Page 146 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
Except for Lucian.
I stay close to him, lingering like his shadow, using his emotion to avoid my own. At least with his grief as a barrier, my own can’t drive me insane.
But I can’t stay with him forever. Today, he leaves for Ilyria, and I’ll be left alone.
Alone with myself.
I don’t know which way to walk. Left or right? Up or down? I don’t know which way to go.
I don’t know what to do.
My feet stumble as much as my heart, and I find myself walking to Azaire’s room. I close the door behind me, staring at the room, not quite seeing.
I didn’t want to come here. I’ve been avoiding this. This is where the truth settles in: Azaire is gone. It’s something I know, but only vaguely, not intimately. His room makes the distinction feel imminent—the truth will settle any minute now.
Just like Ma’s study, Azaire’s room is a time capsule. Frozen on the day he departed.
I stand in the entry, staring.
His bed is made; Yuki’s isn’t. His stacks of philosophy books line the back wall. And his journal sits on the desk in the corner, a piece of brown ribbon peeking out on the bottom.
The day he showed me his writing, he told me he had more. He’d been so nervous to show me. ButIwas the one he chose to show. The one he wrote about.
What luck. What love.
How could I have ever wanted to push him away?
How could I not wish to hold him now?
He’s not here to hold.
I cross the room, pausing at his chair, my fingers brushing over the journal he once held so closely.
In the beginning, his heart would race at the thought of me holding this journal. And now, it’s here—his mind laid bare on his desk, waiting to be taken. One last piece of him, immortalized like Ma in her journals. One final word to read with reverence, as if his soul still lingers within the pages.
I carefully open to the page marked by the ribbon, as if it holds a final part of him, still waiting for me to find.
I think she is wise, like the trunk of a thousand-year-old tree. Strong, like the burning fire of our stars. Elegant, like the flowing tide. I want to tell her that there is a piece of her in everything I see, a piece of her soul lodged within my own, and that it’s the most cherished part of myself that I hold. I see her subtledisposition for our worlds colliding with her love of them in the silent sounds of nature. I see a strong belief in humanity, even when all it has to show for itself is evil. I see her hope and not a lack of fear, but a strength to face it. Gods, I don’t even know what I’m saying. I’m likely rambling. I guess I love her. IknowI love her. And I’m so lucky to love her. Even when my heart does stop beating, I think the entire universe will remember that it once beat for her.
The journal closes, my hand settling on top. I stop reading.
Is that the last thing he wrote? Was it before or after I broke his heart? There are so many things I will never know, but this feels to be the cruelest.
In the most wicked of ways, it feels like fate—his death. The universe has taken everything from me, and the one time I see a glimmer of hope, it ripped that shine from me, too. Likely on the very day the dead boy wrote about his heart ceasing to beat.
That the entire universe would remember it beat for me.
Me. As if I deserve that. As if I’m not just a magnet for disaster, the key to death itself.
I knew from the beginning: do not let Azaire into my life. Now, I’m forced to wonder if he would still be alive if I had listened.
I pull at the tips of my gloves.
When I was ten, I killed Xander because I touched him. Today, I stand in the room of the only boy I could ever hold.
The only boy I could touch, dead.
There are so many ways that my power is terrible—feeling people, killing people—but I think this is the worst of it. The world took away the only person who could withstand my nature.
