The dual icon hangs in shadow, but I don’t move to light the candles that line the altar. The air is draped with the faded scent of smoke. Draw back the curtains and let moonlight pool over the floor. The first time I’ve come-uncorrupted-to the dual altar in the parlor. Tonight is my first observance since it all happened. Though everyone is long asleep, I don’t want to risk disturbing them.
With a sigh, I turn away from the window. How she kissed me that last time, her mouth tasting of blood and poison. How she looked when I carried her to the altar. How she looked when she crossed the shore, went into the water. This is a pain that I can’t work free from. Grief isn’t a tithe that can be paid with blood. My hand on the bed, fingers clutched at a vacant space. And every time, I can’t help reaching out. The spell she marked on my wrist aches and burns. It catches me by the throat when I am at my most unguarded.Īt night, after I drift into restless sleep, thoughts of Leta rise, always, though I don’t want them. Thought I knew the way it softened in hurried moments and returned when the world was quiet. After my parents died, after I lost Elan. In that last, terrible moment when the shadows closed in, I heard her voice as she demanded he take her, alive, to the world Below. Held her in my arms as the poison claimed her, as she spilled her blood beneath the dual altar and called to the Lord Under. I watched Violeta Graceling-the girl I love-vanish into the dark. All remnants of the destruction I caused when I became a monster. Deep wounds torn across the ground that look like they were made by claws. Earth cut up, a fallen tree skeletal in the moonlight. Dark as ink, dark as the Corruption that stained the shore, dark as the poison that filled my veins. Illuminating the blackened streaks that still mar the wooden icon frame, turning the Lady to a shadowed shroud. In the altar beneath the jacaranda tree, at the center of the lawn, a single candle has been lit. The trees are hung with leaves that are dying or dead. Cold glass, moonlight on the locked garden below. Pause at the landing and look down through the arched window. And though I was spared, all still feels ruined.
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