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Violet thought that she’d grown used to grief over the last few years. It wasn’t really a friend… more like an unwitting confidant. Death had walked beside Violet for well over a decade. She just thought she’d had a better handle on the emotions. First, Brennan died. Then, her dad died. Then suddenly, Liam - her truest unlikely friend - was dead but Brennan was
alive.
Then the Battle of Basgiath happened, and… Violet couldn’t even
think
the rest of the words. She couldn’t visualize the wardstone, or Sloane, or any of it. This was a revolution, though. They could all die at a moment’s notice - they all could.
Violet was
supposed
to be used to this kind of thing by now.
Still, she couldn’t shut the traitorous thoughts out of her mind. Violet felt her power drain from her body, her hands turning to ice in the wake of the lightning that had so constantly been with her since she’d manifested. She could’ve died at Resson; maybe she should have died at Resson. Perhaps dying in Varrish’s torture dungeon would have been more appropriate. At least she wouldn’t constantly have to prove she was more than her name, any longer. Maybe in the sweet embrace of death she would be allowed to grieve.
Maybe she could say ‘hi’, just one more time. That wouldn’t be so bad. It might actually be preferable to facing the land of the living. Thunder boomed outside as rain fell in sheets on Aretia. Violet hadn’t heard a storm so strong since her mother’s death. Of course it would be on the anniversary of her father’s death. The storm had started just as the edge of midnight crept across the sky.
Of course it had.
Violet cast her gaze to Xaden. The very shadows Xaden commanded by day cocooned him by night. His muscles were poised to attack at a moment’s notice.
Damn
those muscles would be Violet’s undoing. A pool of heated energy coiled low in Violet’s stomach at the sight of the skin that had become as familiar as her own. It wasn’t a pool of heated desire, however, tonight. It was a bubbling pot of guilt, and it was threatening to boil over.
Violet’s fingers lightly traced the dark skin of Xaden’s back. His scarred back. Violet’s fingers refused to stall on any of the angry, raised ridges. One hundred and seven scars decorated what should have been unmarred skin, and they were all inflicted by the one and only
Lilith Sorrengail
. Acid pooled in Violet’s throat, blocking off any oxygen that dared fight its way to her lungs.
Her feelings were wrong. How could Violet grieve the woman who had inflicted these angry lines on the only person who had ever chosen Violet? Condemnation singed Violet’s fingertips as lightning poised itself to incinerate Violet from the inside out.
This train of thought is not productive, Silver One.
Tairn chuffed into Violet’s mind. His voice was limned with equal parts annoyance and concern.
If you do not respond, I will have Sgael wake the Marked One.
I’m fine.
Lying to me is not complying.
Tairn’s voice was barely finished echoing through Violet’s mind before Xaden was rolling over. Xaden’s fingers gripped Violet’s own, now frozen in midair.
“Did Tairn find it necessary to wake me up because you were petting me in such a relaxing manner, Violence?” Gruff sleep belied the humor in Xaden’s voice.
“Sorry. He didn’t need to wake you.” Unshed tears threatened to overflow the dams of Violet’s eyes. Her voice was little more than a strangled squeak. Xaden shifted to a seated position, scars hidden against the headboard.
“What’s wrong, Violet?”
“It’s nothing.” A traitorous tear sprang free and rolled down the bridge of Violet’s nose. Xaden’s fingers stopped the salt water before it reached Violet’s quivering lips.
“Clearly.”
“It’s nothing that I can talk to
you
about.” Xaden’s eyebrows shot up half the expanse of his forehead. His palm gingerly cupped Violet’s cheek as unwavering sincerity solidified in the set of Xaden’s jaw.
“You can talk to me about anything, Violence.”
“Not this.”
“Ahhh. Are you having sex dreams about Tairn?” Xaden’s lips quirked up in a hesitant smile. Humor wasn’t typically at the forefront of his arsenal; its deployment cleaved a chuckle from Violet’s failing heart.
Excuse me?
Even Tairn’s mental voice sounded reluctantly amused.
“Ahh there she is.” Xaden tugged Violet into his large frame. “What’s wrong, Violence? You know you can tell me anything.”
