CHAPTER 110: ONE HUNDRED & TEN

Valka

I am free-falling, screaming at the pain from the spear in my chest. I will die. I know I have no other choice. My body is not nearly strong enough to make the fall. Or heal from the spear currently sticking out of my chest.

My heart is both hurt. And broken. My thoughts are in disarray.

She is a constant presence in her mind, asking to help, asking me to let her in. She has been more vocal of late, since I started suffering fainting spells and nose bleeds. That dormancy is gone, and with it she seems to have regained whatever part of her that she lost.

And she has been angry. Very angry. She bade me to return to Lucien and I refused. My health worsens when I am around him. He is not good for me. But she doesn’t care. She hardly ever cares. All she knows, all she wishes for is to return home.

"Let. Me. In." Ilya growls. "We will die if you do not let me help you, child."

She only seeks control. To use me. But I cannot tell my thoughts apart from hers anymore. They bleed together. One second, they’re filled with harrowing sorrow of not being reunited with my--her prince. The next, it is the rage of the betrayal of the man I’d grown to and forced myself to love.

And I’m so very tired. Tired of running. Tired of fighting. Tired of... being.

So I shut my eyes. And for the first time, I let her in.

***

When I wake and come back to myself, I am surrounded by bodies. I am bare, covered in so much blood, there is no glimpse of pale skin. My fingers are broken into claws, my lips are coated in flesh, bones stuck between my teeth.

I glance down and scream. And scream.

At the bodies. All dismembered. In pieces. I stand in a field that reeks of death. Bodies of the search parties sent by the royals to hunt me down and bring me back to the dungeons--all ripped to shreds. Their hounds lay crushed around me.

And Malachy, I seem to have saved for the last. His pretty face that I had adored has been gouged out.

I scream, scrambling back. I fall. There are only more bodies. They are not dressed on armor. I look around me in horror. There was a village here. Right here. There is a pyre burning in the centre of it. There is a dead priest by the corner.

I recall it. I half recall being dragged up here by the villagers when they found me drifting by the river side and recognized me from decades ago, when father and I had lived amongst them. Too many lives, too many lies we’d told, changing our names, our abodes, just to fit in.

Witch, they’d called me. They said I was the devil.

I--She, because she was in control of my body, was still recuperating from the fall when they staked us, stoned us, stabbed us with pitch forks and burned alive on that same pyre.

And though I recall all of it, I cannot--cannot... handle what I have done. What she has made me do. This sin.

I have killed. And decimated an entire village of people.

I twist, vomitting, but cry out at the sight of what--who I am vomiting on. I run from there. But it doesn’t matter what direction I run towards, there are only bodies. I killed them all. Men. Women. Gods help me, I do not want to know if I killed their children.

But the cry of a wailing girl halts me. I turn very slowly, towards the sound. I narrow it to a burning home. And I move on pure instinct, darting into the wreckage of fire and collapsing stone and wood. My fingers pry at the debris, skin peeling off as I follow the shrieks.

When I find her, she is stuck under a fallen stone pillar, the skin on her hands and legs badly burned. I do not know how she could have survived the weight of the entire house fallen on her and the heat of the flames.

Her grey eyes are glazed with pain but she say, pointing in the opposite direction of the house that’s completely engulfed in the flames. "My mama. Help her," she cries.

But I know it. That her mama is not in the house. Most likely dead in the square or left the girl to die when she realized she couldn’t get her out from under the pillar.

I take the girl, and she screams at me, calling for her mother. She screams, even when her spine is broken. She screams even if her skin is burned and she’ll never be able to walk again. She screams at me to get her mama, even if she is bleeding from the inside and dying.

And I think in that moment that this nine year old is stronger than I am.

We spent four days together. Four days I tried to get her to a healer and fail. Four days I tried to tend to her wounds. Four days I tried to reach Ebonheart to bring her to Lucien, because I thought he’d know what to do.

But she died as soon as I crossed the border. And I think some part of me must have thought that if I saved her, then maybe I could be redeemed, absolved of the grave sin I had committed.

That is the moment I began breaking. And my mind began fracturing. And she’d whispered to me in that moment when she knew she was slipping.

She’d finally told me her name after four days of refusing to speak to me.

Her name was Valka.

I’d arrived at Lucien’s home on that cliff the next day at dusk, in clothes that weren’t mine, sand buried under my nails, skin covered in days old blood. I didn’t know he would be there. I didn’t know he’d be waiting for me. It’d been months since I last saw him.

But he was. Out the snow, like he’d been waiting a long time.

Chin clenched hard, eyes darkened, nostrils flared. He remembered. I didn’t know how he remembered, but he did. Remembered that I’d left him to be with someone else. Remembered that I’d laughed in his face and told him he was nothing and would never be anything to me. Remembered that the last thing I’d done before I left was punch him in his jaw for telling me he was done with me. And my shenanigans. And I could get the fuck out and go be a breeder if that was the future I chose over the life he was offering.

A small sob slipped from me. "I didn’t know where else to go."

His eyes softened. And he’d crossed the snow in silent steps and ripped the cloak open, searching for injuries. His eyes darkened by the second. "Who hurt you?" he demanded.

I couldn’t keep the sobs back. "The blood isn’t mine."

His gaze rose to mine. "Then they must have deserved it."

And then, he brought me in. Took me straight to the shower and washed the blood off my skin while I fell apart.

He didn’t ask me what happened. Didn’t ask if I wanted to talk about it. Our bizarre relationship wasn’t like that. He’d give me time and wait till I was ready. We didn’t speak to each other for days. He didn’t seek me out. I didn’t, either. But at nights, he’d join me. At night, he’d hold me. Just for the night, he’d say.

Because he knew I couldn’t fall asleep without him. Because he knew I didn’t want to be alone when the nightmares began. And they were so vicious, I’d hurt myself and hurt him, fighting blindly against demons I couldn’t see.

"Tell me how to help you, Lyra," he’d said one time I’d gone straight from his bed and puked in the bathroom. "You’re breaking and I do not know how to reach you." His eyes beseeched me. "Please. Let me help you."

Maybe I shouldn’t have. But I was weary. And so, I told him. I told him the truth. I told him about Ilya.

And whatever fragile thing we had built in the last hundred years of meeting, only to part again, it broke.