Chapter Thirty Five
Theodore
It doesn't take much force to snap a neck.
Veiled memories flicker beneath my fingertips. I brush a trembling knuckle against one. It shies away from my touch. Her soul isn't mine to claim, and to take it would be to lose her. A strangled sob escapes my throat. This was the choice I made.
Even bloodied and wheezing for breath, she's beautiful. I reach for the boy's soul, but it's buried under the others I've consumed. There must've been a different path, a way to avoid this, but I missed a turn somewhere. I got lost. I brought us here. There's no one else to blame. It's my hands on her head, my hands twisting, my hands that draw the final crack.
It doesn't take much force at all.
Morrigan doesn't drink from her soul right away. It gives me hope, which is a dangerous emotion because I know it will be crushed. Still, I have to try.
"Bring her back," I whisper.
If love couldn't save Rose, maybe pity will. With a blood-covered fingertip, I sweep her hair out of her face and tuck it behind her ear, leaving a trail of red behind.
"Bring her back."
Az moves away from me, which is wise because my mother hasn't answered. I'm a man begging to keep what was never mine. I'm a child the way I've been a child before, laid bare and begging.
I rise to my feet and face my mother, demanding one last time, "Bring her back!"
"No."
The word echoes against the hardwood, the walls, my skull. It's the answer I expected, but that doesn't make it sting less. That doesn't keep Az from flinching. He should find the nearest exit. He doesn't.
If love will not save Rose, I'll have to rely on its scorned derivative. I don't know if I'm strong enough to defeat my mother, but I'm torn open enough to try.
Morrigan says, "Come home, dove," like this is still a discussion. "Let's be done with this at last. How many people must die for your ego? I'm tired of telling this story. A thousand times you've brought your lambs to me. Let it end. Sit at my side. I understand your frustration, your terror and grief. I'm the only one who does."
The offer tempts me like it never has before. I've spent so long swimming against the current. What a relief it would be to do as I'm told, to not think beyond my orders. I don't want to fight. I want to weep.
But I so rarely get what I want.
Lightning curls into a whip in my palm. Morrigan readies herself for a blow to the neck, but I aim for her outstretched hand. The whip curls around her wrist and sizzles like the popping of logs on a fire. Like the crack of bone. She pulls away with a hiss at the same time I release the tether, causing her to stumble backwards, cradling her arm.
Before I can delight in the fact that I actually hurt her, an impossible burst of wind forces me to my knees and keeps me there. I push against it with no avail. I don't look at the lifeless body beside me. It's preferable to drowning, is the lie I tell myself.
"Stubborn boy." She starts towards me, slow, and I know what will happen next. Hundreds of times, I've been forced to kneel before her, and hundreds of times, I've been wounded by her hand. She won't kill me. A small, shattered piece of myself wishes she would. "Reckless, arrogant boy. Must we do this again?"
I close my eyes and brace myself for the blow. Instead of the back of her hand, a shadow falls over my cheek, then covers my face, then my body. I peek with one squinting eye and find Azmaveth standing in front of me with his hands behind his back.
"He's suffered enough," Az says. I don't know how he manages to sound so calm. "He is your son, but this is my house, and he will not be harmed here."
My mother doesn't laugh, which is a testament to her shock. She doesn't strike him down immediately, either. He doesn't have the same immunity I do, but he's among her oldest allies. He is the oldest now, I realize, since Uriel is gone. That time spent together holds enough weight for her to hesitate.
"I should've given him to Uriel," she says. "He never would've challenged my disciplinary authority."
"You charged me with protecting him. That's what I'm doing."
"I told you to correct him, which you've obviously failed to do. Perhaps I no longer have need of you."
"Perhaps the world no longer needs either of us."
Not him. Please, not him. I am full to bursting. I can't contain the souls he's offering. I can't lose him, too.
He read to me, once. He comforted me before I thought I deserved it, and now— now, I don't deserve it, and he would comfort me still. How can I go on knowing he's not sitting in his office with the door cracked in case I need his company? His advice, though I never listen? I've distanced myself from him, but the knowledge of his existence is been a fixed point in the chaos my life has become. The chaos I've created.
There's no home if he doesn't exist. There's no way back.
"Don't," I whimper like the child my mother thinks I am. "Please don't."
Az doesn't turn to look at me. "It's been the honor of my life to know you, Theodore. Keep an eye out for the daylilies in the summer. They are magnificent."
When the light begins to build in the center of him, my mother flinches. I close my eyes but the essence of the man I admire most seeps through my eyelids. I'm still, but I'm falling, a ball shoved down a hill— No, off a cliff. I've mastered so many elements of nature, but gravity is beyond me. Time is beyond me. Could Morrigan stop this? Would she want to? She's shielding her eyes, too. She's shying away, too.
They were friends at one point. Colleagues, or associates. They were in the same vicinity for longer than I've been alive. The memories slam into me in rapid succession, another and another until I'm gagging on them. Az is not to my mother as Elias was to me; he is what Elias would've become if he stayed beside me. What terror that would be, a friend turned devotionary turned opponent.
How lonely for the both of them.
Azmaveth's memories don't settle with the fervor of Gemma's or the skittishness of Elias'. His don't run from me the way Uriel's did. Instead, they fall over the souls I've already taken like a weighted blanket, inviting rest. It's not heavy enough to oppress or overwhelm. Instead, it's a comfort, a method of grounding. An invitation to act with reassurance that I will find my way to safety. I'm not falling alone.