“It’s - I,” Violet started and restarted. Her mouth filled with thick mucus and refused to form any of the letters she needed. “I was thinking about my parents.”
“Oh.” A mage light flickered on behind Violet’s head. Xaden’s face bore no malice or discomfort. His eyes filled with pure sympathy and understanding. It was almost worse - Violet had always hated those ‘pity stares’. Those stares had grown less frequent in recent years, but they hadn’t stopped altogether.
“We don’t have to do this. Let’s just go back to sleep.” Xaden heaved Violet from her seated position on the bed into a swaddle in his lap.
“Yes.
We
do have to do this. It bothers you. This is important, Violet.”
Violet fixed her eyes at the window. The blanket. The wall. Anywhere, really, but Xaden’s too-understanding face. “It’s three years today since my dad died.”
“I’m sorry, Violet.”
“Don’t be. You didn’t kill him. And your dad is dead, too.” Foreign lightning - naturally occuring and not at Violet’s behest - lit the far corners of the room.
“Right, but it’s been longer for me. And you didn’t kill him, either.” It was the wrong thing to say. Violet’s back went rigid. She peeled herself out of Xaden’s grip.
“No. My mother killed him.” She may as well have slapped Xaden. Twin grief flashed across Xaden’s face before he wiped it away. “And then she gave you
those
as a reminder. You did nothing wrong. Your father was nothing but courageous. Yet my mother was a monster and my father loved her,” the words spilled, unctuous and slippery from Violet’s lips, “and I’m laying next to
you
while I grieve them. I’m touching the permanent reminders of my mother’s wrath on your skin while I have the audacity to be sad about them. You should have let me die with Varrish. I’m a monster.”
Thunderless lightning flashed through the room once more. That
might
have been Violet. She couldn’t tell anymore.
“Technically
I’m
the venin. That makes me the monster here.” Xaden’s quip fell flat as another sob of guilt raced through Violet’s body. “Vi. Violence, look at me.” A light pressure from Xaden’s fingers on Violet’s jaw drew her gaze to his. Violet’s eyelids squeezed tight in protestation. Her hair dragged softly against Xaden’s knuckles as she shook her head.
“Don’t. Don’t try to make me feel better.”
“I will always,
always,
do everything within my power to make you feel good. Assuaging your misplaced guilt is no different.” Shadows encircled their faces, sealing them off from the bedchamber and tumult that was brewing outside.
“It’s not misplaced.”
“It is, Violet. It is. You had no more control over the actions of your parents than I did mine.”
“Your father was fighting for good-”
“As are you now. We can’t change the actions of those who came before us. The only way to fail is refusing to take better actions for ourselves.”
“When we sleep side by side, I look over and I see the pain that
my mother
inflicted on you. How can you not hate me?”
“You make it near impossible to hate you, Violence.” Xaden’s calloused palm cupped Violet’s quivering chin. His grip was comfortingly firm, but not forced. Never forced. “Your mother made her own choices. I made my own choices, as did you. Each of these choices brought us here. You and I are fighting side by side against the very leadership under whom you were raised. I’d say you’ve long since redeemed any bloodlines.” Xaden drew a shaky breath. “You can talk to me about them, you know.
Both
of them. You’re allowed to feel whatever it is you feel, Love. I’m here for you. You’re allowed to miss them, and you’re damned sure more than allowed to talk to me about missing them.”
A sob squeaked out from deep within Violet’s ribs. She drew one short breath, then a longer, deeper one. “Sometimes, I think about those days under Varrish.” Xaden blinked as rapidly as Violet switched subjects. “Things might have been better for you - for everyone - if maybe I had died. You could fight. Could have heirs. You wouldn’t have your loyalties brought into question over and over again.”
“Don’t.” Xaden’s voice shook, his cadence barely above the low boom of a rock slide. “Don’t ever talk like that. If you had died, so would I. Not because of our dragons, but because a world without you in it is not a world I have any interest living in. I love you, Violet. I need you.”
Nobody spoke for long, silent moments. Their twining breaths were still stolen away in the solace of the shadows. Finally, Violet cleared her throat. “My dad would have loved you, I think.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
I hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since before the Battle of Basgiath. I hadn’t truly rested since I had been stationed at Samara at a damnable distance from Violet. It had been an intentional choice made by leadership, of course. They wanted to get back at me. Not that I blamed them. I was the living portrait of Fen Riorson - public enemy number one, two, and three.
