My Darkening Ember

Chapter Sixty - Seven

I wouldn't see them again. I wouldn't see it again. As empty as I felt, I saw.

I could hear them so clearly, hiding behind the door. Each time they came, the maids, Mayra would shush them away. I could hear their gossip. They whispered about poison, and that I was probably dead.

They were not entirely wrong. A poison had tried to kill me just not the one they thought about.

I spent the next days in bed, silently listening to every sound, heightened now that I lost my sight. It was fast how that changed. Even my smell heightened as I could smell the lunch that arrived outside the door, and later the dinner. Every time Mayra would pop her head in and ask, but I had no appetite. I could hear it in her voice, the helplessness. She had no idea how to help me or what to even say. But there was nothing she could say. She told me Sarvin had come by when I was asleep, to watch over me.

I imagined if I had died right there he wanted to make sure I wasn't alone. To make sure that this time he would say goodbye.

Hearing that didn't compel any feelings because something deep down told me he had been by my side for himself, not for me.

Xander had not come, and I had heard nothing from him. After the meeting in the hall, the council members had another meeting, one that resulted in accusations. Three of them felt the convenience of Xander's interruption and my poisoning wasn't a coincidence at all. They had tried to vote but the majority was against that theory, even Aleron had been against that thought. It wasn't hard imagining the members who had voted yes.

But still, Mayra explained that that was probably reason enough for Xander to have to watch where he went. They had doubled the guards and probably sent spies, not that I doubted for a second that Xander wasn't capable of sneaking past them all.

But I honestly couldn't tell if I even wanted him to come. If I wanted to pathetically cry in his arms while he pretended he knew what I felt, or that he felt any empathy at all.

I didn't want him here. I wanted none of them here, to see or speak to me. Because I would feel the pain of being utterly alone in the same darkness that had welcomed me before all of this, before I became someone. When I was just a girl with no ambitions and nothing to lose, that's when I felt the most alone.

The feeling that no one cared, that no one would ever care. That the world was cruel, aiming all its pain at me, firing when I was already on my knees.

Sure Lau had been there but even that was temporary. My mother, father, Edmund, and Selene. They were all bullets pushing me closer to the edge and I had finally reached it. The black endless nothingness that waited for me to jump.

I couldn't go back to feeling that again. I wouldn't be a burden, a threat, or pathetically weak.

I remembered where I had put it.

I felt my way to the dresser, from the floor. The pouch was so tiny in my hands. Gry's death had been quick and mine would too. The curse was no longer in my veins, I felt it. This time the pollen would work.

I wouldn't be a burden. Wouldn't. 

The pollen poured into my hand. 

I wouldn't lose them again, never. 

I took a deep breath.

They don't need me. It's better to rest. Let me rest.

I closed my eyes only to barricade my tears. They were my fear. 

You've had enough. This is what you always planned. Don't be scared. 

The voice in my head calmed me, my voice. One breath away, the choice, it was my choice.