Dividing Eden (Dividing Eden #1)(24)

But he was dead.

A tear fell. More burned her throat and slipped out of her control as she closed her own door behind her. She took a few more steps as the pressure and ache and swell of sorrow broke through.

Sliding to the floor, Carys let the tears come. Tears for her loss. Tears for the kingdom and the ever-expanding pain and the fear of tomorrow. Tears because she was alone.

Isolated.

Broken.

Tired.

She’d been fighting so long. For what? She stared at the door, willing it to open. Waiting for her brother to remember she needed him.

Her stomach twisted. Tears squeezed out, making the fire on her back burn hotter. And deep within where no strap could reach, there was an emptiness far worse than any beating she could receive. Cuts and bruises and welts she could steel herself against until they healed, but the emptiness . . . it grew wider. Deeper. Hopeless. And alone.

It took three tries to pull herself off the floor. With heavy, staggering steps she walked to her bedroom.

Her father’s rumbling laughter rang in her memories.

Micah’s rare smile flickered and faded.

Candlelight glowed in here. Juliette probably meant for it to be soothing. Instead, the shadows called to her as she opened the small cabinet next to her bed and reached for a red glass bottle her mother first brought to her five years ago.

“This will help with the pain,” Mother said, putting the bottle to Carys’s lips herself. It did. It leeched away the pain. It helped her calm the anger bubbling inside each time she took a sip of the bitter brew. Ten days after that first sip, the welts and bruises had faded, the discomfort from them had gone, but the need for the drink had grown.

“Nothing good comes without a price,” her mother said when Carys’s hands shook and her insides cramped after a dozen hours had passed since her last dose. “Just a little every day is a small price for something so useful. Trust me.”

Trust.

A little every day eventually became a bit more to keep the tremors and the stomach ailments and the sweating at bay. Twice she’d taken far more. In anger. In despair. She’d wanted to feel nothing and made things worse. Since then she’d been careful to take only enough to keep the signs of her body’s craving at bay. After all, Andreus needed her.

She needed him now. She’d trusted he would be here for her so they could grieve together and so he could help her as she had just helped him. And he had chosen to be with someone else.

It hurt to move.

It hurt to breathe.

It hurt to think.

She didn’t want to think. The emptiness was swallowing her whole. There was only one escape. She didn’t care what the price was anymore.

Fingers shaking, Carys uncorked the bottle and put it to her lips. The bitterness filled her mouth as she drank deep of the potent brew that had held her prisoner to the dark for years.

So aptly named, she thought. Tears of Midnight—when the night was darkest and the pain too great to bear. When there was no light.

To hell with the light, she thought as the throbbing in her back dulled. The ache in her heart numbed and everything inside her went warm and fluid and the emptiness grew farther and farther away.

Carys dropped the red bottle. It shattered on the ground and she smiled as the weight of the emptiness inside her faded. She welcomed the darkness. And embraced the abyss.





6


Andreus looked at Imogen’s tear-streaked face and couldn’t squelch the ever-present desire to protect her. Long dark hair. Deep-set eyes that looked away from him each time he turned her way.

Now those eyes were filled with tears and her hands trembled as she stood in front of Andreus begging his forgiveness for her failure.

He took a deep breath and pushed aside the weakness he still felt after his attack.

Cursed.

Maybe he was.

For years he’d tried to deny it. Despite his sister and his mother working hard to hide his secret, he’d wanted to believe it wasn’t real. Seers and their claims to read the future in the stars and call the winds weren’t real. He’d studied the winds and the histories of the weather. He worked with the tools that captured them and powered the lights Eden depended on.

But today . . . when he lay in the alcove with his hand pressed to the gash on his forehead where he’d struck the wall as he fell, he wondered if the curse wasn’t real. Thanks to his sister and the remedy, his body withstood the attack without anyone the wiser. His sister would need him once the punishment she took for him was over. He should tell Imogen whatever he needed to in order to get her to leave so he could go to Carys.

But looking at Imogen’s eyes shimmering with guilt, he couldn’t bring himself to escort her out the door.

“I tried to see the Queen, to explain that the stars shielded this from me, but her chamberlain told me she’d taken to her bed and could not be disturbed. And your sister is . . . busy. So I came to you.”

“I doubt my mother would have been good company, Lady Imogen.” She had probably already downed several cups of her infamous tea, which helped tamp down her temper, but in large doses loosened her tongue. “She doesn’t deal with loss well.”

“She was right to blame me.” Imogen walked across the room to stare out the window at the mountain range beyond the plateau.

“You are not responsible for my father and brother’s deaths,” he said, crossing the room to stand at her side.