avoid the dangerous fall. But she was failing.
The pressure on her chest increased, and the sensation of tears pricked behind her eyelids. She refused to cry. She hadn’t done so in years; she wouldn’t do so now. She furiously rubbed against her eyelids, palms scraping against the scars spread across her skin.
The sudden urge to curse at the sky gripped her, but she stewed in silence instead, letting the wind ruffle her curls. Her own magic bubbled up inside her, looking for release. If she set it free now, she was sure to tear the tree house from its perch and tumble to the ground.
She’d meant to sit up there to find peace, but the night brought anything but.
Bryson looked up at the canopy of leaves, squinting into the night. Her temples began pounding, a dull throb that spread across her forehead and to the backs of her eyeballs.
“It’s just stress,” she whispered to herself, though she knew that wasn’t true. Her eyesight was worsening. She felt it every year, how it was increasingly harder to see. At first it had been at a distance, gradually becoming blurrier up close as well. She lived through a haze of fog, and when the headaches began, she knew it could only ever get worse before it got better.
There was no fixing her sight. There was no healing the ache.
She sighed again just as footsteps sounded from down below. Bryson closed her eyes, listening to the pattern of them against the ground. Her whole body tensed as if primed for a fight. She recognized those footsteps as they approached her tree and began to climb. The scent of them only got stronger as they hauled themselves to the top.
She didn’t move as he settled at her side. In fact, she made it very obvious she was ignoring him.
Everette sighed. “Bryce...” There was silence, almost as if he were waiting for her to fill it.
With what? What could she possibly have to say to him that she hadn’t already? Anytime she spoke these days, she was met with his anger and disdain. Met with venomous words that just filled her with guilt, even when she’d done nothing wrong.
She’d contemplated it as she sat there hours previously. Everything that had happened with the Resistance, with Weylyn. She’d made mistakes, most of them internal. Entertaining Weylyn’s mental conversations, letting him get into her head. But anything else had been out of her hands. Her body’s reaction to Weylyn was primal, rooted from a bond she hadn’t expected. It had caught her off guard, and her reactions to him had been knee-jerkingly quick.
But Bryson was loyal. She had been loyal. And if Ev refused to believe that, to see that, it was his problem. She would no longer beg him to understand. She would no longer lay herself bare only to be kicked emotionally over and over.
If there was one thing Weylyn had been right about, it was that. Ev was taking his anger out on her, and she was the last person in this camp that deserved it.
“Bryce, will you look at me?”