I can't rest yet, but the promise of reprieve steels me as I try to rise, struggling against the wind holding me down. The energy creating it is familiar, like the aftertaste of a fine meal. Instead of shoving, I lean into it, willing the air to still. It's mine as much as it's my mother's. It yields to me.
Morrigan is quick to compose herself. "So you are capable of learning. Extraordinary."
This is a dance, and she's been leading. I've fallen into step every time. A slash, a parry, a breath. A kind touch, an offer, a refusal. I've been following the pattern, but only now do I recognize it. Only now do I have the power to break it.
She steps over Azmaveth's limp, bodiless clothing and reaches to put her hand on my cheek. I catch her wrist, moving faster than I ever have before. The expected response follows: the back of her other hand striking me. It makes a loud sound but doesn't sting. The pain she brings is a fiction I'm inundated towards.
This is a stumble in our waltz. Not enough to trip her, only anger her further. "Stop this tantrum. You are trying to run before you've walked. It's my own fault for sending you to this estate, but that can be remedied. Come, or it will be the succubus next."
On cue, an ultimatum, and one that begs me to cave. I will not be a participant in this anymore. I will not do this anymore. Her wrist is still in my hand. I hold my tongue and stare at her, unblinking.
Like a choreographed dip, her tone softens. "Think of what I could teach you. What we could do together. With me, you would be unstoppable."
She'll never stop. As long as she walks the earth, I will never be left alone. The cycle will continue until I break it. How childish I was to think she'd get bored. To think her interest in me would wane. I'm her son. I'm her son.
My hand around her wrist heats with flickers of electricity. She doesn't flinch, not at first. When the skin begins to char, her eyes narrow. When it starts to melt away, she tries to pull back, but I tighten my grip on tendon and bone.
"Enough," she hisses.
I've begged her before, and she didn't listen. Why would I stop now, when she never did? I slide my eyes to Rosalie's body. My mother could've let us live in peace. She could've prevented this. I could've prevented this. There's only one way forward. There has only ever been one way.
I twist her disintegrating wrist and force her to the ground. Standing over her, she looks as small as I've felt. How did I ever think of her as inevitable? Invincible? A force instead of a person. Now, an obstacle.
She could kill me. I'm strong, but her power still dwarfs mine. She could reach up, snatch my soul and the ones I've stolen, and draw them into herself. I'm but a vessel, an extension of her, housing power until she's ready to claim it. She should kill me.
But I'm her son.
On her knees, she says, "I can bring her back. If you let me, I'll bring her back."
"To what end? So you might torment us for another thousand years? So we might replay this scene over until the stars wink out and we have no ground left to stand on?" I release her wrist to fix my grip on either side of her head. "To what end, mother! That you might convince me, that I'll fail to be convinced, and on and on. I'm tired. Aren't you tired?"
"I only ever wanted what's best for you. I only wanted you to become—"
"This?" Memories dance beneath my fingertips. I wonder if any are hers. If she has a soul at all. "I could've had a life, but you condemned me to this."
"I did not kill you, dove," she says.
It's only technically true, the way I didn't kill the boy. What a convenient narrative. What an injustice.
Now I'm stalling. It does frighten me, this shift, my fingers on her temples. I've only ever existed in her shadow. Who am I if I'm not running away? What might I become?
I'm her son.
But if I falter, Rose will have died for nothing. Azmaveth and Gemma and Elias and Anya will have died for nothing. If I can't exist for myself, I'll exist for them. They guide me, even if I can't feel them. I will never be alone again. I have never been alone.
"Forgive me," my mother says.
The piece of me that could've offered her kindness is shattered and lifeless at my feet. I am what I am, what I always have been: a starved child. A thief.
I know this river. The bubbling of water sliding over stone is as familiar as my own breath, the breath it stole from me. Somewhere down the bend, there's a boy stripped to his undergarments. There are three men watching from the bushes. Further down, a family massacred for the sins of the son. I dip a finger into the water and watch it part around me.
It doesn't stop the river from flowing. The story ends as written.
I cup my hand and let the water pool. Most of it slips through my fingers or drips down my wrist, but a few stubborn droplets wedge in the creases of my palm. I lower my head to inspect them. So small, these lives, these souls. So quiet, but the river roars. I flick the dew onto the grass and sit. I tilt my face towards the sun.
Time doesn't matter in this place, not to me, and not to the water or the sky. My cheeks are red and warm with the sun beating on them like an embrace. I sit there for days. I sit there for seconds.
A familiar tug in my chest stirs me. I squint, scanning. It's not the pull of death, but a hand held, not forcing but leading. I stand, pacing along the riverbank. My feet are bare, my pants rolled up to expose my ankles. Grass squishes beneath my steps, moistened by the splashing of the river and nurtured by the uninhibited sunlight.
I stop in front of a single bright pink flower at the curve of the river. It's out of place among the uniformity of green, but it thrives. I squat in front of it and trace the petals with the pad of my index finger. Dew settles on my skin. I bring the finger to my mouth. I set the droplets on my tongue. I swallow all that's left of her.
Now, she is safe. This is a promise kept, an oath fulfilled. And still, it's not enough. I can't rest here, so far from my body. There are others who remember her. And I am hungry. I have been hungry.