A Court of Blood & Mercy || Elriel Dual POV

Chapter 25 - The Twelfth Rule

"This was a mistake."

Elain bit hard down on her lip, her eyes fluttering open as her heart began pounding in her chest. She felt a burning ball well in her throat as her eyes began blinking, her brain struggling to determine if she was asleep or awake.

Just a dream.

The same dream.

The same torturous dream that would not relinquish her soul since she had returned from Winter.

She struggled to flip her body over in the sweaty mass of sheets and blankets, her skin shivering and clammy against the chilled air floating above the hollow canopy bed. She could feel a faint draft somewhere, a slow stream of wet air drifting toward the fortress of her bed. But she had no energy to investigate it. Hells, she didn't even have energy to light a fire, let alone call for a servant to help.

She drew her fingertips to the space between her brows, pressing on the pulsing ache that had implanted in her skull the second she had said those words, all those days ago, in Winter— to Azriel.

"This was a mistake."

She felt her heart continue to thunder as she tried to slow her breathing, squeezing her eyes down hard, crinkling the skin across her cheeks as she flipped her face into the musty pillowcase.

The words were haunting her. Like an eternal poison leaking into her bloodstream, each day only yielded a more severe slice and pain— worse than she had felt in many years.

And the ridiculous thing was that it was she who had poisoned herself.

She knew it would impale him, of course, but what she had been too foolish to realize is that she was piercing a sword through her own gut in order to get to his.

Because those words had birthed the ache now resting upon her brow bone and the stiff and wooden feeling in her limbs. It had begotten her nightmares and stolen her appetite, running off into the gilded uncertainty of heartbreak, but not before marring her with a reminder of her treachery.

From the trek back to Autumn, wedged in Eris' silent plush carriage to now being alone in this godforsaken manor, she could feel the poison reaching and curling around her limbs and skin, from her shoulders to her fingertips and nails, numbing and burning her muscles and blood until she felt like she was going mad or blind, her heart and brain torturing her with what almost was.

And now it was a burdensome chore to witness the sunrise the way it was a torture to glimpse the sunset beyond the dull windows of her bedchambers. With every day the scorching pain became deeper, severing her from reality in a way that reminded her of when she was Made. It was blinding and unforgiving— the emptiness of the mansion with her daughter traveling abroad paired with the ache in her soul from her time in Winter— Elain could hardly remember what it felt like to have peace.

It had been five days since returning from the Winter Court, but to Elain, it felt like five minutes— five minutes since she had felt Azriel's scarred hand gripping onto her fingers... five minutes since she had smelled cedar and mist... five minutes since she had heard his pleading whisper against her curls.

Five minutes since she had lanced his heart.

It was a treachery— what she had done to him. And it had gone against everything she had thought herself capable of.

Because Elain had never thought she was cruel.

If she were to define her most malevolent characteristics, Elain would have thought passivity or unbridled meekness... perhaps cowardice or weakness.

But now she knew the damning truth. She was a passive coward... but she was cruel and callous.

She had become what she hated.