Of Thorns and Beauty by Elle Madison

Chapter Fifty-Four

Einar and I walk silently down the halls of the West Wing. Halls I now realize he kept me from for very particular reasons.

These people deserve their privacy. They deserve to have a place of their own to rest and grieve and cope.

No wonder they despise me.

I‘m the monster who tried to force my way in, who took so many things for granted while they suffered and fought just to trudge on with their lives.

And it is here that he keeps their hope for a cure, protected by and for them.

We eventually find ourselves back in his rooms, and I’ve been so distracted that I’m not even sure how we got here.

“Are you all right?” Einar’s deep voice rumbles through me, cutting through the silence.

The timbre of his voice coupled with the sincerity in his stare threatens to unearth the catacomb of emotions I’ve worked so hard to bury.

“What helped me get through the years after I lost my family was talking about it,” he steps closer. “Sharing the pain and finding a way to let it go.”

I’m not breathing. My mind does not begin to fathom what that is like, because I came from a house of suppression and avoidance. I can’t speak or find the words to express what this offer means to a person who has never been allowed space for their own emotions.

I want to say no, to shut down and close myself off, but as his eyes search mine, my lips begin moving of their own accord, and nothing I do can make them stop.

I’m so tired of the pretense, and of keeping everything in and pretending the pain away.

“My childhood has been very different from yours.” I begin with the obvious. Einar doesn’t move, doesn’t speak.

“Where I am from...family doesn’t mean the same thing as it does here. Family is ownership, not love.” I try to break down my sordid tale, in the pieces that are safe to give.

“You are more valuable to the family if you have something to offer.” I swallow hard, thinking of the pieces I’ve already given him and how to present the rest. “My value was my age, my virginity.” I pause, not looking at him when I add the last part, because it's not something he has ever specifically commented on. “My beauty.”

Einar clenches his fists and his jaw, his entire body going taut with fury, but he stays silent.

“These are things that are highly sought-after. After mine was sold, I knew they were going to do the same to my sister.”

“Who did this?” His voice is strained. “Where was your aunt?”

I close my eyes for the briefest of moments, willing away the images of them before I answer his second question. I can’t give him an answer to the first, even though a selfish part of me wants to.

“She was the one who brokered the deal,” I say flatly. “I tried to run away, and I took my sister with me. I had planned it out, down to every last detail, but nothing went exactly right. We were found right before we would have boarded a ship to freedom.”

Einar’s face is pained. He moves forward like he wants to touch me, but then pulls his hands away as if he is afraid to.

“She was furious.” I carefully choose my words while the reality of the situation plays on a loop in my head.

“Rose --” I nearly choke on her name. “Rose wouldn’t stop crying.”

She was afraid and wailed, as a child should be able to do.

“The family guards,” Madame’s soldiers, “were too rough with her... They beat her. At Mother’s orders.”

Madame knew they were going to kill her. She played God as if she had the right to, then forced me to watch as the sentence was carried out.

Einar’s eyes are wide as he soaks in every word, and I wonder if he can read between the lines to everything I still can’t say. Some small part of me wants him to.

“It’s my fault that she died.” I speak the words aloud, giving life to the guilt I have carried with me for so long.

She was calculating. She chose which of us was most valuable to her and decided how she could prevent something like this from ever happening again. And she was successful.

Einar walks toward me, his voice calm, his eyebrows gathering inward as he speaks.

“No. You were a child. Your family was supposed to protect you. This is not your fault, Zaina.”

“This is the price of your disobedience, child.” Madame’s voice was cool, no hint of anger as she sat back to watch her orders being honored.

“I haven’t been a child in a very long time.” My chest aches, and I rub absently at the pain that I know will never fade.

She forced me to watch as the soldiers tortured my helpless sister, my only friend. She forced me to listen to Rose’s cries while her men held me back, preventing me from helping.

“Do not fail me again.” Madame said coldly when it was all over. She handed me a picture of Melodi in an unspoken promise of the fate she would share if I did.

And then she found Aika, and no amount of sense or reason kept me from growing attached to her as well. My sister.

That was my punishment. Reliving Rose’s death, knowing I was powerless to stop it.

“I try to remember our happiest moments,” I add after a while, doing anything to quell the misery that accompanies the memories of that sands-forsaken night. “I try to remember the sound of her laugh, the music she played on the piano, the way she begged for one more lullaby.” A bitter smile tugs at my mouth.

“The song you sang for Sigrid,” Einar says, and I nod. “I can see why she loved it.”

This time, my smile is a little more genuine. “She did. She was learning to play it on the piano.”

“I would have loved to meet her. I am certain that her life was better for having you in it.”

This time, I look up at him, truly seeing him. Realizing that there isn’t a single thing he has judged me for, things other men would have. But it's more than that.

For so long, I have thought only about the death Rose suffered because of my incompetence. Because of my bad decisions. It never occurred to me what kind of life she would have had before that if I hadn't been around to protect her. For the first time in nearly a decade, the squeezing pressure around my heart eases just enough for me to breathe.

“How?” I ask, baffled by everything that he is. “How are you like this? Full of hope and life after what happened to your own family? After what happened to your people?”

Einar takes hesitant steps toward me, slowly moving his hand to my cheek, giving me plenty of opportunity to stop him if I wanted.

“Because there is more to life than pain, Zaina. We just have to find those moments.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “And hold fast to them.”

I close my eyes and try to think of the moments he’s referring to. The music and the laughter, and, most of all, the love. All of the little bits of her that I can keep for myself, even though she’s gone.

“Thank you,” I say when I open my eyes.

He nods, and his body is still so close to mine.

I don’t deserve his kindness, but I am a sea sponge, and I take this, too. I close the space between us, wrapping my arms around his waist, pressing myself against him as though I can force an ounce of his goodness and hope to seep into my tainted soul.