Chapter Text
It has been three days since I came back to myself out on the gravel in the courtyard. I’m no closer to knowing or not knowing what happened.
My memory was an empty canvas. I had been searching for the answers for days upon days and I could not find anything to cling onto. There’s just a blur — one minute I was in the throes of battle, shadow whipping all around me, and then? Nothing.
Andarna had been within reach and closer than ever before, her golden bond slowly, steadily tricking through her window in the Archives. But Tairn’s power? Locked. Sealed behind the vault doors, even if I thought I could reach beyond the vault doors, my mind knew what was behind them — an impenetrable wall of onyx. I’ve tried to reach beyond it, gods have I tried, but whatever he did. No, whatever I did… it cost him. And my damned self made Imogen erase it.
When I wasn’t trying to remember what the hell happened to me, my thoughts were only filled with only one other thing: Xaden.
There was not a waking moment in which I wasn’t trying to reach him no matter what I did, no matter how hard or how far I stretched myself, I could not find him through the bond. It had been broken — severed. No. That reality was too difficult to face. It couldn’t be broken. I need to believe that it was — it is still there. Mostly because the pain of the alternative is too much to bear.
I am enraged with the very thought of him, but it also is the only thought bringing me any peace. I know in my heart that he had to have done what he believed to be right, but I thought we were in this together, side-by-side. I thought we were going to fight off whatever this was as a team. I was supposed to help cure him. How can he do this without me?
Familiar footsteps pacing outside of my guard-armored door drag me from my darkened, spiraling thoughts. I hadn’t been alone for a single moment. Even in my own room I could hear guards steady breathing all through the night as they took shifts standing out by my door. After all, now I was the Duchess of Tyrrendor, a crown, and a title to be protected. But this particular brand of footsteps sounded lighter quicker, footsteps that I was familiar with. These footsteps were in step with that of my best friend Rhiannon, trying to bargain her way in to see me.
It was a rarity that I got to see people that genuinely wanted to see me and not the Duchess. The meetings that I was constantly ushered to and from. Constantly being plagued with visitors I had no vested interest in discussing anything with. But I wasn't just Violet Sorrengail anymore. Hell, I wasn't even Violet Sorrengail . I am Violet Riorson, the Duchess of Tyrrendor. But I already felt so far behind, there are mountains and valleys of documents and paperwork that need my attention — not to mention I don’t have the slightest clue what I’m doing. The last thing I want in this world is to fail Xaden after all he sacrificed for me, for us, even if I am pissed that he is doing it without me.
“Let me through! You are treating her like a prisoner; she is my friend!” Rhi’s voice booms as the knob on the door starts to jiggle.
I hear commotion as guards shift their weight and give their strict orders “Meetings with the Duchess are by appointment only. You will have to come back at another time. She’s overwhelmed with work at the moment. She has no time for the likes of you.”
With that, I peel my lifeless body from the bed. Every movement feels like lifting the weight of the world. No one was going to talk to my friend that way, I always had time for her. I glanced at myself in the mirror, hardly recognizing the woman standing before me. Hardly a woman. Mostly a shell, but I straighten that shell's spine and make quick, purposeful steps toward the door.
The commotion increases outside, just mere steps away. My hands clam for the door, grasping it quickly and swinging it open. And that’s when I see it. Rhiannon standing before me, one guard completely unconscious, collapsed on the floor and the other in a submission hold.
"And here I thought you were never going to answer the door.” Rhi smirked.
“Get your ass in here now!”
She threw the guard to the floor, and stepped into my hallowed room. I sulked across the floor and flopped my half lifeless body onto the bed, a cocoon of sorts. A nest, formed by grief and fear to keep myself safe, except there will be no rebirth, I will not emerge the beautiful butterfly. Not without Xaden.