And I had the gaul to sully the daughter of the great, esteemed General Sorrengail. The derisive glares cleaved through the walls of my waking nightmares. No one thought I deserved Violet. I didn’t, of course. I would however never stop trying, from now until my last breath sputtered from my rattling lungs, to steal even a modicum of truth from that sentiment.
The soft wrestling of sheets behind me was the first indication that Violet wasn't sleeping either. Her breaths shuddered out in jagged, labored gasps. I almost rolled over. Almost. Violet was struggling, too though. At least some of that struggle was rendered from my own monstrous palms. I dug it straight from the earth myself when I channeled a trench straight to it.
The least I could do was give her space if she wanted it. She would have told me if something was bothering her and she wanted me to know. Certainly.. Or she would have, anyway. She would have
before
. She would have told me before I lied to her. She would have told me before I’d kept the revolution from her - before I’d kept Cat from her and her owned damned
brother
.
She would have told me before I channeled from the source. Now I counted down the nights before she refused to share my bed, or even my air. She no longer had any reason to confide in me; she hadn’t truly had any reason to trust me from the start.
The rancid stench of emotion flooded through the bond. Intermingled fear and guilt tasted of rusty iron decay on my tastebuds. It was a taste I’d grown accustomed to since Resson. It was a taste I’d hoped for all of my power that Violet would never know. Yet she was lying next to me, next to a venin initiate, only allowing herself to feel under the guise of sleep. I bore one hundred and seven scars on my back plus one as a badge of honor above my chest. Still, the phantom sting of a thousand scars would never be enough to distract me from the guilt that threatened to drown whatever was left of my soul.
Another hideous thought flooded my mind and dove straight with its arrows of nausea to my very core.
Was she afraid of me
? It would make sense, after all. I should have let her have this room to herself.
I should have left the damned house. My dad would have been so utterly disappointed. He died in an effort to eradicate the venin. Now his only son had tried so hard to be the hero that he had become the villain. It was a sick joke indeed. I didn’t deserve the Riorson house.I didn’t deserve the Riorson name.
Halt this odious train of thought. I grow weary. It does not fix anything. I did not choose you to brood.
Sgaeyl chides down the bond. I huff a humorless laugh.
But it’s what I do best.
Your greatest skill is your discernment. Use it.
My greatest skill is deception.
Sgaeyl didn’t even try to argue. We both knew it was true. Still, I closed my eyes and drifted off into not-quite-sleep.
Wake, Dark One.
Train’s voice was gruff in my mind.
Lightning lit the dark corners in which I, the red-eyed monster, hid. Violet was no longer beside me. Battle leathers were still strewn across the floor in comfortable disarray. The door to the terrace overlooking Aretia creaked in harmony with the howling wind. The blanket was damp with rain water. Everything was as it had been the last time I’d had any real presence of mind.
Violet’s fingers traced across my arms and back in featherlight touches. The soft fingertips on my marred skin were electric. Every point of contact with her was transcendent. If I were to lose my humanity, this would be an excellent last memory.
Only, I wouldn’t be so lucky, would I?
The thunder’s next crescendo cemented two truths in my mind. First, this storm was natural. Of course it was; I couldn’t bring Violet to that kind of pleasure anymore. Not safely anyway. Secondly… this storm was natural and Violet knew it.
This storm didn’t belong to her, and it wasn’t commanded by her mother. Her mother was dead. The two of us had always shared a baseline trauma. Both of our fathers - both the parent who ostensibly cared more about our well-being - were ripped from our lives. That kind of loss changed over time, of course. It was, however, the kind of thing that never really left. Grief altered both of us permanently and forged a bond between our souls.
This was different, though. We had both shared trauma, but we’d never supported each other in its wake. Rather, we’d met in its aftermath. My dwindling sanity wouldn’t cause more trauma for Violet. Not tonight, anyway.
