Viridescent Demise

Chapter 1

It's been months now since I've seen him, heard his voice.

For a while, right after it happened, I saw him every day. I watched the glimmer in his eyes, gold flecked as they always have been, begin to disappear.

It got worse, and I saw him less. He is the same, physically, but he isn't there anymore.

The bond that tied us once before now lays shattered in shards of glass, leaving only occasional glimmers that mirror each other's thoughts to the other.

Now I don't see him anymore. Or at least, he doesn't see me. I watch him often, sneaking down to the cages just to get a glimpse of his ruffled hair laying long and shagged against the stone walls. While he's not in a true cage, rather a holding cell, it looks like a cage to me - feels like a cage to me. Watching your lover caged is not something I'd wish on my worst enemy, but I don't know if lover if the right word for Xaden. He is the ocean, and I am a shell. He washes over my entire being, and I roll, a cold shell of what I once was with him beside me. I could start over. I could have another life, give up my place in this new chain of command, and sleep beside someone new if I chose to. But I will never love like I have loved him.

I'm standing here again, spying. He's not asleep but it's like he is. He stares out the window like this without stopping other than to relieve himself or eat. The red rings around his eyes deepening more and more. Every once in a while he moves his hand, squeezes it a little, like he remembers.

I remember. His hands.

I remember them now in different ways.

His hands around my hips. In my hair. Around my neck.

Under the sheets. On my breasts. Around my heart. Squeezing.

He has never harmed me physically, but sometimes I pretend he has to make it easier. To allow myself the idea of letting him go for a reason that makes sense. In reality, the third and sixth ways I remember his hands are dark figments from my imagination, nothing but lies, but I try to think of more because I can't imagine a reality in which Xaden and I are not together, happily ever after, the conquerors of kingdoms after the battles we've gone through together - and alone.

Xaden sighs and it sounds agonizing and deep in a way I can't better describe. Suddenly it occurs to me that my hand is wet from tears dripping down onto my fingers that were covering my mouth. I breathe in, as silently as possible, and start to back away trying to stay hidden.

Then a thought pops into my head - no, a memory. Riorson House, no surprise because that's where we are, but everything seems smaller. It feels dark, dismal, and a bit haunted like an old poem. A door opening, a burst of joy and...

Suddenly it hits me that this is not my memory. This is Xaden's. It's me, running into our room and falling into his lap. I'm telling him about Cat giving Dain a run for his money in our lessons that morning. This was before Xaden got worse, when he still slept in our bed in his room.

Now my sobs are audible. I can't help it or hold it in and I'm falling to my knees. I can't see through my tears and it feels like I'm being ripped to shreds by the teeth of a beast. The despair feels enveloping, and yet I think I might be watching my own demise from outside my body because I am watching myself collapse on the stone floor and Aaric, bursting through the doors to the sound of my screams to catch me before I hit my head.

Xaden is watching me. So I am watching me. And I am in shambles.

I hear Aaric's silent tears now too, or at least the slight shrug of his body when he sniffles his emotions back into his body. His arms are holding me, and I am grateful because I don't think I could stand on my own if I tried. The room is dark, or it isn't and my eyes are just closed, but regardless he's hauling me to my feet and putting my weight on him to bring me outside the heavy wooden door that's keeping me in this cage with Xaden. While I might not be behind the bars physically, I am stuck inside with him and there isn't a latch to set us free.