His mouth opened, as if he wanted to say more, but he clamped it shut, released her, and stood. He gave her another lingering look before he strode from the room.
Tears clouded her eyes, but she refused to let them spill. Aera nudged Emmery’s hand, and her amber eyes, so similar to her gold, blinked up at her. Her fox snuggled into her neck and cooed softly.
Only for a moment, did Emmery let herself wallow, but she made sure to pull herself together before Dez returned.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
VESPER
As they flew back to Rensburrow, Vesper’s neck and ribs bled like a total bitch, but it was his mind that remained an irreparable mess. What they’d just witnessed haunted him. He’d seen some pretty horrendous fuckery and yet this—
This was a new nightmare inducing brand of horror.
Gaelen stared blankly out into the night, his brother’s corpse draped across his lap. Both Thorrin and Vesper had offered to take Dimitri’s body, but Gaelen refused to let him go, even for a moment. Vesper could hardly blame him. He would have been the same with Izzy, and that thought lodged a lump in his throat and made his eyes sting.
In his desperation, Vesper even prayed as a last call for hope as he gazed out into the cold, hazy night, red moonlight glancing over the sad, dull land.
He wondered where Emmery was. How she was doing. If she had found that man from her dreams and made headway in the prophecy. If she would ever speak to him again when he told her he’d let her down. If she would even listen long enough to hear him say those few words. And he thought of Briar, Cal, Marlys, and the castle that had once been his home. The one that would be ripped from his grasp. And how he had lost Izzy all over again.
Only Nef’s occasional cough broke the dense silence as Vesper escorted her back to Rensburrow. She clung to him and buried her face in his filthy tunic, while her hands trembled. Kyrith was equally silent, her arms wrapped around her middle, face solemn. She rode with Thorrin, not that Vesper expected anything different, but he couldn’t ignore the twitch in his arms that longed to comfort her.
When they landed, Kyrith slid off Vahla’s hide, and stalked away with her arms still clutching her middle. Vesper watched after her but didn’t know what to do. He helped Nef off Kaida’s back and gave her upper arms a quick rub while she refused to meet his gaze, fixated on the cold stone floor.
“Alright?” he asked, his brows scrunched. He knew she wasn’t but didn’t know what else to say.
Her nod was less than convincing. “And you?”
Vesper managed to shake his head. He wasn't in any shape to comfort her, and her eyes tracked Gaelen as he exited the cavern with Dimitri’s body in his arms. She squeezed Vesper’s hand and followed after Gaelen.
Thorrin approached at his side and said softly, “I did everything I could. I’m very sorry we didn’t get your answers.” He laid a comforting hand on Vesper’s arm, which shot radiating pain into the raw skin of his neck.
“We did. The answer was just no,” Vesper replied. He stuffed down the crippling disappointment climbing his throat, not only in himself, but toward his catastrophic future. He gave Thorrin a whisper of a smile through the ache. “At least you found the source of the bloodlace.”
But the firm press of Thorrin’s mouth was skeptical. “Let’s pray that’s what it was. Seems it still lingers up there.” He nodded to the open ceiling. “Not sure what will happen to those who are sick, either. We still haven’t found a cure.”
As his mind wandered back to Nef, Vesper swallowed hard. “We will,” he assured, but doubts clouded his mind.
They exited the cavern and trudged through the streets of Rensburrow, the little civilization quiet as everyone had gone to bed for the night.
“I need to get cleaned up, then check on Gaelen,” Thorrin said, and eyed Vesper’s neck. “Ensure you sanitize that wound and rest.”
They exchanged weighted glances before they headed to their separate cabins. Thorrin was clearly a better man than him. All Vesper wanted was to be alone, get some sleep, and try to forget what they’d seen.
Once inside his temporary home, Vesper stripped off his bloody tunic and cleaned most of the jagged meat of his ribs before the heavy, crippling exhaustion settled in. Even though his body was battered and bleeding, a numbness folded over him, like his mind refused to let him feel the pain.
He found a trough of cold water and plunged his hands inside, savouring the bite as it reddened his skin. He took a rough brush and scrubbed, got beneath his nails caked in blood and dirt and—
His mind wandered to so many things he wished he could unsee.
Those mothers reaching for their children through the ivory bars. Their limbs crumpling. Their translucent, bloodless flesh.
A little girl’s face slackened in death. Carrying her emaciated body outside. His whispered apologies when he thought no one could hear. How easily she went into that makeshift grave. How the soil had buried her face, and this atrocity, as if it had never existed.
How he had leaned over the cliffside and hurled until tears and snot streaked down his face. Until he wanted to sob and beg not to go back in there. To not see anymore. But he had straightened his spine and endured.
Vesper sank into how fucking guilty he felt about it all.
Because if he’d gotten off his ass, done something with his sorry existence, maybe it would have never happened. But he’d been drinking and fucking his life away when he could’ve been actually doingsomething.