“Gods, Violet…” Rhi breathed out under her breath as she evaluated the collateral damage that was my room. I didn’t know how to explain the state of my room, it was a reflection of my life: chaotic, messy, tragic. All I have done for the last few days outside of being ushered to meetings and talking with strangers was sleep and read. With Tairn unreachable and Xaden seemingly gone, I had spent every waking moment attempting to hone my dreamwalking power, pushing myself to the very brink of exhaustion, as if the sadness I was living with wasn’t already enough. Is it really sleeping if you are draining power while you sleep? At this point I feel more real and alive within others' nightmares than the nightmare that is facing my own reality.
“ You’re pushing too hard. You need to rest. ” Andarna spoke softly from the small corner of my mind. I knew my actions were pushing her too. Shamefully, I pushed her feelings out, slamming the window closed. Her pity, my brother’s pity, everyone’s pity only pissed me off. I could see the mournful look in Rhi’s deep brown eyes as she sized me up.
Shifting my weight, forcing myself to roll over so I am not speaking directly into my pillow “I’m fine.”
“Fine?” Rhi cocked an eyebrow in my direction. “Vi, you haven’t taken a bite in days, and
THIS
” she motioned towards the entirety of my room, the books on dreams sprawled across my desk, the clothes I haven’t bothered picking up, and the nest of a bed I perched myself upon — “looks almost as bad as you do.”
She crossed the floor, stepping over the maze of notes I had scratched in the middle of the night on the endless subject that is my own dreams, the dreams of others, desperate theories, fragmented thoughts, anything to make sense of them. I’ve been trying to track them and for some reason no matter what I do, I can’t seem to make myself dream of him, regardless of how badly I desire to see him. Gods, I have to see him.
Rhi lowered herself to my side, placing a hand on my blanket covered leg, and looked at me. Pity and grief practically ooze from her fingertips as she places three gentle pats against my thigh. But suddenly I realized, she wasn’t mourning what I was mourning. The grief of losing Xaden was not the loss swallowing her whole, it was the loss of me . And there was no amount of love in her eyes that could glue the fragmented pieces of my soul back together again. I couldn’t even be fully honest with her about my signet manifesting.
I’m sure they thought I was spiraling, that I just wanted to catch a glimpse of Xaden within my dream, which isn’t entirely untrue, but also, not entirely true.
What I wanted was to find someone within these fortress walls who might be dreaming of my Xaden. If I could, maybe I could slip into their dream... and from there, into his.
“You don’t have to look at me as if I am dead.” I stated, staring past her gaze.
Rhi blinked, looking a bit stunned at the silence I broke. "I’m not.” she said gently, “but, you haven’t really been here either. C’mon Vi, this version of you is like a ghost. You might be here physically, but you aren’t here. Not even a little.”
Her words sting, but part of me knows they are true, “Do you think this is what I want? Do you think I am sitting in this room because that’s what I prefer? Because it’s not.”
“No,” her head dropping “but you’re shutting me out, AGAIN. You think we don’t notice that you are on the very brink of burning yourself out?” she said shortly. “And fine, let’s pretend we are all stupid and that we don’t know you Vi, do you think our dragons don’t notice Andarna and how exhausted she is? I know you manifested. I don’t know why you are keeping this from me; I don’t keep things like this from you.”
“Oh, really?” I snapped, pushing myself up against the mattress. “Then enlighten me, Rhi. What happened three days ago? What can’t I remember?”
“You know I don’t have that answer. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Do you expect me to believe that no one has filled you in?”
“Yes, Violet. I do expect you to believe that — because we’re friends. And we trust each other.”
The room fell into a thick silence.. Neither of us moved or said anything further.
And then, a wide smirk slid across Rhi’s face.
“I knew you were in there somewhere,” she said, grinning. “At least now I know you’ve still got some fight left in you.”
A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
“I really am trying, Rhi.”
“I know. And for now? That’s enough. But don’t think for a minute this is the last conversation we will be having about this.” She gave my leg one final squeeze, stood and silently slipped out of my bedroom and I let myself fall into a deep sleep.