Page 72 of Dark Night Golden Dawn
“The Illuminated. You’re just like them. Is it from spending so much time with Alaric? Is that why you’re like this? So cold and callous?”
Now her sister was furious. The pink flush creeping over her ears tipped Harlow off, but the ice in her voice confirmed it. “You were amess, Harlow. When I picked you up from that hospital I had no idea how to keep you alive. Do you even remember the weeks I spent with you that summer at the cabin?”
Harlow sighed. “I remember how you helped me. And I’m grateful for it.”
The summer after Kate left for Nea Sterlis, Harlow had spiraled out of control. She’d been drinking too much, doing too many drugs. It hadn’t been for fun, not any of it; she’d been trying to dull the pain. And then one night, she’d taken too much of something. She wasn’t even sure what, but she’d known it was too much at the time. She hadn’t meant to end things, not exactly, but neither had she cared when she felt herself slipping away. Harlow didn’t even know how she’d gotten to the hospital.
Thea didn’t look at her. “When I picked you up from the hospital you wouldn’t speak to me. They said you’d hadn’t spoken once in seventy-two hours, except to make your phone call.”
Harlow didn’t remember much about that. The drugs they’d given her made her groggy, and she hadn’t taken them again when she left. Whoever took her to the hospital had left her at a top-notch facility, but she hadn’t wanted to stay, and after seventy-two hours, they couldn’t keep her against her will. She’d called Thea, and they never told anyone else what had happened. They told the maters they were headed up north for the summer, and no one had questioned them.
“It was a bad start to our summer, but we had an okay time eventually, didn’t we?” Harlow asked, trying not to sound petulant, but it was tiring being the sister that always screwed things up. Besides, after the first week or two things hadn’t been so bad, had they?
Eventually she’d stopped wanting to die and after that her memories of that summer were golden and bittersweet. She and Thea had swum in the lake every day, napped, read books, cooked together and when they began laughing together again, Harlow had known she would make it. That she would live. She hadn’t stopped the hard drinking for another two years, but she never touched drugs again.
Thea’s face contorted with grief, as though she was wrestling with herself and what she wanted to say next. Harlow thought she looked like she wanted to deliver a lecture about mental health, but she’d had enough of those and interrupted her sister’s train of thought. “Sorry I’m a pain in the ass, Thea. Sorry I’m not perfect like you. But that summer wasnotso bad. We had fun.”
Thea flinched at Harlow’s words, as though she’d been slapped. “Fun?” she murmured as she stood and walked toward the window, staring out, wrapping her arms around her slender frame. “When we first got to the cabin, you talked about how much you wanted to die every single day, Harlow. Do you remember that?”
Harlow’s breath hitched. She didn’t remember that. Thea glanced at her, deep sadness in her eyes. “You said no one could ever love you. That you were fundamentally flawed somehow. Later, it was the thing that started my research into The Scroll of Akatei, into the history of the Striders… but back then…”
None of that was surprising, despite her inability to remember it. Those thoughts had lived inside her for a very long time. “But youknew, you knew Alaric and you knew the truth about Finn. You knew all that, you knew what I was going through, and youstilldidn’t tell me the one thing that could have stopped it all.”
A long silence stretched between them as Thea obviously tried to calm herself. She’d covered her mouth with her hands, and when she spoke again, her words were muffled. “But I didn’t know that then… I had no idea what would help, or hurt…” Thea’s voice cracked. “I was so afraid to lose you, Harlow. What if I—” Thea stumbled forward, sobs wracking her shoulders.
Harlow froze. She’d never seen her sister lose control like this, not ever. She was incapable of moving from the couch.
“I didn’t know what I could tell you and what I couldn’t, but then you started to get better and I just—I just couldn’t open it all up again. What if you went back to that place because I re-opened a wound that should have stayed closed? What if I lost you forever, because I made a mistake?”
The words fell from Thea’s lips in a deluge of pain as she fell to her knees. Harlow moved then, freed by the understanding that Thea was a person. Not some perfectly controlled creature who did everything right, with all the answers. She was just a person, a person who got scared and made mistakes. Harlow didn’t know what Thea should or shouldn’t have done in that moment, only that she was certain her sister had done her best. And that knowledge was enough. Her arms went around Thea and they cried together.
“I’m so sorry, Harlow,” Thea whispered. Her fingers dug into Harlow’s back. “I don’t love anyone in the world the way I love you. Do you understand that? I would do anything to protect you.Anything.”
Harlow rocked them both. “I know, Thea. I know.”
“And then everything happened with Mark and I failed you. I didn’t keep you safe. Mama told me what you told Larkin about how you found Axel… I’m so sorry.” Thea was sobbing so hard Harlow could hardly understand her.
“It’s not your fault,” Harlow soothed. “I should have gone to therapy—like they said at the hospital. I walked right into my pain, and I paid for it.”
Thea’s sobs quieted. “You don’t have to be with Finn if it hurts, Harlow. Everyone will understand. We’ll find another way to fix things.”
“That’s not what this is about. Not anymore.”
Thea looked up. Her face was swollen. None of the Kranes were pretty criers except Larkin and Meline. “It’s not?”
“No, I have real feelings for him. It’s time for me to move on, and I think I want to do it with him.”
“You’re sure?”
Harlow looked around at the office, thinking of the cafe below, and the apartments and offices on this floor. The work she imagined the Knights of Serpens were doing was the kind of work she’d always wanted to do. And she wanted to be doing it alongside her sister and Alaric—but most of all, Finn. “I’m sure.”
Thea’s swollen eyes crinkled and more tears squeezed out. “You’re really all right?”
“Yes,” Harlow said, hugging her sister even tighter. “Yes, I’m doing better now.”
In that moment, as she held her sister, she understood it was true. Shewasbetter now, and it wasn’t because of Finn, or her magic manifesting, or anything else. It was because of the work she’d done on herself. The time she’d taken for herself. The months alone in her empty apartment working through things, letting herself be lonely, staying with herself, with her pain, instead of running from it. She wasn’t perfectly healed, and maybe she never would be, but shewasbetter. Stronger.
“Do you promise?” Thea asked as her sobs began to quiet.
