Chapter 22: Astoria - Bound to Ruin

THE WEAVE

Warmth envelops me, a deep rumbling echoing. I curl tighter in this soft embrace. The pain that burned within me ebbs with each rumbling, rhythmic tightening. It’s a familiar hold, the kind that aches my heart and warms my bones. Gravity no longer exists. My troubles no longer exist. This cocoon is my entire consciousness, and I bask in the comforting embrace.

My hand twitches when a sound pings beneath the rumble. My brows twitch, my lips turning down. It’s not a sound, but a pull. A tug in my center, an ache that draws me from my slumbering existence.

I lift my head from where I rest it against my knees, the warmth I hover in shifting like the softest fur. All I can see is darkness, and the warm comfort beckons my return, and yet, I resist its call. My hand drags from being wrapped around my legs, the long strands of warm silk slipping along my flesh as I do, and I press my palm to my chest. My heart convulses, not with a pump that sends blood circulating, but with an agony of want when that call sounds again.

My legs straighten, my toes searching for a floor but encountering nothing except more soft tendrils. Memories are returning to me. This is not the first time I’ve felt this call while slumbering within Jinx’s healing embrace. That time, the call was from my own heart, stretching and reaching as I sobbed for Lucas. I needed to know that he survived. I needed to ensure he was safe.

This… this feels different.

I stretch out, turning as I look all around the black, inky darkness.

Go back to sleep.

Jinx’s voice is all around me, and I look down at my glowing form. A black-stained tear stretches down my body like a scar. I touch it and expect to find oil staining my fingertips, but it’s smooth like it’s a part of me now.

The tug pulls, and I turn, my hair drifting slowly as if I’m underwater. “What is that?”

Jinx’s fur shifts around me. A summoning.

“A summoning?” I keep one hand pressed against my sternum, the other reaching through the floating, silky fur like I’ll encounter a hand.

If it’s anything like my own experiences, it’s a mortal soul within the physical world that calls to you. Sometimes it is purposeful, like what your men did earlier with their painted sigils on the mirror. Others are a subconscious cry for help within the night.

My heart pounds against my hand, like it is trying to burst forth to go towards that aching tug. I reach out, my legs moving in hopes of swimming. Jinx shifts from her wrapped embrace of me and two halves of her part for my hand to slip free.

My fingers press against something cool and solid before my palm flattens out against it. My heart thuds desperately, and I place my other hand against it as well. Like when I was searching for Lucas, the space before me shimmers and ripples as a smooth lake’s surface.

The call becomes louder, and my soul recognizes it, my voice cracking when I cry, “Valen.”

The image distorts to reveal the weaver that broke my heart. My breath catches, and I press my palms harder. His hair is a mess, and there are dark circles under his too-wide eyes. He’s ashen and his spine curls in a slump I’ve never seen on him before. He’s missing a shirt and bruises cover his body. Why hasn’t he healed himself? What has happened?

My heart clenches, and I cry again, “Valen!”

He sucks in breath, his head lifting and our gazes meet. He searches me before he covers one of my hands with his. His surroundings sharpen. He’s in his bathroom, but instead of the large full-length mirror I gazed through before, I’m in the mirror above his vanity. There is luggage everywhere, open and partially packed. A fresh shirt sits beside him. Is the Bauer estate compromised?

His voice echoes, small and desperate. “How are you here?”

“I felt you. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

I search his surroundings, but he’s alone. I nearly scream in frustration. Valen. Usually so put together, so calm. My pillar of strength is a wreck, and the change in him sends me into a near rage. I am so tired of being trapped away from the men I love. I want to fall through this mirror and wrap my arms around him. I want to stroke his hair while he leans against my chest. I want to tangle my legs with his until our feet touch.

My fingers curl against the glass, my head tilting down. My voice warps, and Jinx shifts when I slowly say, “Who hurt you?”

His eyes shift. A shimmer of deep feeling softens him, but there’s a tension within him still. He huffs, shaking his head before partially turning. “Your beastly little grimoires.”

I gasp, flinching back, my hand leaving the mirror to cover my mouth. His shoulder is partially destroyed. Magic glimmers over the raw, open wound that is slowly reforming tissue over his exposed bone. The pain he must be in…

“Valen. You need a healer.” My lip trembles and I press against the mirror. I need to get through. I need to help him.

