Page 11 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
I have to leave this room that’s full of pain, of people who feel violated by my very nature.
I have to leave this room full of Nepenthes who have been deliberately hurt.
I have to leave this room.
I leave the room. The emotions are still heavy in the hall, but at least I’m away from the heart of it. I go to the garden, to the woods, to the nature. I feel Azaire follow shortly behind. I sit on the grass, and he sits next to me.
The sun shines through the tree canopy above us, casting dappled golden light across Azaire’s face. The bruises are gone, leaving his skin flawless—a combination of his deep olive complexion, and the sun’s warm glow. Like veined marble.
He sits inches from me. Too close, but not close enough.
No one can ever get close enough.
“Are you all right?” Azaire asks softly.
I glance at him incredulously, trying to laugh. It becomes a scoff. “You’re askingme? You were beaten half to death.”
“Yeah. I’m askingyou.”
I shake my head, muttering, “Can’t Lucian do something? Why didn’t he do something?”
Lucian is the prince. He must be able to stop these volunteer groups.
My comment only makes Azaire sad, and I feel guilty, all over again.
“He can’t.” His defeat is hopeless—like a stone in water that doesn’t want to sink. It has no choicebutto sink. “It’s just life. I’m okay with it.”
“You can’t be.”
“Yes, I can, if I want peace.” There’s no animosity in his tone, nor any bone of his body. “There’s nothing I can do to change it, so I accept it, until maybe one day I can change it. Like when Luc is king.” He smiles at the thought. It isn’t a happy thought to him, though. Not completely. He is just as worried as he is relieved by the future.
Kind of like Calista.
“I don’t think that’s how life works,” I argue.
I can’t just sit around hoping thatmaybelife will get better, someday. I can’t just take the paineveryday.
Except… that’s all that I do. The only difference is that I don’t have hope. I’m resigned to the fact that my life will always be this way. Always on the outside, never in.
Always alone, longing for closeness, but fearing for those who try.
“It’s how mine does.” Azaire shrugs. “Has to.” He looks around the woods, the bright sky and trees. The willow leavesdangling over us. He’s still in awe of it, despite seeing it everyday.
He looks back at me.
“Here.” Azaire holds out his hands. “You can feel me, can’t you?” he asks, but he already knows. Most of my classmates know my disposition. “I’ll show you peace.”
I look at his hands.
I don’t pick them up.
He thinks I’m a normal Eunoia. The kind that needs skin-to-skin contact to trulyfeelanother being.
To control their emotions.
If I were just any other Eunioa, he’d be offering up his will. I could do whatever I wished with it.
It scares me that he trusts me.
