Page 55 of Antiletum
The maniacal glint in Val’s eye when he made that outlandish promise follows me into the graveyard of The Citadel. I’ve avoided visiting in these short days, afraid to see Rainah’s resting place. To make her expiration too final, too real.
Despair and betrayal cling to me like a parasite, barefoot in the wet summer grass.
The rain isn’t a deterrent on my race to an empty finish line, dodging the gnarled, old trees and headstones, knowing there’s nothing but open, unending heartbreak waiting for me when I stop moving. In fact, the storm strengthens my determination, washing away all of my tears and the stench of my fear soaked sweat. It cleanses this layer of raw skin, peeled back to expose the stupid, foolish girl within.
I let the summer storm rinse the last vestiges of my naivety, digging deeper into my unfurling rage—blooming further with each step away from my lying husband. Anger beats in tune with my mourning. A sibling. Kindred. Born of the same situations, but different.
Woeful skies free me of the lingering scent of Val’s skin against mine; how some broken part of myself wishes I had stayed lost in it. Let him tear me apart completely and pleaded with him to put me back together. Form me into something new.
That was the whole point, wasn’t it?
Val played his hand just right, making sure if I ever wanted to search out an embrace, his would be the only arms I could find. I hadn’t been that physically close to Val since the night we wed. His magic called out to me, locked against his body. It was frighteningly comfortable there. Feeling the heat off his flesh, the flex of muscles, the strength that delivers death. And buried beneath it, the magic that banishes it. Just like mine.
Instead of running back to my husband, I seek empty air. The only thing that was ever really meant for me.
A loud, wailing screech calls from a tree, lost among the patter of the rain while I brace myself on the rough stone of a towering mausoleum. I half expect my owl to swoop in on a flurry of dark feathers and give me his company, but he doesn’t appear.
I’m utterly alone in this foreign place that holds the most harrowing of memories.
I never thought I’d see The Citadel again. Try as I might to acclimate and fit in at my new home, through the insistence that I’m accepted, I’ll always be a piece of a puzzle that doesn’t quite fit. My image says I should fall into this life with but a gentle push, snapping me smoothly into place. But my edges have been tweaked enough that I’ll never fit into any mold.
Foolish of me, to ever have hoped that I might have found my place. That I could have something beautiful within all the tragedy, however fleeting that hope may have been. During my wedding, but mostly, in the last few days. Waiting for my husband to return so I could fall into the fantasy that I nearly let myself have.
My gut has been leading me in too many directions. Perhaps that’s what happens when you live a too sheltered life. Never having a chance to become your own person with your own thoughts or opinions. Everyone else’s become your own, no matter how contradictory they may be. I couldn’t pick apart what was real and what wasn’t. I’m not sure I can even now.
My heart is feuding with what I know.
It takes me a minute to weave my way through the tombstones, dizzy. I stop along the way, being violently ill after too much adrenaline and shock that now melts away to let me absorb a reality I wish I could escape.
After Val’s promise that we’d bring Rainah back, I left his room without another word. The tension billowing off of him, wanting to chase me again, seeped through the halls, following me until I reached the outside air.
Rainah’s grave is interred with the original family she was supposed to marry into, a bouquet of daisies from another visitor collapsing beneath the weight of rain. When I’m met with her name carved into stone, my legs finally give out. The patch of ground covering her bones meets my face. Laid out flat on my stomach, my hands curl and tuck under my chin. Thanks to growers, the ground’s green is a dishonest illusion of time. Like Rainah’s been here for years, the lawn of the cemetery consistent and pristine.
I weep, my tears mixing with the storm to fuel the sod that shields her body from life.
Val’s a deceiver. Has been the whole time. But he lied to me again, just now. Knowing exactly what I needed to hear. For the briefest moment, I thought maybe it was possible, so pliant for him, in his hands. That we could bring Rainah back to this side of life. That if we could, it would be enough to erase his wrongs and make our marriage feel less like a prison. Because at least I’d have my sister back. Have her wholly, not separated by distance, status, and parents who thought I might ruin the perfect reputation of them and their favored daughter.
But things that are raised from the dead don’t like to stay alive.
They long for their rest, to go back to where they belong. And since Rainah’s been in the ground for months, the being we would raise would be grotesque. Horrific. A rotted, haunted corpse being forced to breathe.
It wouldn’t be my sister.
“I don’t know what to do!” My admittance roars into the ground through a mouthful of grass and dirt. It’s eaten away by a confident boom of thunder, laughing at my pitiful existence. Mocking the way I don’t even know myself or my own thoughts.
The blank stare of my sister’s gravestone is grim and unforgiving. Judging me for ever letting my guard down. For ever wanting my husband, in any capacity. From the moment I first saw him as I stepped into our wedding ring, letting myself see someone he’s not. Just wanting to not hurt anymore.
“I can’t go home,” I cry, thinking of my parents’ estate. Landscape blackened and empty after the fire that razed theantiletumfields, my parents tied to stakes among the flames. Too much death and darkness and heartbreak there. Besides, how much time would it take for ourvinculumbond to demand me and my husband to return to each other? To put us in physical pain from being apart for too long?
Another uncontrollable sob lurches from my throat with more wracking waves of grief.
A fork of lightning illuminates Rainah’s name.
Does everyone agree that my sister was a worthy sacrifice in order to have a necromancer Lady marry their necromancer Lord to resurrect theNoctuaHeartstone? I was nothing but a pawn in some great scheme. To catch the hand of government control in a bear trap and set everyone free.
Better me than someone else,I think with a self deprecating laugh, grass tickling my nose and cheeks. Me, who had distant parents that only cared about their older daughter, and only for what she could do for them. Another stab pierces at my heart, hating Valledyn more for knowing that he was right. My parents were terrible people who never cared about me at all. Even Tabitha uses our relationship as more of a means of entertainment, to boost her own confidence at the expense of my own.
Better me than someone who would have been ripped away from anyone who really cared.