His lips twitch, and some of the hollowness in his face lessens with a spark of amusement in his bloodshot, blue eyes. But then it’s gone, his expression falling as his eyes shine. My heart nearly stops. “What’s happened? Is Lucas okay?”

He doesn’t answer, but stares into my eyes in a broken, lost way. His softly whispered words echo as time stops when he says, “I’ve put my father to rest.”

My breath catches, and he doesn’t look away as he continues, “I saw the blood in your shop. Saw the violence of his death. I don’t understand how you could witness such a thing and not immediately summon me. You could’ve warned me in case I was in danger, but you didn’t.”

My chest heaves, and my eyes squeeze shut when his voice cracks. “I am so utterly ruined by you, my love.”

Tears burn down me. I curl in against the glass, my forehead pressing against it. The mirror threatens to fade away, but I slap my palms against it, forcing it back to a solid state. I will not run from him, not this time. I will keep the connection even as his words slice a thousand cuts into me. For Valen, I will endure this agony just to hear his voice.

Valen’s mask is gone. The broken exhaustion weighs heavily on him, aging him in a way that nearly sends me to my knees. He speaks softly, his gaze far off like he’s reliving each word. “I loved you. I loved you with my whole soul. I grieved your loss from my life so deeply that I couldn’t get out of bed for months. I barely ate. I barely slept. And when I finally started to come alive again, I discovered the curse and the bottomless depth of your vengeance. You would have consumed each member of the Order one by one until we were all gone. It took so long for me to accept that you would so mindlessly doom even me to such a fate. I was so certain that you’d keep it to only your father and brother, but to also curse my family? My mother? My sister?”

His hand trembles as he covers his eyes with it. “Did you ever love me?”

I can’t catch my breath, my shoulders heaving where they press against the glass.

Valen’s voice becomes softer and softer, but is still easy to hear over the pounding of my heart. “I let myself be blind for so long. I joined Viola in hiding what you’d done, worked endlessly to try to keep my father from turning on you.”

A choked breath has my head snapping up, eyes wide. Tears stain Valen’s face, and it utterly ruins me. I claw at the glass.

Valen. My Valen.

I did this to him. I broke him. It was so much easier to distance myself from him when I was angry, but now I could fade away just to make his pain stop.

His whole body is shaking as if he’s in a winter storm. I stroke my fingers back and forth, wishing for his hand over mine. Anything to lessen his misery. His gaze leaves mine and his face crumples. “I wish I’d known how much more I loved you than you loved me. Maybe then I would’ve made better decisions, but I can’t find myself regretting it because even after all the selfish, evil things you’ve done, I am still so utterly, completely, consumed by you. I don’t think I would’ve made it through the last seven years if I hadn’t tried to save you. My love. My soul. I just wish I wasn’t so alone in this feeling.”

Something within me breaks, and the black seam running down my form tugs as if I’m being pulled apart. “I’m so sorry, Valen.”

Valen’s desperate whisper slices through me, and his hand presses against the glass over my own. “Don’t break apart, my love. Lucas would be devastated. I would be devastated.”

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My fingers drag down the glass. I should never have let him leave my shop believing I loved one more than the other. I had a window of opportunity to set him straight, and I missed it for my own selfish desire to avoid arguing. I thought it would be easier. I was so very wrong. This is so much worse.

“I don’t love Lucas more than I love you. One of you does not outweigh the other in the scales within my heart. I just could never return to the Order.”

A sad, broken laugh shakes him, and he places his other hand over his face to hide it. “Oh, my love. Please try harder to lie to me. I’ve known you for too long.”

My face contorts with my flaring rage. A darkness curls within me, a mist gathering around my feet. I don’t care if he doesn’t believe me. I’ll make him believe me.

I slam my fist against the glass, magic erupting along my form in a shower of sparking flame. “I love you, you arrogant asshole! I’m so completely, totally, unendingly in love with you. Do not think for a fucking moment that I don’t burn for you. That seeing you like this doesn’t rip me apart. If I could claw my way through this divide to get to you, I would, because I will not let you walk away from me. Not this time.” Something darker takes over, and my fingers curl into talons, my voice distorting as my flames dance around me. “I own you, Valentin Bauer. Your body. Your soul. Your heart. They are mine.”

His chest heaves, his eyes wide. A kaleidoscope of light dances along him, and I return to my senses to realize it’s because of me. My flames are no longer simply black and gold. Sheets of lights dance like auroras along the glass, swirling around like smoke to my flames.

