Page 55 of The Blade in the Ashes
What had I been thinking when I made that deal with Caldrius?
Delusion.
I’d been having delusions of grandeur.
I’d actually believed I was aGoddess,capable of anything.I’d believed I could face Hyrax as an equal.
That was so far from the truth.
Without my powers, I was no one. Nothing.
All that bravery and determination had left me the second my magic had faded from existence, and it had taken with it any chance I’d had of standing against him. I was a prisoner here and I hadletthem lock me inside.
A violent heave rushed through me, my body erupting into shakes so intense I was sure that my knees would bruise from where I leaned over the cool tub.
“Thea?”
Caldrius.
Of course, he’d followed me here. I couldn’t escape him. I would never escape him, or Hyrax, or this castle. I was going to be trapped in here while Hyrax killed everyone I knew and loved.
He would do it while claiming that all his actions were for me.
It might as well have been my own hand that had summoned those shadows and set them upon Damon.
I had barely been able to stomach watching Hyrax do that to someone who was basically a stranger to me. What if he found Clay or the others? I would rather carve out my own heart than watch him do that to them.
I felt Caldrius’ presence when he entered the bathing chamber without having to turn and look at him. He filled every space he entered. Maybe that was why the servants looked tohimas their leader.
Not me.
“Theadora,” he placed a hand on my back, running up and down in a soothing motion. “You need to breathe.”
Breathe. He wanted me to breathe. As if it were just that simple. As if I weren’t desperately gulping down air. Breathing wasn’t the problem. It was that I couldn’t hold on to that air. My body was rejecting air the same way it had rejected my magic.
“I—” I gasped. “I can’t.”
Caldrius wrapped a hand around the nape of my neck and pulled me away from the tub as he sat on the floor next to me. “Yes, you can, Thea. Come on, big breath in.”
Maybe this was death.
Maybe I should have died when Pasnia drained my magic, and it was just now coming back for me. Perhaps that wasn’t the worst thing, though. Surely dying now would be better than watching my friends suffer and knowing it was all my fault.
“You’re having a panic attack,” he explained with a detached sense of clinical assessment, and he pulled me forward until I was basically in his lap. “You need to slow down. Close your eyes.”
His fingertips brushed over my eyelids, drawing them closed.
“Breathe in for a count of four. Good. Now hold it.”
He counted to six before instructing me to exhale, then he leaned away from me and the sound of running water filled the room.
“In for four again.” Caldrius once again wrapped a hand around the back of my neck, only now his fingers were wet with cold water. I jerked slightly at first, but stilled as he wetted his fingers in the bathwater again and then pressed them to my forehead.
“Now exhale.”
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
Breathe in.
