Chapter 216. Nothing
Maisie
Close your eyes, Bright Eyes. It will all be over soon.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
Die. You should find a cliff and jump off it. Die. The world would be better without you.
Wake up. They need you.
***
My lashes fluttered open to the sound of beeping machines. White fluorescent lights stung my eyes so sharply, I blinked rapidly.
Everything was a blur and when I tried to shield my face from the excruciatingly bright light, I found that I couldn’t move my hands. I couldn’t even feel them.
My mouth was dry as ash and something was sticking out of it. Felt like a tube.
The incessant beeping was destroying my ears. Everything felt too loud. Too close.
The beeping grew erratic.
Footsteps rushed in. A woman with thin framed glasses pushed down her nose leaned over me. "Clarisse," she said, yanking something. A torch light burned into my eye as she forced my eyelid open. "Tell him she’s awake."
Hurried footsteps faded. I must have slipped under again, because the next time I opened my eyes, a different face hovered above mine.
"You’ve cost me a hell lot of money, woman," Gruer said.
My voice came out scratchy and slurred around the tube. "Where am I... what happened... I... can’t move... can’t feel my body."
He glanced down the length of the bed, then back at my face with mild interest, and then, he yawned.
"You broke every bone in your body while being pumped full with ash. It’s like being reverted to being mortal and dropping from that height."
He yawned again. "Ah... what was it again? Something with your spine. You’re positively paralyzed. The doctors are calling it a miracle you didn’t die on impact." He tilted his head. "They’re less optimistic about the walking part. In fact, they’re fairly certain you never will again."
The machines spiked. My chest heaved too fast, too shallow.
"I-I-am p-pa... ra... lyzed?"
"Heh." He shrugged one shoulder. "Could be worse. You could be dead. Like the boy."
The boy?
The memories returned with full force, slamming into me all at once.
Lyon.
His hand keeping me from falling. The desperate look in his eyes as he dangled over the edge. The wet sound of Tessa’s blade tearing into his back again and again. His blood spraying across my face. The way his arms still held on even as his strength failed.
Then the fall. His body wrapping around mine. Twisting.
Oh goddess. Oh goddess. Goddess please no.
Something between a sob and a scream, muffled by the tube in my mouth escaped me. My chest convulsed, but my body stayed useless and still, locked in place while the grief and guilt poured through me like acid.
He shouldn’t have followed me.
He shouldn’t have jumped.
He should still be alive. He should be somewhere safe, rolling his eyes at Jenny—oh goddess, Jenny—living a life that had nothing to do with me and my cursed existence.
But he was dead.
Because of me.
Because I had been too weak. Too slow. Too stupid. Because every time someone tried to save me, they paid for it. First my parents. The scars on my mates. Now him.
I hated myself so completely in that moment that I wanted the machines to stop. I wanted the beeping to go silent. I didn’t deserve that kind of sacrifice.
I should’ve died on that cliff. Everything, everyone, the world would be a better place if I was just gone.
Gruer watched the tears track down my temples with something close to mild curiosity.
"Oh please, don’t start that," he groaned and fell back lightly against a chair I couldn’t even turn my neck to see. Then he touched the back of his hand to his forehead like he was walking through a drama routine.
"Oh god, I hate myself. Kill me now. I don’t want to live!" he said in a high-pitched falsetto as I sobbed even harder.
And then he smiled, cheerful. "If it makes you feel any better, the boy died quickly. Faster than most—"
My chest compressed and the machines spiked even higher, wailing like an alarm in my ears.
Gruer scrunched up his nose. "Ah well. I guess that doesn’t make you feel better." He watched me choke on my tears. "If you truly wish to die, I could hold a pillow over your face and smother you to death."
I couldn’t answer. I could barely breathe.
"There’s more, by the way."
My gaze shifted through the tears, and he said, "You were pregnant."
The words didn’t land at first. There was a disconnect between them and my brain.
I heard them in pieces. Pregnant. A baby. I was pregnant? Were.
I’d lost it.
If I thought I couldn’t have been broken down anymore than I already had, I thought wrong.
Something inside me cracked open so violently I thought I would split in half. I heard someone bawling in the distance. It was deep and raw and ugly and broken.
It was me.
I cried for Lyon. I cried for the child I hadn’t even known existed. For the future that had been stolen before it ever had a chance to begin. For the fact that I would never know if it had been a boy or a girl.
I cried for my mates.
I cried for myself.
For the life that had been ripped apart piece by piece until there was nothing left but this broken shell in a hospital bed. For every person who had ever tried to protect me and paid for it. For the guilt that sat in my chest like a living thing, whispering that it should have been me. That it should always have been me.
I cried until my throat was raw. Until the tears ran out and only the shaking remained. Until the machines quieted and the room faded around the edges of my vision.
I cried until there was nothing left in me.