Page 86 of Antiletum
But how endearing it is, the way Val so terribly struggles to articulate how he feels in those short, choppy sentences. And oh, how I hate it, the way it makes me want to lie to him. Tell him there’s no need to fret, and it will be alright.
“Teach me,” Val pleads. “And I can teach you, if that’s what you need. We can love each other.”
I ignore him, my stare falling away from his in the mirror, shutting my eyes like it would close him out, make him cease to exist.
Val refuses my rebuff. I hear him span the room in just a few wide strides with those long powerful legs. He turns my wood and velvet wingback chair to face him, legs scraping loud and jostling me in my seat. Val falls to his knees before me, putting us at eye level. His gentle fingers hold my chin, tilting my face towards his; his imposing shadow falls over me like a burial shroud.
“I—” Val stops speaking abruptly, his words withering on his tongue.
A hot trickle of warmth falls to my shoulder from where I ripped my skin out of need to get some part of my husbandout.To peel him away from where he’s burrowed his way in.
Val cradles my face, turning it to the side to put my ear under the fall of yellow from the gas lamp. The heat of his body washes against mine, pinning me in place. I’m too exhausted to move. To fight. To say or do anything at all. I’m a rag doll in his grasp, limp and pliant. Not living at all.
Even in my husband’s heightened emotion, beneath the shaking of his murderous, artist hands, he treats my skin like its glass. Moving me gently. Languid with his long fingers and strong, attentive touch.
Trying to prove his point that he would never hurt me.
He pushes my hair behind my ear, painfully slow, fully exposing the naked, bleeding flesh. Val pulls in a sharp inhale at the emptiness he sees. Almost a sob.
The moment is silent but for our breathing, intimate in a harrowing way. Quiet in its anguish. In its slow and torturous death. Thelack of visuals I allow myself makes the severing that much worse, the sound of our hearts breaking in tandem that much louder.
The threat of Val’s tears after admitting to ending the final person of my past life was enough to make me want to run to him. Throw my arms around his waist. Wail into his chest, not unlike I cried when I learned he killed Rainah. Let us wallow in our brokenness together. Because as I told him, we are both incapable of love. Giving or receiving, it’s not an instinct we hold. We cannot fix it. Not together. And certainly not alone.
If I open my eyes, look at him now, I may just fully break.
Val doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. His harsh breaths become louder. More chaotic as he holds my tilted head in his hands, my brown hair sweaty and long and leaning towards the floor. My neck angled like it’s aching for the cinch of a noose.
And I can hear his shattering in each breath. The apology. The terror. The ragged sounds of no going back. Mingled within it is the spike of betrayal he feels from me, the rejection of this particular gift cutting him deeper than any before.
Finally, slowly, he drops my head. Stands. Steps away from me. Reluctant. And only then, does my gaze slide open. Lined on Val’s sickly-pale face is all the misery I expected, folding in on himself completely.
I swallow. Steeling myself past the irrational, naive longings thrashing at my ribs. Hungry for the warmth of his touch to return.
Despite how my throat, my eyes, my whole being burns, I hold my husband’s stare as I tell him on a whim, “I am going to go to Greystone. Do not come to me. Not until you’re ready for us to finish what we started with the Heartstones. Or until our bond demands that you have to. If you try to come to the manor before then, I swear to thedeos,I will slit my own throat while you watch. And keep doing so any time you raise me back to this side of life.”
Our stares hold.
As everything it means to hurt and to hurt the people you love passes between us, I wait for his indignation. His fury. His delusional rebuttals that we are meant to be. I wait for the determined, nearly petulant set of his jaw. For my husband to tell me that Iwillaccept him. That all of his actions were noble. Justified.
That we belong to each other.
I wait for him to tell me that I’m not leaving.
But none of that comes. Instead, Val does something that shocks me all the way down to the marrow of my bones, further than anything he’s said or done so far.
Val turns on his heel—and without uttering a single word—he leaves.
Anxiety has been paramount in the last hours.
It doesn’t help, I’m sure, that I’ve kept myself locked away in my room. Walking circles through the space.
It’s increased steadily with each minute that the day slid by. With each item packed in my trunks, conflicted in how my sudden absence in Omnitas will be perceived. With each sound I hear that isnotmy husband coming to argue my departure. It’s loud in my ears, buzzinglike a swarm of wasps. Present in my breaths, rich and burning. It squeezes my stomach. Hard enough that I can scarcely breathe. Wondering when Val will barge into my rooms, force me into a goodbye. Or demand that I stay.
I’ve waited for it—all through a long, sleepless night. And all throughout the long, agonizing day.
Every noise drifting towards my room, I imagine it’s my husband, intent on confronting me, on defending himself. It’s not like Val to let me go willingly. For him to allow me to leave in a hush—not with how we left things last night. Not when I told him I would rather end my own life than be in his presence. But I suppose maybe that’s why he hasn’t come.
I want to lash myself every time those noises pass by, nothing but a shadow of unfulfilled want. Each spike of expectation met with disappointment leaves me more wound than the last.
