Page 84 of Realm of Wind and Vines
Grabbing the chair next to me, I hurl it into the wall on the other side.
Wood snaps as it crashes into the stone wall.
The satisfying sound fuels my rage, and I snatch up the already cracked chair and slam it into the wall again while another scream rips from the depths of my soul.
Rage and agony tear through my chest like feral wolves.
She killed them.
I slam the chair into the wall again.
She killed them. She killed them.
Chips of wood fly through the air as I shatter it against the thick stone wall. There isn’t a lot of furniture in this room. Only the now useless chair, a bare desk, and an empty bookcase by the wall. I break everything I can get my hands on.
But no matter what I do, I still can’t stop my own heart from being ground into dust beneath the mountain of grief and regret that is crushing me.
My knees buckle, and I crash down on the floor again. This time, I don’t even bother catching myself. I just lie there among the broken pieces of wood and stare at the light that falls in from the window to create bright rectangles on the floor. My chest aches.
Curling into a ball, I wrap my arms around myself
And then I cry my eyes out.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lying on the cold stone floor, I stare at the fading light on the ground. It’s almost gone now, which means that night has almost fallen. The small study around me is dim, the deep shadows hiding all the furniture I ruined. Too bad it can’t hide everything else that I’ve ruined.
I know that I should get up. I know that I should rejoin my friends. I know that I should apologize to Orion for destroying his chair and some of the shelves in his bookcase. But I can’t bring myself to care.
So I just lie there on the cold stone floor and stare at the sliver of golden light on the ground that fades into darkness with every passing second.
Pain pulses inside my chest like a second heart. I try to draw in deep breaths, but it feels as if someone is sitting on my chest, crushing it, while a pair of brutal hands are locked around my raw throat.
But worst of all is the regret.
It sits inside my stomach like a block of ice, poisoning everything with freezing tendrils that twist between my ribs like snakes and turns my entire body cold.
Curling up on my side, I squeeze my eyes shut and try to shield myself from the horrible regret that is eating me from the inside.
It doesn’t work.
Because regret, I’ve come to realize, is the most brutal emotion of them all.
Fear fades as soon as you remove the thing you’re afraid of.
But regret…
Regret is permanent.
Either you said or did something that you can’t take back. Or you didn’t say or didn’t do something that you should have. Either way, the result is the same. It’s too late now. Too late to go back and redo it.
That irrevocability of it is what makes it so horrible. No matter what you do from now on, it’s too late to change what you should have done before.
And I know exactly what I should have done.
I should have gone to see my parents straight away. As soon as we left the Unseelie Court, I should have visited them and checked if they had my magic burning inside their chests.
But I didn’t.
