Page 298 of The Ascended
The emptiness where Thatcher should be was a physical ache, a phantom limb that woke me screaming. Our twin bond—once a river of shared thought and emotion—had become a single fraying thread leading nowhere. I could feel that he existed, impossibly far and faint. Like hearing the echo of an echo.
I knew I should have been angrier. Should have been tearing the divine realm apart stone by stone. Should have been anything but this walking corpse going through motions. Sometimes, late at night, I'd dig my nails into my palms until they bled, trying to feel something—anything—as purely as I used to feel everything.
Half my soul was gone, and no amount of divine power could fill that void. But gods, I wanted it to. I wanted to feel the rage that should have been burning me alive. I wanted to care about Xül's marriage with the fierce possessiveness that would have once driven me to violence. I wanted to hurt the way you're supposed to hurt when everything you love is ripped away.
Instead, I was just... this.
I made my way to the cliffs. Where I'd first lost control and brought the stars down for Marel. Where everything had begun to unravel.
The path was exactly as I remembered—worn smooth by generations of fishermen's boots, treacherous in the growing dusk if you didn't know where to step. But my feet found their way without thought. Some things the body remembered. Always would.
The ocean stretched before me, vast and indifferent. Waves crashed against rocks that had stood since before the gods drewbreath and would stand long after we were dust. There was something honest in that constant. In knowing that some things simply endured.
"I thought I might find you here." That velvet voice dragged across my skin.
"Shouldn't you be at your wedding?"
"The ceremony ended an hour ago." His footsteps crunched on the gravel as he moved closer. Each step careful, like he was walking on glass.
"And you're here."
There was a long pause. When he spoke again, his voice was rough. "I couldn't stay there. Couldn't pretend when I could feel—" he cut himself off.
"You should go back. Your wife will wonder where you've gone."
"Let her wonder." Bitterness crept into his voice, but there was something else underneath it. Something that sounded like grief. "She got what she wanted. They all did."
We stood in silence, watching waves paint the rocks with foam. The space between us hummed with unspoken words, uncrossed distances.
"I'm sorry," he said finally, and the words came out broken. "For everything. For the marriage. For not being able to—" his voice caught. "Gods, Thais, I'm so fucking sorry."
"Don't." The word came out flat. "You did what you had to do. We all did."
"Thais—"
"I can't be what you need." I kept my eyes on the horizon. "Can't be what anyone needs. Not anymore."
"That's not true."
"It is." I turned to face him then, letting him see the hollow thing I'd become.
His eyes searched mine, and I watched something shatter in them. His hand rose toward my face, then dropped. Like he was afraid to touch me.
"You're still in there. Dimmed, maybe. Grieving. But not gone."
"Half of me is gone." My voice carried on the breeze. "The part that knew how to feel things. How to hope. It's with him, wherever he is."
I wanted to reach for him and feel my heart race. Wanted to kiss him and taste his lips. Wanted to rage at him for marrying her, to scream until my throat bled, to feel betrayal like a knife between my ribs. But the thought of doing that was terrifying. Having all of it consume me at once. I couldn't.
And this ghost of desire was just another reminder of what I'd lost.
He reached for me—slow, careful, like approaching a wounded animal. When I didn't move, his arms wrapped around me, pulling me against his chest. I let him. Didn't hug back, didn't pull away. Just stood there while he buried his face in my hair.
"I will find a way to fix this," he whispered, his voice low and fierce.
"There is no fixing this."
His arms tightened around me, and I felt the way his breathing had become carefully controlled. Too controlled. Like he was holding back an ocean.
