Page 100 of The Devil In Blue
I watched as black veins formed like tiny threads under Elanor’s skin. They moved up from the collar of her dress toward my hand and bled into me. I could feel it. It was a needle-like sensation that crept along my fingers, through my palm, my wrist, and straight into my heart from which Elanor had come. Little by little, the existence I’d woven for her returned to me and the harder I squeezed, the faster I took it back. Until finally, her body began to shrivel. Her skin turned ashen. Her eyes glazed over until they lost color completely. Her hair grayed and then began to dissolve on the gentle breeze.
Finally, there was nothing. A dress vacant of a body to fill it slid to the ground in a heap of black fabric. There was no soul to drift to the Labyrinth. Nothing remained of Elanor, the raven who’d been with me for two hundred years listening to me shout and rage and laugh and cry. She’d seen every part of me and somehow I had failed to see every part of her.
Opening my fist, I saw slight traces of Elanor’s ashy remains dusting my palm. I had so easily destroyed something I created and I didn’t feel nearly as bad about it as I should have. Or perhaps I didn’t feel it because I had always known something to be wrong with my first creation. I’d always felt an emptiness in her that reflected mine. It was why I could never love her the way I loved Briar.
She simply wasn’t enough.
I wasn’t enough.
I turned to look back in the direction of Ferrothorn. I could not see it from that ruined temple, but I could feel it. It was the heart of the Glyn and my heart was inside of it. My everything.
Soon after Rune disappeared, sleep claimed me. I had no control over it. My body betrayed me, but despite the rest, I woke filled with worry. Rune had been gone for some time and after a bath and some much-needed rest, I was feeling anxious. I paced in his room, biting my nails and throwing constant glances at the balcony where he had disappeared, hoping to see him. Lura seemed just as nervous as me. She sat in a chair in the corner, eyes focused on the floor, but I knew she was worried. Naeve sat opposite her, her legs propped up on a stool. She looked quite bored.
“Stop your pacing,” she said. “You two realize you are worrying about the king, right? He could ruin this entire realm with the snap of his fingers if he wanted. Venturing out into the untamed forest lands will not be his downfall.”
“I’m not worried about that,” I admitted. “I am worried about Elanor.”
Naeve narrowed her eyes and rose from her seat. “What did you see in there, sweet?”
I stopped pacing and faced her, trying to take deep, calming breaths and only succeeding in taking too many too fast. I blinked away a bout of dizziness and shook my head.
“Things I needed to see but wish I hadn’t,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Elanor,” I revealed. “Selling me to the men who broke me. To Father Eli. They took my blood. Used it. For years.”
I didn’t think Naeve’s face could get paler until it did. “Elanor,” she muttered.
I nodded. “I don’t understand her motives and I may never understand them, but she gave me away so I’d break. And she made your king believe I’d betrayed him so he would break, too.”
Lura stood up to look at us. “But he didn’t break. He searched for you. I should know. He created me so I could help. Worrying over his happiness is all I’ve ever done.”
Naeve was still staring, her eyes rounded with realization. “She has loved him more than any of us. She has wanted nothing more than to help him be king. A most effective king.”
“Then she thought it best I did not exist,” I said.
Maybe she was right…
I was nothing but a lost soul that Rune had kept around. One he’d given life to. One he’d fallen in love with.
Love.
That word should have been harder to say, even in my head, but my gut knew it was right. He loved me. He loved who I used to be, at least. I knew it to be true butdidn’t know how.
Even more, I didn’t know why thinking of him triggered emotions I didn’t think myself capable of feeling. Without my complete memories, why was my heart crying out for him? Why was my body aching for him to be by my side where I could see him and touch him and hear his voice?
“Briar,” Naeve said, reaching out to cup my face with her hand. My eyes met hers and pain lassoed my heart, squeezing. Her gentle smile somehow brought me back. “It is alright to feel.”
That statement anchored me. I felt it in my bones and nodded, blinking away any tears that might fall so I could continue to think clearly.
“I want to tell him,” I whispered.
Her eyes flicked up over my head at the open balcony doors just as a gust of wind blew through his chambers. Naeve lowered her hand and inclined her head, which prompted me to turn. Before me stood Rune. He stepped through the doors, folding his massive wings back. On his head stood two thick antlers that swept back along his scalp, black in color and adorned with silver rings. It reminded me once more that Rune was not just a king. He was more like a god. A god of his realm and everything in it.
“Elanor?” Lura muttered.
Rune’s eyes zeroed in on me and did not stray as he spoke. “Gone,” he said.
