Page 111 of Antiletum
Alaric gapes at me. “You’re really not here to head off your wife and refuse her denying you?”
“Appears that way.”
“You’regiving up?”
I turn the knob of my closet door hard enough I’m surprised it doesn’t twist right off. “What else is there to do?”
“After ten years of pining for this woman, you’re just… letting her go?”
“I don’t know.” I’m overwhelmed. Every inch of my being is screaming to go back to Delaney. Beg on my knees again and pray that it’ll be different this time.
“What do you meanyou don’t know?” Alaric asks.
Why does he sound like he’s angry with me? Even after I murdered Rainah, he was more relaxed than this. Held every confidence in my ability to pull all my mistakes back together.
“I mean I don’t fucking know!” I slam a drawer in my closet shut, moving on to another.
“How did she learn the truth?”
A sliver of shame eats its way through me. Seeing myself faced with Delaney’s clit, about to shove a needle through it. Saying those tender words that we shared in a much happier, more pure moment. I sullied them, right then and there. Lost to my own insanity. Heartbreak and longing owning Delaney’s features, aching for me but in a twisted way.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Though I’d say it absolutely does.
“Let me guess, you told her in some wonderfully Val way that was probably incredibly difficult to digest?”
Silent, I shove clothes in hues of grey and white into a small bag, nothing showing my station as Lord ofNoctua. I hate the title. More and more with every day that I hold it. It has no weight at all.
“Give her time,” Alaric says softly. “You were a ghost she believed dead for ten years, Val. Give her time.”
I glare at him in warning, trying to stifle that grating, kind tone. His optimism.
Returning to my task, I’m generally better at packing, consolidating everything into the smallest version of itself that it can possibly be in order to carry it in my talons as I fly. Small enough that the pack could be mistaken for prey from afar.
Already, I stand out in the skies far too much as my barn owl, being melanistic.
Hated and inconvenient though they are, the packs of clothes are a necessary risk in certain situations. I’m not bothered by my nakedness after a shift, but the masses seem to disagree and are generally suspicious of a person who is fully nude in public for no discernibly good reason.
Learned that lesson early on.
It will be interesting to see the adjustment period when shifter gifts are returned to the masses.
I let my sheet drop, sick of holding it and trying to pack one handed. One shaky, unusable hand. Alaric is unsurprised, having seen my cock more times than he probably cares to have at this point and usually without any warning.
“I don’t like this side of you. You’re too… blank,” he says, watching me with concern, his worry pulling at the long scar across his face. “It’s unnerving.”
His voice sounds like it’s traveling to me through water. I really should try and sleep. I’ve lost track of just how long it’s been. “And how do you propose that I be?” I murmur.
“Angry. Incensed.” He rounds my side, keeping ample distance, but peers into my face. “Petulant. Literally any version of your usual highly emotional self. Have you even killed anything since Delaney outright rejected you, knowing who you are?”
It is out of character that I haven’t. Even before I slaughtered her family, I was quick to draw a blade. Or if a weapon wasn’t available, just use my bare hands. She bore witness to that herself.
Didn’t mind then.
“See,” Alaric barks, pointing an accusing finger towards my face, “you aren’t even arguing that your emotions are, in general, completely off the fucking charts unstable. This isn’t you.”
“Do you need more prisoners?” I ask abruptly, changing the subject, abundantly aware that he doesn’t.
