Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter One Hundred OneSage

Chapter One Hundred One

Sage

I wasn’t in total control of my body, I don’t think. Not in the sense that I was compelled and the manipulation was moving my actions, but in the way that my mind was fogged, and my body ran itself, without any input from my mind.

There was so much to process. My father’s death, and the secrets he kept from me. That he did love me. That he was kind. That my mother was alive. That she didn’t abandon me.

I even knew her last name, now that the Gods had spoken it.

But I had to shove it aside. There was too much work.

We’d moved the dead bodies, Kovarrin pulled me aside quickly to tell me of the plan to allow the Vasi into a section of the island, and asked me if I could help him with it tomorrow.

My head was nodding before his words ever really sunk in, and then I was moving, to help bring the ships in. Then to help build funeral pyres. Then we were watching the service, and the bodies were engulfed in flame.

Hours had passed, but it only seemed like the moments flashed by my eyes the way pages of a book do, when you brace your thumb against them and allow them to flicker past.

All the while, Dean had been at my side. His gentle voice was constant in my ear, his hand was steady on my back, on my hand, or on my shoulder. Light touches to remind me that he was near. That he was here with me.

But now, my eyes were only locked on Vasier’s body. On my father’s body, as it lay before Kovarrin, fire eating up the wood below him, until it reached his clothes, and they ignited.

I didn’t realize the tears were skating down my cheeks until I felt the cool of the coastal wind hit them.

My world was both closing in on me and expanding out of my chest. The more the fire stretched over his form, hid him from me, the more memories flashed of my childhood with him. The happy memories, that he’d taken away from me until this very day.

Every smile he’d give me behind the door of his office, every forehead kiss at night when I was a girl before bed, every hug when he caught me crying.

Each of them was torn away from me for so many years, flooding into my mind—through my mind—one after the other. Memories that had never existed, until he said the words. Memories that were so painful to recall as I watched him burn, that I couldn’t breathe.

My eyes slid to Kovarrin and Rasa who held him, and even through my tears, I could see that he looked down at his brother, at my father.

I’d seen him hold Vasier on the ship, seen him grieve from a few boats away. I didn’t interrupt, though, mostly because I didn’t understand what was happening to me.

But now, I regretted it. Because now, I watched his body burn and realized that I never got to say goodbye. That no one had asked if I wanted to see the body or cry with him like Kovarrin had, before he’d been burned.

Logically, I knew it was because no one knew what I did. No one knew what occurred between the words he’d uttered to me. The trigger phrase that didn’t lead to a compulsion, but rather freed me from it.

“You are my little girl. You will always be my little girl.”

The words liberated my mind from the manipulation to keep all those loving moments erased, yet somehow locked me into a crueler jail than I’d known before.

Because at least before, I’d hated him. I’d known he deserved to die. I’d known he would die. So the idea of his death—while still painful—could be understood.

But he loved me.

And I loved him.

And he was gone.

And no one else knew.

Dean led me back to the loft after the service. And Gods help me, he tried to comfort me. He knew something was wrong, and likely pieced together that it had something to do with Vasier and my confounding feelings over his death. But he didn’t know the whole truth. He didn’t know the real pain.

The pain that was born from the love I’d gained and lost in a matter of minutes.

The door to the loft shut behind him, and he was speaking, asking if I was okay, if I needed to talk. But I couldn’t respond. I only stared ahead of me. I didn’t really even see the world around me, either.

My chest was numb, and in pain, somehow at the same time.

He was at my side, leading me to the bathing chamber. He didn’t have to explain the action, I knew I was covered in blood and sweat and seawater.

He was sitting me down gently on the stool beside the tub, and I stared at the ground as he filled it.

The air in the room grew thick, and I realized the tub was hot and full.

He came toward me, got on his knees, and looked up at me. My wide and unblinking eyes were still fixed on the ground, but his soft voice begged me to speak, to tell him what I needed, to open up.

I’d closed the bond, I realized.

His hand raised, fingers held my cheek softly and tilted my head until I met his eyes. His other hand closed over my knee.

“Sage,” he whispered my name and I could hear the pain in his voice, saw it etched on his face. “What do you need?”

I could’ve laughed, but my face didn’t lift to do so.

I could’ve screamed, but anger didn’t swell in my chest.

I could’ve stayed numb, wished I had, because the feeling was so, so much worse.

And I felt it all, in that moment. When he asked what I needed, and it all came crashing, tumbling, plummeting into me.

I needed Vasier to be alive.

I needed the father he showed me he was, for more than a minute.

I needed a chance to say goodbye.

“It’s okay,” Dean soothed quietly, and it was then that I realized tears were streaming down my face as the full force of my grief hit me all at once. As all the numbing that had protected me in the time since Vasier died, slipped away now. Cracked and crumbled until there was only feeling . Until there was only pain.

Dean’s hand tightened on my knee, his other fell to curl over my wrist that sat in my lap. His eyes were soft and kind and pained, too.

It wasn’t for Vasier’s death, I realized. He was in pain because he saw me in pain.

It hurt him, to see me hurt.

The reality of my life, the truth of who Vasier was, had seemed like something that was impossible to share, impossible to allow someone to see that much of my pain. To see that far into the maze that was my mind.

But Dean tilted his head, his brows furrowed as he looked up at me. Now that I cried, now that I showed a sign that I was in here , he didn’t speak. He only let me cry. He didn’t need anything from me, now, because he knew what I needed.

And that had my face crumpling, the tears streaming, had me sliding down off of the stool and into his arms, where he caught me quickly and easily. My hands grasped at his shoulders, fisting in the fabric. My face pressed into his neck as I sobbed.

I opened the bond. I showed him the memory of what happened on that ship, showed him the memories that had been hidden from me, if only because the truth of it all was so overwhelming that keeping it inside hurt so bad that I needed to show someone—to show Dean —what happened. I needed to share this secret, this revelation, with someone else.

“Oh, Gods,” he croaked against my ear as he held me, as he watched through the bond.

He didn’t tell me there was a solution, he didn’t try to find one. He didn’t try to make me feel better.

He held me, and he cried, too.