Page 239 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

In some asshole with the audacity to laugh like he meant it… like any of us still had a right to. In Freya flashing that cheeky smile at my cousins. Gio and his fucking guitar in the fucking dining hall, playing his ridiculous fucking folk tunes.

The pockets of joy for the sane were nothing but agony for those of us without a semblance of it.

When the heaving stopped, I sat back on my heels, breathing through another flood of saliva.

I spat into the toilet, irritated with myself, then rose on shaking legs and went to the sink. Rinsed my mouth. Splashed cold water across my face. Bracing both hands on the counter, cursing the tremor climbing my arms, I lifted my head—all ten thousand pounds of it somehow hanging from my neck. My skin looked how I felt: sickly pale, bruises beneath my eyes. Rest was never granted to the wicked, so I wasn’t sure why I’d expected anything different for the son of a monster.

When I was pretty certain I wasn’t going to empty my stomach again, I headed for my room.

“Fuck it,” I growled after one look at my empty bed. I used to have ways to deal with shit. Coping methods that were fairly foolproof. None of them were available these days. Well… that wasn’t entirely true. Lucky for me, Dad’s liquor collection was top of the line. Aside from the posted guards, I didn’t see a soul along the way.

Vodka in one hand, a book and pen in the other, I shifted through the shadows to the one place I’d ever created a bubble of peace—the Luminark Manor roof.

Only… there was no bubble of peace.

A wall of humidity hit me hard enough to make my skin instantly sticky. A familiar, downtrodden raven perched on the ridge of the spire. His silence was his report: no sign of Nix.

Beside him sat a beautiful red-haired nightmare, chin resting on her knees in the moonlight. She didn’t look like much of a threat like that. No sign of the feral creature who’d torn my life apart before flipping everything upside down—challenging everything I thought I knew and converting an entire hierarchy in one fell swoop.

Nah. Up here in the depths of night, she just looked like a girl.

So breathtaking it hurt. Moonlight silvered her skin until she looked almost luminous, red bangs tucked behind one ear. For the first time since we got home, when she turned to look at me, her eyes seemed every bit as heavy as mine.

She didn’t bother to hide it. Just let me see exactly how tired she was. How heavily the crown—the grief—must weigh.

“Nightmares?” she whispered, turning her attention back to the estate—to the guards, I realized, like she couldn’t help but monitor the perimeter of her keep.

“Yeah. You?”

“Always the same thing.” She didn’t say what, and I sure as shit didn’t ask as I crossed the steep pitch to sit beside her near the spire, tucking the worn paperback under my arm. I was pretty sure mine ended the same way. Or close enough that I didn’t need confirmation. Freya apparently disagreed. “What do you see?”

I swallowed, eyeing the bottle in my hand and wishing I’d downed it first. With a sigh, I twisted off the cap and held it out. Those glimmering jades flicked sidelong to me before she wordlessly accepted. I watched her take a long pull, throat working as she downed it like water. Jesus.

My eyes must’ve been wide when she turned to pass it back, because hers narrowed. “What?” she deadpanned.

“Tryin’ta drink me under the table, Porter?” Ma moitié. It sat right on my tongue, but the endearment felt alien after… well, everything. Like neither of us had the right to claim it, much less say it.

“You’re a big man, I think you’ll be fine.”

I snorted, the glass cool against my hand as a merciful summer breeze blew across my skin, easing the humidity.

“So?” she pressed, turning to set her face against her arms where they wrapped around her knees, those eyes locking on me with all the warmth of seeing a ghost.

“The duel, mostly. Nix sometimes.”

“Your mom?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

I took a long swig, eyes never leaving hers as they welled silver. She fucking meant it. I had no idea what the hell to say.

“Not her death,” I clarified. “At least, not usually.” When her brows dipped in the middle, I held out the bottle and added, “Sometimes it’s childhood stuff. The good stuff.”

Mostly, it’s you, though—the moment she went for your heart.

Goddamnit, what the fuck was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I find the words for what actually haunted me—the alternative? The one where she hit her knees with that blade in her side and never got back up. Where she didn’t move fast enough and it was her throat spilling crimson in the end. Where I was the one clinging to her corpse on a boat in front of twenty-six hierarchies. Twenty-six rival peoples united by one common nightmare. Me on my knees, no air left in my lungs as grief shredded them like paper streamers.