Page 71 of In Death's Hands
“I was under the impression you all shirked those duties.”
Atys’ playfulness disappears in less time than it takes for me to blink. And I find myself ashamed and regretful, and all too quiet in a night that should hear many words of apology from my mouth.
Turan’s head lands on my shoulder. “I know you regret what you did back then. We all know that, but we’ve moved on. So should you.”
Swallowing becomes difficult around the tightness in my throat. I willneverforgive myself. They may all be able to mix pleasure and duties like there are no differences between them, but it’s different for me. It always has been. When my role is so crucial in the human experience, how can I take it lightly?
When I close my eyes, all I see are the souls I let down. I know all their faces, all their names. And as usual, guilt and sorrow rip me open. There is nothing to be done for those I failed. And when I realised my mistake, I swore I would never let it happen again.
Shock scatters those faces from my mind as Atys says gently, “We know our duties. But we also learned that we cannot perform them well if we do not partake in humanity every once in a while. It keeps us grounded. But I have a feeling you’re learning that the hard way, brother.”
His kindness, his forgiveness, allows my breathing to slow down and my heart to lose one of its many shields. I hadn’t realised how much I needed this. People to talk to. People who understand. When Atys puts his hand on my shoulder, I don’tshake it away as I usually would. Instead, I let his offer of friendship warm me.
After all, allowing myself some friends doesn’t have to lead me to my ruin. I’ve learned from my mistakes. At least, I hope so.
“What now?” I ask, tentatively testing this new dynamic of ours.
“Now we hope Celestina listens,” answers Atys.
I frown, not liking the sound of that.
Things had been chaotic, to say the least, when we all woke up. Our minds and hearts were hollow, hungry for any sense of who we were. The most powerful of us discovered more quickly than the rest some of the instincts guiding us as a species. The need to heal for some, the call of the crying souls for others. There were different opinions; none of us really knew anything about ourselves. Glimpses and pieces were left in each of us, enough to have a general inkling aboutwhatwe were, enough that many of us went to work right away after we managed to crawl out of that damned cave. If what we do can be called work. It’s more aneedto follow our calling. A unique purpose that one should not deviate from. I know that because I was stupid enough to do so. In my need to connect, I fell in with a small group that decided that we didn’t fit into this world. That despite what our bodies and souls called us to do, we didn’t have to follow through. And for someone with a calling like mine, it felt good to convince myself that I wasn’t really needed. That things would work just fine on their own. To say I was wrong would be the understatement of the millennium. Bigger than saying that Atys likes to walk around naked and flirt with anything that breathes.
Many souls paid the ultimate price because of my selfishness.
That’s why friendships are dangerous. Getting close to someone is giving them power. My mistakes haunt every step I make, and I cannot condemn another soul. I cannot get any closer to Liv. She’s too full of life, too bright for me to tarnish. What will happen when all this is over? She’ll go back to her life as a human, and I’ll go back to haunting them.
“You heard Fenrick,” says Atys. “If what he said is true—”
“It’s not,” interrupts Turan.
I frown, the images of the memory we unlocked too fresh in my mind to readily agree with her. I know it’s the same for Atys. What we saw, the chaos of the fight, there was no up and down, no way of knowing which side is right. “Ifit’s true,” I say, taking over for Atys, “Celestina has to listen. Because it means we’ve been fighting the wrong enemy all along.”
Thanks to my mistake, it became apparent we needed a leader. I was far from the only one who decided to treat their duties as nothing more than a recommendation from the Order, and the souls that were lost because of me were a mere fraction of what we caused. Without supervision from one of our own, the Earth split and swallowed an entire island. A mountain grew restless, and its fire decimated an entire bustling city. Anger and fear grew like an epidemic. Crops refused to bear anything nutritious, and wine turned the humans against one another. It was a dark period for us, but darker even for those we were supposed to look after. That’s when Celestina became prominent. The de facto leader that brought us back to the right path. I’m not sure how it all went about, to be honest. I think I blocked most of that period from shame. But despite my not liking the woman and her advances, I cannot help but admire that she managed to make a unit out of us. Sort of.
“Well, maybe Liv will convince her. She seems good at that.” Turan’s joke freezes me over.
“Liv isn’t coming.”
Both Atys and Turan turn at the steel in my voice. Atys smirks. “Good luck with that.”
“She isnotgetting anywhere near Cel again,” I growl. She may have refused to elaborate, but I know all too well what Celestina did to her. Probing, testing her like a lab rat. I will not subject her to that again.
“Th—”
“That’s final,” I snap, cutting Turan off.
“Again, good luck with that. Liv won’t like being excluded. Not when it’s her life that’s on the line.”
I sigh, knowing Atys is right. It doesn’t help that I can’t seem to think about her without feeling a fire in my veins and a tightness in my throat and…otherplaces. I’m supposed to protect her. That’s what I set out to do, yet here I am putting her into more and more danger. Kissing her,touchingher, may be the biggest mistake I ever made. So why can’t I find it in me to regret it?
Liv
I can’t believe this. Where is he?
Where is he, where is he, WHERE IS HE?
Did something happen to him? Did the Novensiles get to him somehow? Or worse, another Origin that has a score to settle? My heart is pounding, but no longer because of his touch, his warmth, the steel of his body beneath mine.
