‘My hands were fists at my sides. Her pale shadow pressed against the glass behind me. Her soft whisper inside my head.
‘“Don’t listen, love …”
‘“I don’t—”
‘“You lied to Aaron,” Dior said, her voice breaking. “I know what happened to them.”
‘“Don’t go someplace I can’t follow …”
‘I turned back to the window, the shadow floating in the night beyond. Her skin was pale as the stars in a yesterday sky, her beauty of edgeless winters and lightless dawns, and my heart hurt to see her – that fearful kind of hurt you couldn’t hope to bear, save for the emptiness it would leave if you put it behind you.
‘“Tell me you love me,” she begged.
‘I turned to look at the girl, jaw clenched. “You stop this now.”
‘“The Worst Day,” she insisted. “The day he found you. That’s why you left home, why you’ve come all this way. Why you drink. Why you don’t believe any more. All of it. This isn’t about me, none of it is. It’s about them, Gabe. Astrid and Patience.”
‘“Promise you’ll never leave me.”
‘“Astrid and Patience are at home, Dior.”
‘“I know. I know they are.”
‘She breathed deep, tears spilling down her cheeks. Eyes that saw the hurts of the world, and a heart that wanted to fix them. But she couldn’t fix this. No one could.
‘“That’s where you buried them, Gabriel.”
‘The words were a knife to my chest. I felt my teeth clench so hard I feared they’d crack. A war drum beat in my temples, heart rushing as I turned to that shadow watching me from beyond the glass. She looked at me with pleading eyes, long hair floating about her like ribbons of silk, tearing now between my fingertips.
‘“Don’t,” she begged me. “Don’t let me go, love …”
‘The taste of betrayal was venom in my mouth, my fury white hot in my chest. I looked down to the blade at my waist, that silver dame on the crossguard. And I tore Ashdrinker from her sheath, starsteel glittering in the firelight.
‘“You told her?”
‘Gabriel, n-never.
‘“You talk about them in the past tense, Gabe,” Dior whispered. “You talk in your sleep. All the time. About that day. The Worst Day.”
‘“Shut up,” I whispered.
‘Gabriel, p-put me down. Ye are upset, upset.
‘“Gabe, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you …”
‘“My lion … please …”
‘“Shut up.”
‘Think now, what ye do. Think of what she—
‘“I hear you talking to her sometimes. I know it hel—”
‘“You promised you’d never leave me. You—”
‘“SHUT UP!”
‘I roared at the top of my lungs, turning and hurling the blade through the window. The glass blew outwards, a million glittering pieces falling like snow as the sword sailed through the empty black outside. The wind blew through the shattered panes, and I slipped to my knees. Looking into the dark where she’d never been.
‘Because she was at home.
‘Where else would she be?
‘I felt it rising inside me, pressing the walls of the dam I’d built. The denial, the drink, the smoke – all of it, anything to keep it at bay. But still, I stared out that broken window, that hole they’d left behind. I felt Dior kneel beside me, heedless of the broken glass as her fingers slipped into mine. My fangs had torn my lips, blood in my mouth, hair about my face as I bent double and tried to hold it inside.
‘“I don’t want to hurt you, Gabriel,” Dior whispered. “I know what they meant to you. I can’t let other people die for me because you’re afraid to lose someone else you care about. I can’t be what you want me to be. But I am your friend. And I can be more than just a hill to die on.”
‘“What else is there?” I whispered.
‘“A shoulder to cry on.”
‘She shrugged as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
‘“If you want. I’ll not judge you ill for it.”
‘I felt the words behind my teeth. Trying in vain to swallow them.
‘To speak it would make it real.
‘To speak it would be to live it again.
‘But still …
‘But still.
‘I spoke.’
XVIII
THE WORST DAY
‘IT WAS AN ordinary day. I’d spent it working in the loft of the lighthouse. The brick was warm under my bare feet. The sweat cool on my skin. I could see our house below, the spire of stone it was built upon, falling down into the ocean. Patience and Astrid were feeding the chickens together. The water was almost blue. That’s the awful part about it: the worst days of your life start out just like any other.
‘It’d been fifteen years since the Battle of the Twins. My service in San Michon felt a lifetime ago. The war was creeping closer, year by year, but we’d gone as far south as we could. I hadn’t smoked the sacrament in ten years. Despite all they’d warned me of – the thirst within, my father’s curse – all of it was held in check by the bliss Astrid nightly gifted me from her veins, and in the simple joy of her arms. The Forever King’s war, the things I’d been and done – it was almost far enough away to forget, and in truth, I was happy to let myself. And that’s the thing that wakes me up at night, see. I should’ve known there’d come a reckoning.
‘He told me he had forever, after all.
‘I don’t know how he found us. Nor how long ago he’d learned where we hid. Maybe he’d always known – allowing me a few years to taste happy, to delude myself into thinking he might forget. I know only that it was springtime when he came. The breeze off the ocean was soft and cool. The silverbell trying to bloom among the stones.
‘We had a rule to always be inside by dark. Always. But Patience loved the scent; Astrid, too. And while my wife finished in the kitchen and I set the table for supper, Patience had gone outside to gather flowers for the centrepiece. Just for a minute. That’s all it takes for your world to turn upside down, you know. A second’s distraction. A single moment that haunts you every moment for the rest of your life.
‘The waves were crashing on the rocks, but there were no gulls singing in the air. That was what crept on me first; a small silence, a tiny note of wrongness that planted a sliver of ice in my gut. Astrid was singing in the kitchen, and what was left of the sun was pressing dark red lips to the horizon, and I fell slowly still, listening. And that splinter of ice became a stone, sitting cold in the pit of my belly as Astrid called over the song of the sea.
‘“Patience, dinner!”
‘Not a sound, save shushing waves and whispering wind and the silence where the gull song should’ve been. And I felt it then; the dread I should’ve cherished all those waking years. The tiny part of me that had known, that had always known, bid me walk to the fireplace, to reach to the dark wooden plaque above it, to the blade I’d hung there so many years before with a prayer I’d never need draw her again.