Page 95 of Antiletum
My wrecked heart won’t survive the hope that such a notion would inspire.
“I didn’t know you would come here,” Val whispers, and he could very well be talking to the infinite night for the way he refuses to glance my way. Finally, he peels himself from the star strewn sky and turns to me, heartache owning his onyx stare. “This particularspirlinaryis the sanctuary that I often seek. Where I come when I’m feeling completely lost.”
A crawling sensation falls from my chest, down my stomach, all the way to my toes on my shaky feet.
Moonlight splashes through a paneless window across Val’s handsome, haunting face, lined with exhaustion and too many other things that I can’t quite put a name to. Or maybe Val’s been right all along. I could pinpoint each and every one, I just don’t want to. Because I imagine I am just as creased with the exact same emotions, mirroring his.
The stone altar sitting at the front of thespirlinary, facing the pews, is littered with empty bottles and bowls, no casting ingredients to be found—the only major difference in setting from the first time I came here. Maybe if it had been fully abandoned then, I wouldn’t have made the decisions I did. I wouldn’t have set into motion the facilitation of an even more agonizing and closed off existence than the one I led before.
Tell me to stop.
Those words were first whispered to me, right in this very room during a pivotal moment—a choosing. With only theNocturneto witness.
Or so we had thought.
A tear falls down my face, admission building in my throat. One I should have voiced from the very beginning. “You remind me of someone that I loved very much,” I say, choked with how the truth doesn’t want to be released from my body. Stuck in there, shielded, outwardly silent, and alone for far too long. “Every time I look at you, all I can see is him.”
I force myself to look at Valledyn now, closely, in a dissecting manner I have mostly tried to avoid. To inspect and recognize every inch of his beautiful face that calls to the past and the only person my heart has ever longed for—other than Val. And his owl form. Those similaritieshave made the draw to him undeniable. Fierce. Intoxicating. And so incredibly guilt ridden sometimes I believe I might fold completely beneath the magnitude of it.
It’s all been my own chosen madness, trying to make my husband someone that he’s not while also trying to protect myself in the process, keeping him at arms length. I’m guilty of exactly what he accused in the graveyard, taking just enough to sustain myself before pushing him away.
Val says nothing, his jaw visibly tensing, even in the darkness.
“But you can’t be him,” I continue. “No matter how badly I want you to be. Youcan’t.Because he’s dead. He’s been dead for ten years, and even I couldn’t bring any piece of him back. He always ignored my calls—through a mirror. Because my necromancy is what got him killed in the first place.”
It’s freeing, almost. To say these things aloud and shed some of the blood on my hands. I’ve never spoken about it to anyone. Not to Rainah, or Tabitha, and certainly not my parents. They expressly forbade me from ever mentioning the situation again, right when they thinned the minor gaps between the bars on my cage, hiding me from the world effectively before I gave my secret away again.
After years of trying to convince them to give me lenience and freedom, I took my punishment willingly because even a prison was better than what I deserved.
Val throws his head back against the wall gently, releasing a harsh breath while he stares at the vaulted ribbed ceiling, as if my admittance is pulling him apart at the seams.
It may be cruel, sharing with my husband—whose love for me is so intense and all consuming it leans towards obsession—that there was once someone else. And the only affections I ever offered him were outof want to keep some portion of that boy I met when I was just a girl alive.
But I can’t stop myself. I’ve opened the lid on the container I’ve kept everything tucked away in, and now it demands to flow out, all at once.
A small, heartbroken smile comes across my face, recalling the day I shared with the person lost to me, who my heart has ached for since we were separated in this very room. I pull in a deep breath, preparing myself to tell someone else the name I’ve hoarded for myself over the last ten years.
“His name was Sebastian.”
Ten Years Ago
The loud bustle of the city was too perfect an opportunity to squander, Delaney decided rashly. It would be easy to sink into and find even the briefest breath of freedom—albeit, a jaunt rebellious in its liberty. But rebellion was a close companion of hers, a mischievous shadow, and it urged her into the sea of strangers with little cajoling.
Slipping away from Tenna, the governess tasked with watching Delaney like the hawks she so resembled, she merged into the throngof bodies. Exhilaration bloomed through her stomach, not dissimilar to the way life poured back into petals of expired flowers with arcane magic hand delivered by Delaney herself.
There would be a price to pay, as there always was when she was defiant, but at fifteen, she simply could not contend with being unable to explore Omnitas wholly unencumbered by dull, strict Tenna and the way she scolded Delaney for the simplest things. Afterall, who knew if she would ever get a chance again? And often, the spoils of Delaney’s crimes far outweighed her punishments.
It seemed like fate. A gift straight from thedeosthat the carriage she traveled in separately from Rainah and her parents broke an axle on the way to The Citadel. Close enough to the city it wasn’t worth the fuss of finding another or awaiting repairs, they completed the last leg of the journey on foot, soaking in the ancient architecture that stood the test of time in a way that theNocturnewho built the city couldn’t.
After two weeks of grueling travel, even Tenna was overjoyed at the prospect of open spaces.
It stunk in Omnitas. Like sewage and trash and dirty bodies. An extreme juxtaposition to the elegant, elaborate stone buildings and fountains and statues that had been standing since the days of thedeosroaming the earth. Opulence and poverty, hand-in-hand.
Delaney smelled the illness crawling through the city, death of disease speaking to her senses. She wanted nothing more than to explore more of this grit, having never experienced such before. Her parents would be scandalized to hear such sentiments.
“Delaney!” The screech of her name rose above the din while she tried to slowly melt into nothingness, as she usually did so well, seeking some semblance of escape. Maybe she’d never go back. “Delaney!”
She broke into a run, pale pink skirts tangling around her legs. Large brimmed hat nearly slipping off her head, she experienced awild thrill, imagining herself as an owl fledgling, fleeing her wired nest—saw herself spreading wings to fly. She knocked into a woman dressed in homespun who shot her a glare.
