Chapter 32

A pale hand snakes around my throat. It drags me off my feet. The hand is boney with all sorts of odd ends sticking out and clawing into my skin. The hand is so cold that I feel like I'm drowning in a frozen wasteland as ice starts to climb from my throat to my eyes.

The hand drops me. I can't move. The ice is spreading.

I can feel it in my chest. I'm caving in, becoming new, being destroyed and saved, freed from my curse. I'm sorry, so sorry. I am more sorry than you will ever know, my darling.

"How odd" is my last thought before I'm out like a flame gone dry.

I look back over my shoulder, speaking in various tones of nerves as I start to climb the rickety stairs that lead to the second floor where Gislee lives and holds quests, "And Draven, Aaliyah and Leander? You made arrangements for them?"

She grabs onto the railing, supporting some of her weight as she follows after me, her old voice annoyed as it carries to my ears, "of course I am sure. They won't escape the clutches of Aera Lee if they try."

I rub a hand over my head, smoothing my hair out, "Of course, my mistake. I presume everything is in order?"

"Stop fussing. Haven't you done this before?"

"Twice and I have every reason to fuss. I may very well die tonight."

There's no maybe to it. I both dread and crave the silky darkness that comes with death. I fear being swallowed up into nothing and I want to disappear from the pain of life all at once. We reach the top of the steep, wooden, monstities Gislee calls stairs and she pushes past me, taking out a key as she walks from the pocket in the loose dress that hangs off of her slim frame. The room at the very end of the hall is locked and for good reason, too.

She raises the key to her lips, mutters something under her breath, then brings it down to slice the center of her palm. Blood wells and the metallic tang wafts through the air, coated in tension as it is, and up to my nose. She finally puts the key firmly into the lock and gives it a twist.

I can feel it when the wards come down, a pressure on my mind lifts and my tension eases ever so slightly, but not completely. I know what's coming and I know that it's going to hurt. Blood red hair flashes across my lids as I close them. A touch of a smile works its way onto my face and I brush my fingers faintly over my red stained lips.

In just a few moments these lips are going to fade to grey and my face is going to drain of all life. Scarlett blood on my lips and death on my face. Like the girl in the human tale of Snow White, except I don't need a prince to kiss me to life.

Gislee gets to work, setting out a few bowles across a table that she had just cleaned, "You have the knife's, I presume?"

I open my eyes and blink at her, I had not noticed how dark it is until just now, "Oh, yes. Of course." My head goes light and into the clouds, then comes back to the ground as I take in the room.

I reach around the air and grab onto two handles when I feel them. The in-between is always trying to grab me and drag me in, but I've found a much more useful use for it.
She reaches out for the two handles, "Give those to me. We had best get started. You better hope to the high Hells that the effects of this don't linger in my bakery. It distracts customers."

I laugh a little at that, grasping onto the distraction, "and your bakery is more important than the ley lines." I nod, amused, "I understand."

She grasps one of my hands in hers, "This will work. You will be fine. Sorrow does not touch those of this city."

"The late Elder Lara was a loon. Sorrow touches everyone and everything."

"But not right now and certainly not when I have plans with the Halowins soon."

"How is Mary?" I ask, trying to broach the subject lightly.

"She has a new Gryffin. You know her. She lives in the moment, revels in the pleasures life has to offer." Gislee says as she starts to crush herbs in one of the three bowles lined up. "Although, she still tries to dote on Elliot as much as she can."

I pull my lip between my teeth, wetting them as I sit on the larger and higher of the two raised stone slabs, "Everyone deals with grief differently. Elliot is a grown woman though, it must get on her. I know it used to."

She grunts, sprinkling more sage leaves into the bowl, and continues to mix, "Maria died nearly three hundred years ago. She needs to start to move on, hard as it is. Elliot has been begging, practically, to get out of Lunata, but Mary denies her requests." She shakes her head, clearly frustrated with Mary, but I can understand Mary Halowin. Gislee cannot. "And no one can go around her because no one is above her in the Sector."

"The Fifth sector purge left her shaken and I think that's how she must see the outside world. What they did to Maria-" I trail off, looking down. I stare at my knees, focusing on the lines in the skin like I'm gazing upon my saviour.

"Was awful, I know. It is still no excuse." She finishes for me. She moves onto the second bowl and grabs my hand and slices my palm. I squeeze my hand together, clenching my muscles and letting my blood flow in a fairly steady stream into the bowl.

The blood stops as my hand heals on its own.
She drips her own blood into the bowl and stirs. It glows as she mutters under her breath, getting words out faster than I can hear them.
She dips the knife in blood, then in the mix of herbs calmly, "Are you ready?"

I lay back and mentally try to prepare myself. It odes nothing to ease me, "yes." My reply comes out breathy and somewhat fearful and I know I'm not ready but I have to be because I can't not be ready. I have to be ready. Why can't I be ready?

Clearly sensing my nerves and apprehension, she tries to calm my beating heart, "Just keep your breathing in control and you should be fine."

I nod and take a few deep breaths because I have to. I shove everything down and tell myself to be afraid and to cry later because now, now I have to be perfect. I slam a wall up between me and fear, emotion, and I don't cry out as the first cut is made.

Blood rushes out of me. Cut after cut is made, my skin splitting in half, opening a raveen of overflowing water turned red. When she finishes my legs she goes to arms, to my chest, to my everything and things are fading and out of sight and I don't- I don't see, but I smell.
I can faintly smell pine and a burst of pain- what's pain?

My chest isn't rising. I can't hear my heartbeat and I can't feel. My fingers are no longer mine and my legs- my legs must be gone. Feeling is gone, gone gone and slugs are in my brain and I-I- what?

My eyes. I can feel lashes batting at my skin. I feel so on fire and like I'm burning up and freezing and foaming at the mouth and eyes are closing and chants, words can be made out, but I can't make them out.

So heavy, I feel heavy and drowning and suffocating and- yeah- yeah- something like that- for sure.

I can't see and I can't feel and I'm gone.

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