Page 81 of Light As A Feather
“Come any closer, and he’ll never see the outside of these walls again. If you stay there, I’m inclined to offer you a choice.”
Hawthorne doesn’t say anything, all of his attention on the knife that moves up and down with each breath Jayden takes.
“Him or her. The best friend who stayed by your side or the woman who left you.” He might as well have stuck the knife in Hawthorne’s gut with that ultimatum.
“Fuck. You.”
From the corner of my eye, red trickles down the front of Jayden’s throat. Time slows, the air sucking from my lungs in a vacuum of fear—or maybe it’s the oxygen deprivation making my breathing labored.
“One.” Hawthorne rushes forward.
I bolt for the stairs, desperate to recapture Ivan’s attention. I don’t look back to see what damage has been done.
Focus. Focus. Focus.I beg of myself as my mind melts, reality and memories bleeding together till the world hardly makes sense. Somehow, I continue forward even as the ground shifts beneath my feet. It’s a sad attempt, but at least I can hardly feel the once-throbbing pain in my ankle.
“Solaneen, get the fuck back here.” Ivan’s voice layered over Jayden’s is otherworldly as he pursues me, all fury and desperation.
His rage is a tidal wave that chases after me, crashing over everything, rippling through the very foundation of the house. It shakes something loose, calling the other unsettled spirits that linger here. They seep from the walls, hungry, eager to taste my fear.
As my body fails, I’m almost within their reach. Almost one of them.Will they eat up my despair too?
I become aware of the footsteps pounding behind me too late. Ivan captures my arm in a bruising hold, jerking me backward. We both lose our balance, and I stagger down the stairwell, tripping over my feet. My unsteady surroundings blur together in a discolored mass. Reality is murky as I come face-to-face with an echo of the past.
Time means nothing as I see my past self levitating, open-mouthed in terror, witnessing this unfold all those years ago. Staring into her wide brown eyes that have yet to see just how ugly the world can be, I don’t have anything to offer her other than the confirmation of her fears.There’s no changing fate.
“Sol,” Hawthorne comes running to my side, yanking me back to the present. “What happened?” I can barely hear his words over the murmuring voices that have come to witness my downfall, but I catch enough.
“I had to.” Pulling my hand out of my pocket, I hold up the little glass bottle. As expected, he attempts to take it from me, so I smash it on the floor, the tiny pieces piercing my skin are hardly noticeable compared to the ripping pain that radiates from my stomach and the burning dryness scorching a path down my throat.
“No, no, no, no,” he mumbles and lifts my bloodied hand to his lips. He kisses his way across the shards, but there’s not enough poisonous residue to have the same effect. He’s only cutting himself up.
My death is a wound that keeps hemorrhaging. So much of Hawthorne’s purpose is rooted in my survival that he’s lost sight of the fundamental truth we both know:this isn’t over when we die.
Yes, this means that we’ll never have children who are made up of the very best parts of us. And we won’t ever get to see the world together; there won’t be any progress on my “most haunted castles” bucket list. There’s no hope for that fantasy of us dying in our sleep together, holding hands and crossing over at the same time.
But we were never conventional, never destined for anything remotely normal.
We can still be buried in our coordinating caskets, decay under the same roof, haunt the same halls. This isn’t the end of us. Ihaveto believe that.
I’d be a liar if I pretended it wasn’t gutting that he’s lost sight of that. All he can see is his grief.
“Thorne.” His name crackles in the roaring fire of my throat. “You made me hope again. Don’t you dare give up on me now.” It’s a struggle to pick out the words I want to say from the chaos that’s unraveling in my dying mind. “I’ll see you soon, okay?” I try to squeeze his hand, but my limbs won’t cooperate—my muscles have gone weak.
“I could never give up on you.” He nearly chokes on his sob. “My entire world isyou. There’s only you.” He takes a small green velvet box from his pocket, shaking fingers fumbling with it until it reluctantly whines open. Without pretense, he slips the once-returned onyx and citrine ring onto my finger, making sure I’ll never be without it again. Through tears, the tracer’s citrine gems gleam around the black elongated hexagon stone. It’s as beautiful as ever. “This isn’t how I was supposed to give this back to you,”—Thorne whispers through a choked breath— “but this will have to do. Just promise me that you’ll remember. Not even in death,” a wave of emotion steals the rest of the sentiment, but it’s imprinted in my mind still after all these years. Somehow, he manages to make this traumatic moment something special.
“I love you,” it’s a croaked murmur, each word a massive undertaking as the many hands of the dead pull at me from every direction. The effort is worth it.
“Sol, you can’t leave me.” His tears are streaming down his face now, droplets of rain pattering on my skin, and all I can smell is petrichor and popcorn, transported back to those stormy afternoons we’d spent hiding out in his room. That’s my happy place. It’s safe and it’s warm and my pain is distant now, the ugliness of it unable to touch me as I’m clutched safely in hishold—the steward of my body and my soul. He might not have said ‘I love you’ back, but he doesn’t need to. He says it a million times with the grief in his eyes and the way he clutches me to him.
My vision goes black, the last memory, his beautiful face.
The only thing I do know is that this was the right decision. This was always plan B if everything else failed. And, well, it has. What’s a little more suffering to spare the man I love more than anything, the impossible choice of having to choose between Jayden and me? But it wasn’t purely selfless. Choosing the means of my death was an opportunity to have some autonomy, a last act of spite.
Hawthorne shakes as he holds me, but I’m floating now, distant, untethered from this world, a nightingale finally in flight.
In these final moments, I could be screaming, crying, or laughing. I have no idea as my mind fractures, wavering in and out of consciousness until suddenly, everything stops. The agony of death recedes, and clarity prevails.
I might grieve if I were in my right mind. Maybe not. Because in this brutally morbid way, letting go, finally cutting the cord on the noose he’s been tightening around my neck, detaching myself from the delicacy of my own mortality, feels a lot like freedom.