Warm tears fell onto my forearm as I rolled over and snaked a hand under Violet’s shivering body. I tucked the blanket more firmly under her chin, but she didn’t seem to notice. The blanket moved to eclipse her face, a verifiable wall where there should have been a bridge. That was definitely my fault. Violet hiding her truth behind a flimsy piece of bedding definitely cracked one of the last remnants of my soul.
Still, I couldn’t leave. Selfishly, I would stay until the earth scorched the final dregs of my consciousness.
“Did Tairn find it necessary to wake me up because you were petting me in such a relaxing manner, Violence?” Jokes were good. Jokes got responses. The thick worry in my voice was easily disguised with a yawn.
“Sorry. He didn’t need to wake you.” Silvery tears threatened to fall from Violet’s perfect eyelids. Her voice wavered under the strain of emotion. How long had she been crying? I shifted to a seated position, gently tugging her body toward mine.
“What’s wrong, Violet?”
“It’s nothing.” I palmed her face, catching her newest tear on my thumb. I couldn’t recall ever seeing Violet cry like this. Had she cried like this in private? Had I ever caused tears like this? Bile rose steadily up my throat.
“Clearly.”
“It’s nothing that I can talk to
you
about.” Translation? It was my fault. All of the blood in my face drained, leaving my slack jawed and numb. Maybe I should have let go of her cheek, but I didn’t. I stroked my thumb across it once again. She was always so damn beautiful. My mouth dropped open twice, but no sound came out.
“You can talk to me about anything, Violence.” Baritone finally found my vocal cords.
“Not this.”
“Ahhh. Are you having sex dreams about Tairn?” She clearly didn’t want jokes here. They were clearly a more welcome intruder than I, though. The small giggle that didn’t even reach her lips was the most marvelous symphony I had ever heard. Maybe I should get someone funnier than me to talk to her. Maybe Ridoc?
Bile once again clawed at my throat in protest. I’d do it, though. If Violence didn’t want me here, maybe she would talk to a friend instead.
Excuse me?
Thankfully Tairn sounded more relieved than he did offended.
“Ahh there she is. What’s wrong, Violence? You know you can tell me anything.” Instead of leaving to get Ridoc, I clung more tightly to her shaking frame. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t pull away. I leaned selfishly and clung to every second she gave me.
“It’s - I,I was thinking about my parents.” Small, broken stuttered sobs shattered what was left of my heart. Of course I knew that it was a possibility. I had even thought of Lilith in the clamor of the storms. Still, hearing her say it, hearing her voice break like that, wasn’t something I could survive again.
I cast up a mage light for her benefit. I’d felt isolated in my own shadows enough times to know just how solitary the darkness could be. That darkness clung to her mind right now. It shouldn’t be all she saw around her, too.
I could only hope no incriminating red veins surrounded my eyes right now.
I should have thought of that first.
You look as you did when you were simply hiding secrets from the girl.
Train found his singular path to my mind. I had no retort. I deserved it.
“Oh.”
Pull away. Pull away.
Violet’s intentions whispered. I locked my traitorous eyes with her beautiful blue-grey ones. I clung to her more tightly.
“We don’t have to do this. Let’s just go back to sleep.” Uncertainty clung to every letter she spoke.
“Yes.
We
do have to do this. It bothers you. This is important, Violet.”
“It’s three years today since my dad died.” Her eyes kept dancing around the room, robbing me of precious moments I might have spent staring into them. I matched my breath to hers. Every inhale was in perfect sync with the slightly staccato rise of her chest. I held each breath with her until she allowed herself a release.
“I’m sorry, Violet.”
“Don’t be. You didn’t kill him. And your dad is dead, too.” A deathly grey pallor crept across the pale of Violet’s skin.
“Right, but it’s been longer for me. And you didn’t kill him, either.” It was the wrong thing to say. Violet tensed in my arms before peeling away entirely.
“No. My mother killed him, and then she gave you
those
as a reminder.” Violet looked pointedly over my shoulder and traced one of my scars perfectly. She didn’t need to look to know exactly its positioning. Exactly its length. She had my map of treachery memorized. “You did nothing wrong. Your father was nothing but courageous. Yet my mother was a monster and my father loved her and I’m laying next to
you
while I grieve them. I’m touching the permanent reminders of my mother’s wrath on your skin while I have the audacity to be sad about them. You should have let me die with Varrish. I’m a monster.” This wasn’t right.
