Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 3

Longing mingles with self-disgust in my throat as I stare down at my childhood home from atop the hill. Bitterness colors the lens I peer through at dilapidated ruins of a home left to rot, myself along with it. I have seen this view every day, but it looks different here, now.

I used to feel justified in my feelings, but I can’t anymore.

People lose people every day. People move on. They still smile, make dinner, go to work, clean up their damned walkways. They can still light a fire in a hearth, go to sleep in a bed instead of on the floor. What is wrong with me? I must have been made of the weakest spirit to allow it to cripple me in such an all-consuming way. To be so stuck while everyone else continues on. I still can’t grasp the feeling of fear that should be consuming me. I feel only a longing to remember— something I’ve spent many cold nights avoiding .

My boots carry me down the road, mud squelching beneath my feet. I can’t see the trees lining the boundaries of our land without seeing my father, his body strong with youth, chopping wood to burn. My mother is a figure in blue beside him, her face containing no discernible features. I can no longer see the shape of her nose or mouth, the sound of her laughter. It burns. She’s chasing a silver-haired toddler through the lush grass, little me squealing in delight.

When did I stop screaming my feelings? When did I start screaming in my head instead?

I’ve moved into the dead patch of herbs that line the walkway. I look down at my ten-year-old body, face devoid of emotion, plucking the rosemary to dry. She’s gone somewhere deep in her head, maybe for the first time. My father hovers near me, steeped in painful confusion. A child should scream, cry at her mother disappearing. I should have been more normal, more outwardly broken, should have shown him that he was not so alone in his devastation. I remember feeling so far away from my body in that moment, unable to do anything but the motions, clinging to what I know. There was nothing to say. Nothing to be done but what needed doing. And maybe, if I just did that, my every raw nerve would stop screaming. He walked away eventually, leaving me to navigate my own grief while he wandered aimlessly through his. Maybe he felt like I had left him alone first. Maybe I did.

The dead plants crunch under my feet as I walk up the walkway and glance over at the lump in the yard. It is what he would have wanted, to be buried with his love—his garden that he loved more than me, the daughter he didn’t know what to do with. Maybe he saw my mother in the irises. Smelled her in the rosemary. Felt the softness of her skin in the rose petals .

A love that just won’t die.

He never had to say a word about it. I could see it in every line of his face as he took a deep pull of his pipe; the scent always clung to his skin. I could hear it in the silence whenever I passed him in his garden, his hands deep in the dirt. I could feel it hanging in the stale air during his last days, as he stared at the ceiling, seemingly at nothing, a slight smile on his face. I like to think she was talking to him, helping him be not so scared.

He was a man of few words. I could not take it personally that there were none of comfort, none of love, just a few of necessity here and there. What do you say to a daughter who doesn't grieve with you? Can I blame him for not giving comfort when he never received any from me either?

She loved us. I remember that much of her. Her love for my father and me was fierce, despite our shared aloofness and oddities.

She would not have wandered off without us.

I remember her sneaking me little fruit pies that she would bake whenever the weather began to turn. My grubby hands would grasp at her skirts, begging for one more.

She loved my father too; the pawing, the sweet smiles he only gave to her, his low whispering, and her giggles when they thought I was asleep.

She would not have left us.

That meant that the raiders, who had just started terrorizing Suri at the time, probably took her, or killed her. I try not to think about what brutality she faced in her end.

Glancing up at my childhood home I am faced with one blaring thought.

A home requires life.

I died here a long time ago.

It ended with a wet choke, bloody lips, and a weight slumped over the side of a bed. Heaven and Hell could never contain me when my spirit longs to collect dust with the beams of my childhood.

Meaningless minutes, seconds, hours pass. I can’t go inside. Just like I couldn’t burn it to the ground the day it held nothing for me anymore.

They came, as I knew they would, no Banshee scream to preclude them, just rattles of armor cutting through the charged silence. I just stand there, staring at the door, offset from its hinges. It’s too late to run anyways.

“Alyxara vch Seren?” The croaking voice makes me sick. Her name coming from his filthy beak. I don’t deign to turn around. They are not worth seeing in my last moments, not worth turning away from my past.

Metallic clinks follow his voice as he approaches me. His darkness is the night falling during the twilight of my life.

I try not to focus on the feeling of him at my back, try to absorb the feeling that clings to this dead structure before me.

A needlessly rough hand grips me at the elbow—as if I was going anywhere. I’m yanked almost off of my feet, turned face-to-face with my executioner. These men crave violence, they don’t need me to instigate it.

His face is almost too human to be the monster I know him to be. Although under his hood I can see it is gaunt, with soulless eyes—they’re an inky black, twinkling with malice and nameless hunger.

I want to spit in his face—spit in the face of the Pretty King’s Crows and spit directly in the face of the monarch himself. Though self-preservation starts to hum under my skin, keeping me from spurring on this man’s ire. I hate that the fear is the sun burning off the clouds of my nostalgia.

Rough-gloved hands grip my cheeks, pulling me forward, the other hand still gripping my arm. My hands fist at my sides, shaking in fury and fear already, even though I know this to be only the beginning.

He feels wrong, like he doesn’t belong, even in this place that reeks of lives passed. His smirk turns into a leer as his gaze sweeps downward, hand still gripping my face. The three Crows behind him are chuckling and looking among themselves.

“Look at this one, boys. A little skinny for my tastes, but most of you rats are these days. Can’t afford to be too picky.”

It feels like insects crawling down my body. I try to rip my face out of his hands, but he holds on, his grip turning painful. He grows tired of my squirming and pushes me at the others.

Wandering hands of the other five Crows grip me everywhere.

Hindsight sickens me. I shouldn’t have lingered here, not caring if I lived or died. If I had walked straight into town, to them, I would have had an audience. It would have encouraged them to maintain their stoic sense of duty. They represent the Crown after all. But here, in secret, they feel safe to let their monsters out. Here in the outskirts of town with no neighbors, no eyes to witness them, they feel brave. If you call this bravery.

Hands start to tear at my dress, pulling it off my shoulders. Chilled gloveless hands slide up my calf, smoothing past my knee. Brisk air, though warmer than his hand, breezes up my dress as it lifts.

A strange prickling sensation starts up in the back of my skull, like sharp talons drifting over its surface. Cold and wicked.

Terror claws its way up my throat. I had not thought this through. I had begun to feel relief that I would not have to live in my own head anymore.

But now, as I stand violated by the monsters that have been tearing apart my world, life by life, for their own gluttony and pleasure, I cannot.

I cannot bear it.

I thrash wildly, like a wildcat caught in a snare.

Some dormant force in me awakens. Writhing and starved.

The monster living beneath the ice bursts free, and my apathy turns to screams.

They can’t be allowed to take, and take, and take.

Fury drives me to take something from them .

And so in the place I had died, I am born with a burst of power.