Page 206 of The Eye of the Fifth
‘Stop,’he said again.
A sob retched from her then, and Gedeon did the only thing he could think of.
He crushed her against his chest, hand cradling the back of her head as the other arm wrapped around her back like a vice. For a few moments, she struggled, relentlessly bucking her body, pushing against him, desperate to be free from his hold.
Gedeon said nothing. Just held her close. Held her tight.
And then she gave in. Sagging against him, she despaired into his chest. Those same fingers that had sliced thin lines on his throat folded in his shirt, gripping the fabric with such intensity it might have been the only thing that would stop her drowning in her grief. Soon, his shirt was wet with her tears.
Gedeon let his back slide down the wall, taking Kyra with him and cradling her between his legs. For a long time, he just listened to her bawl. He did not slacken his hold, nor did he say a word. Her grief was his grief. Her pain was his pain.
Never, in his entire life, had he imagined his flames devouring his own mother.
Now it was all he could think about.
???
Kyra.
In silence, Kyra ate a particularly pungent fish stew. On a now broken and wonky chair, Gedeon did the same. It might have been delicious. It certainly looked like a hearty, flavoursome meal. Oil from thick butter was a sheen on top of it.
But her tongue was numb to the taste. The most fundamental pleasures, like just eating good food, now seemed a useless task.
She’d welcomed the scolding of the stew on the roof of her mouth upon that first spoonful. But then it had cooled. Now, it was near cold. Just like everything else. Cold and worthless.
Rosary had taken every ounce of warmth from the world when she’d left it.
Kyra set the bowl on the bedside table. She could eat no more.
After her sobs had subsided, Gedeon explained how they escaped the Black Castle. The scenes from before were a fractured puzzle in Kyra’s mind, the pieces scattered. Gedeon helped to fit them back together, and painful though the recollection was, she was glad to have some clarity.
‘This night is the third we have spent here,’ Gedeon said. ‘I didn’t want to stay so long. We are too vulnerable. If you feel able, we should make for Phaenon in the morning.’
‘Not yet,’ said Kyra quietly. ‘There’s something I need to do.’
‘What is it?’
Kyra peered out of the dirty window. ‘Ousca is one province away from a town called Taru.’ Her throat constricted but she forced herself to carry on. ‘Rose was there. My brother was supposed to be there too. After he left Avaldale, I told him to find Rosary. I have to see if he’s still there.’
Gedeon was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘We will leave at first light.’
She looked at him, his agreement surprising her. The scratches her nails had left on his neck had almost disappeared. She felt no remorse, and nothank youcame to her lips. Instead, she just nodded.
A sleepless night followed. The insides of her eyelids were a deep black each time she closed them, and though her body was wrought with exhaustion still, she would not let herself drift off. Her dreams would be lawless and bloody if she did.
She was unsure if Gedeon slept. From his makeshift mattress of blankets on the floor beside her, he barely moved. His breath was steady, as though sleep did grip him. But when they silently got dressed before the cockerel cawed in the morning, his eyes bore no puffy semblance of a well-rested night.
Taru held much of the same of Ousca’s idyllic seatown appearance, if not a little rougher around the edges. They arrived sometime in the mid-morning, bundled in the back of a transit carriage that Gedeon’s darkness had allowed them to successfully stowaway on. For a solid three hours, the clashing harmony of copious bottles of Sarlal’s finest wines clinking against each other was torture. Kyra’s fingernail beds were raw by the time they arrived; she’d been picking and ripping at the skin the whole time.
Everywhere she looked, she saw the life that had been taken from her. A phantom Kyra and Rosary laughed on every street corner, their hands never without a goblet of wine, their faces never without the joy of their newfound freedom.
They worked honest jobs, and sat by the waters edge every night, watching the sunset with their arms slung around the other’s shoulders, grateful that they had each other, grateful that they had the privilege ofliving,grateful that they’d taken their destiny into their own hands.
A life in an alternate reality.
A life that would never be hers.
Hood up, Kyra led Gedeon down a busy, slanted street. Canopies jutted out from the side of buildings, each housing stalls of varying wares beneath. In front of a shop of strange perfumes and potions proclaiming to win the heart of whomever you may desire, Kyra halted.