The guilt that I had felt and tasted was Violet’s for me. I had thought nothing of her touch earlier. I had delighted in her light fingertips; each point of contact was a salve for my soul. She had been doing it in fear. In guilt.
The very sight of my back rendered her a traitor in her own mind. I had to start sleeping in a shirt on death anniversaries… and perhaps on stormy nights.
Those marks were my choice as much as I was hers. Though I couldn’t figure out why I was a choice that she kept making to save my own life.
“Technically
I’m
the venin. That makes me the monster here.” That joke definitely didn’t work. Ridoc definitely made deflecting look easier than it was. “Vi. Violence, look at me.” I tilted her chin up with the crook of my finger.
“Don’t. Don’t try to make me feel better.”
Not a chance.
“I will always,
always,
do everything within my power to make you feel good. Assuaging your misplaced guilt is no different.” Shadows swirled around us in a cocoon. The warm glow of the mage light crept through just enough to contour Violet’s face perfectly.
“It’s not misplaced.”
“It is, Violet. It is. You had no more control over the actions of your parents than I did mine.”
“Your father was fighting for good-” The image of my dad seeing me now, seeing the red webs of veins that swarmed my eyes, squeezed my stomach in a vice.
“As are you now. We can’t change the actions of those who came before us. The only way to fail is refusing to take better actions for ourselves.”
“When we sleep side by side, I look over and I see the pain that
my mother
inflicted on you. How can you not hate me?”
Hate?
Silent vows flooded my head in a barrage of thoughts. Only one vow mattered.
I vow to make you feel my love for you from now until I am gone whether that be tomorrow or seventy years from now.
I kept the words to myself. I didn’t speak them aloud or down any channel.
It was the sacred bargain I made with myself. It was an invisible scar I’d happily bear on my soul. It was my only vow. It was more important than Tyrrendor. It was more important than my legacy. It was Violet.
“You make it near impossible to hate you, Violence.” I tightened my hold on her chin. I had to feel her for my own sanity. She could pull away, but she would have to take my heart with her. “Your mother made her own choices. I made my own choices, as did you. Each of these choices brought us here. You and I are fighting side by side against the very leadership under whom you were raised. I’d say you’ve long since redeemed any bloodlines.” Violet still looked so helplessly unsure. Silence rang as I weighed my next words, carefully. “You can talk to me about them, you know.
Both
of them. You’re allowed to feel whatever it is you feel, Love. I’m here for you. You’re allowed to miss them, and you’re damned sure more than allowed to talk to me about missing them.”
Small squeaks and whistles filled the air as Violet wheezed through a panic attack. I didn’t blink - didn’t move. I’d be there so long as she needed me. “Sometimes, I think about those days under Varrish.” Nausea coiled with anger in my gut. I still had dreams of slowly peeling Varrish’s skin from sinew in vengeance. “Things might have been better for you - for everyone - if maybe I had died. You could fight. Could have heirs. You wouldn’t have your loyalties brought into question over and over again.”
She couldn’t possibly be suggesting that life would have been better for me if Varrish had succeeded in torturing her to death. I would have channeled all of it, then and there. I would have taken
all
of the power. It would have been the end of everything.
The end of Violet would have been the end of me, either way. Of that, I was certain.
“Don’t. Don’t ever talk like that. If you had died, so would I. Not because of our dragons, but because a world without you in it is not a world I have any interest living in. I love you, Violet. I need you.”
I need you.
I tried to whisper down the bond, but it was closed.
“My dad would have loved you, I think.” Violet’s voice was so small, so shaky. I couldn’t respond aloud.
I wish you could have met mine, too.
I would make sure there was a wedding, a beautiful one fit for Violet.
I would make sure there were two chairs left in front side by side for our fathers. Together we’d stand at that altar before the chairs that should have been full. Together we’d look out and grow teary.
Fen Riorson wouldn’t have been proud of me now.
He absolutely would have been proud of Violet, though. Maybe he’d attend my wedding in spirit for her.
I
know
that my dad would have loved you.
I spoke to the silent bond.