I turn back to Valen, and he’s leaning close to the mirror, his other hand flat against it as he beholds my power with such wonder. My hand trembles as I smooth it over his, his arm muscles jumping when our heat touches through the mirror. His Soul Thread dances, a thin silvery blue line in his chest stretching forth. My eyes flutter close, my heart thumping when the smell of the first snowfall in winter washes over me. It blends with my flames, and I’m filled with the heat of warm fires during long winter nights, the crackling of wood, and the softness of the still world beneath the blanket of white. A sweet paradise.

Slowly, I open my eyes for our gazes to connect. Tears flow freely down my face. “I’m so sorry, Valen. I love you so much and have hurt you so deeply.” My lips quiver, and my voice cracks. “I didn’t mean to keep your father a secret. I may hate him, but you don’t deserve his death to be like that. You loved him so much and now he’s gone because of me. You’re hurting because of me. You’re suffering… because of me. Maybe it’s for the best that I’m trapped here.”

Jinx presses her soft warmth against my back to try to draw me into her cocoon of healing comfort, but I don’t lean against her. I keep myself pressed against the mirror and weep. My fingers slide down the glass, the darkness closing in along the mirror’s edge.

A slam has me gasping, my head whipping back to the glass. Valen glares at me, and the glint in his cold eyes is so familiar that a fresh wave of tears shudders through me. I drag my hands back up to press against his and the darkness withdraws.

His voice fills my heart. “Don’t you dare leave me.”

I choke on my sob. “I’m unworthy of you. All I do is cause you pain.”

“I’ll decide if you’re unworthy of me. Yes, you’ve hurt me, but I’ve hurt you as well. If I’ve learned anything from our tasty magician, it’s that it doesn’t have to be that way. I love you, Astoria. No matter how much I should hate you, or how angry and frustrated I am with you, I can’t seem to live this life without you.” His eyes glow. “I don’t want to live this life without you.”

I suck in breath. “I don’t want to either. I’ve missed you so much.”

My fingers ache from how hard I press against the glass. His voice flows through me. “I want to hold you.”

I laugh brokenly and sniffle. “I want to be held by you. Fuck, Valen. How did things get so messed up? Do you think we can heal? Maybe one day forgive each other?”

“I don’t know, but I’d like to try.”

My breath trembles. “I’d like to try, too.”

His face softens, and it’s like he’s returned to me. His forehead presses against the glass and his heat warms me, calming the firestorm around me until it is nothing more than rainbow-hued flames dancing within my floating hair.

“Astoria. My Astoria.”

I shiver, the line along my form thinning to be barely the width of a string. Valen presses his lips against the mirror where my forehead rests, and I lean harder against the divide in hopes of feeling him.

“My love, there’s something very important I must ask you.”

I lift my head to meet his gaze.

“Do you know where your body is?”

I frown. “My body?”

“Antonia’s statue is missing from the park. Lucas believes it’s with your father and has left to try to steal it from his estate, but I have my doubts. I don’t think Alasdair would hide it there.”

My mouth drops, the freshly thinned black line tugging as I gasp, “Lucas went alone?”

Valen nods, and panic has me screaming. Lucas. Oh fuck, Lucas. That crazy, stubborn asshole. I release Valen to scrape my nails along my hair. How can I help him? What can I do?

I turn to Jinx, who is a ball of living fur and much more disturbing now that I’m not being cuddled in her warmth. “Is there a way for me to return to my body to figure out where the statue is?”

Jinx writhes, stretching to coil around my form and the mirror. You’d be trapped by Alasdair again if you do. You might get the answer, but you wouldn’t be able to come back to tell him.

I sneer. “Of course, because why would anything be easy?”

I turn back to Valen and stumble back into Jinx’s ball when Emilia stands beside him. She glares at me, her blue eyes slitted like the blades she loves so much. Her words hiss through the divide. “You’re lucky he loves you, bitch.”

Her nail taps the glass and drags down. A sparking line slices through to flash on my end. I stagger back, Jinx wrapping around me like a fur coat, ready to strike. But before I can figure out how the hell she did that, a book slips through. I snatch it before it floats away and gape at the thin leather notebook I buried behind my pentagram.

My mind spirals, but one thought rears its head louder and angrier than the rest. “Were you the one who destroyed my bookshop, you crazy bi⁠—”

But she’s gone. The mirror is no more, and I am left standing in the wide expanse of the cosmos, holding a familiar notebook with no clue what I’m supposed to do with it.