Finally, within the recesses of those shared shadows, Digby speaks. “You’ve got to have it looked at, my lady.”
No one, save him, would’ve been able to do this. To break down this one wall I have constructed around such a painful piece. It must’ve been keeping my spine upright, because as soon as it comes tumbling down, so do my shoulders. I ache as the bricks of refusal rain down at my feet, showing me exactly the sort of rubbled ruin I truly am. And to think, this is only a single wall.
When I say nothing, Digby gives me a firm look. “It’s got to be done.”
With the debris useless and scattered, I have nothing to hold up my resolve. Not with the recognition of his gaze. So I swallow hard and say, “Okay.”
Because I can’t say no to him. I can’t look him in the eye and say I’m fine. I could with the others, but not him, not when we were both in that room.
Digby steps aside, deferring to Hojat. “This way, my lady,” the mender tells me.
My numbness comes off in layers as I walk down the hallway. It feels like dead skin peeling away, left in a scattered trail behind me.
By the time I reach the borrowed bedroom I woke up in, I’m already raw. When Hojat covers me with a sheet so I can slip off my shirt, my body starts to tremble. When he has me lie face-down on the bed, my skin breaks out into a cold sweat.
Slade stays at my side, his hand gripping mine, and I squeeze and squeeze, because his touch is the only thing that’s steady against my convulsing rupture, but I also can’t bear for him to see. “Don’t look at them,” I say quietly, my voice a plea.
I don’t know if he already saw, but I can’t stand him looking at it now. Can’t stand for him to see what’s no longer there. At the wounds left behind.
His jaw muscle strains, but he gives a nod, his eyes never leaving mine, never straying down my spine.
I turn my head on the pillow, and there’s Digby, standing guard at the door like he’s done my whole life. Face grim, mouth quiet.
One of these males watches over me, the other sees right through me, no matter where I tell him to look.
“Alright, Lady Auren, I’m starting now,” Hojat says quietly.
I brace myself, but I could never really be ready. The pain is hot and angry, almost bitter at how I’ve tried to ignore it, ready to lash out in punishment.
The first pass of Hojat’s gentle hands as he starts to clean the wounds makes my spine bow up in shocking pain, and I suck in a noisy breath.
Every single swipe of his rag, every trickle of water and the herbal smell that fills my nose, I feel it all with stark alertness. But I feel the phantom pains of what happened in that room, too. The lightning bolts of agony that cut through those pieces of me, leaving me to bleed out onto the floor in golden tatters.
It’s the smell of herbs tainted with the memory of metallic blood.
It’s the dipping of his water mixture wrung out in the bowl that’s morphed into the sound of blood dripping into a puddle.
It’s the swipe of his motions merged with the swipe of the sword.
It’s Digby watching me now, just as he was then.
But it’s the window that really does me in. The dark glass may as well be a mirror for how well it reflects. And with my face turned toward it, there’s no hiding away from the sight of my exposed back.
It looks so empty. Devoid. When I see it like this, the true reality of my loss slams into me full-force in a way it hasn’t before. Because I wouldn’t let myself think of it. But now, I can’t ignore it. Because there it is, like scalloped edges jutting from my back that I can no longer cling to.
They’re gone.
I don’t have their comforting hug around my middle or their graceful twirls along the floor. I don’t have the satiny brushes against my skin or the steadying weight at my back. They’ve been taken away, hacked away like a length of hair, leaving me to ache with the loss. All that’s left are two rows of jagged, throbbing stubs that bleed and fray in the wake of what they once were.
And it’s right here, right in this moment, that the pent-up sob finally tears past my lips. My stopper is yanked out, and there are no denials, no I’m fines. There isn’t a cave in the world that’s deep enough for me to hide away from this.
Because I’ve passed the point of no return now, and it’s not just that there’s no going back—it’s that my back doesn’t even exist anymore.
Eruptive emotion pushes out of me, so loud I feel it must burst from the house and echo through the cave. As if it cries with me.