The deep blue dress that brought out the darkness of her eyes; the fabric doll Thom had made her for her second birthday, the stitched eyes pulling slightly from where she would rub her nose against them; the white night cap; the petticoats; the flower crown that I had watched her make in my dreams for years.
I knew how they were laid.
I knew how they were folded.
I knew how they felt.
I knew it all.
Because I had cried over that box every day for hundreds of years.
Because I had touched those things as I had longed for her.
Because I knew her.
My hand slid down the fabric of the dress as I sunk to the floor, my legs folding awkwardly beneath me as they forgot how to support me. The weight of my body against the floor sent a plume of dust around me, but I barely noticed.
I only stared at the box while my hands wound together as memory after memory flashed through me, my heart tightening more and more with each one. A pain I hadn’t felt in years built so quickly that, before I knew it, it was seeping from me in a scream that echoed every pain, every heart ache.
It ripped from me and shook the room around me, making layers of dust fall through the air in sheets of grey that slid like snow drifts, piling in mounds around me. The room I was lost in was as lost as I felt.
I didn’t stop the emotion.
I didn’t think I could if I tried.
I let it come.
I let myself feel it.
Never before had I let it out. I felt the pain of Rosaline’s murder. I felt the agony of Talon’s death, the betrayal of Thom leaving me behind, the heart stuttering loss of my brother who had been the only support I had known for my hundred years. I felt the stabbing loss that Joclyn had given me, that one look saying more than she could ever know. Not because it showed me what I was, what I had become, but because it showed me what I had given up.
I felt the pain for the first time as something snapped inside of me. A weight that I had carried around for centuries slipped away into the piles of dust that surrounded me. I let it fall away, and I let myself become stronger than it.
What Edmund had done was unforgivable. What I had lost was insurmountable. However, by holding it inside and letting it fester, I had forgotten the person Thom had taught me to be. I had forgotten my child.
I had become something else.
I was more than pain. I was more than bloodshed. I was more than joy. I was more than the confusing bits that made up who I was. Those were part of me, yes, and some day, I would explain all those parts to Jos.
I let the agonizing wail fade to nothing as I stood, my eyes scanning through the orange bathed room in search of the one thing I would take from this place. It was the only thing I wanted.
I moved through the ghostly forms of furniture, through the rooms of the small apartment as I ripped off sheets, as I opened boxes and drawers and wooden chests in a mad rush to find it. The need only grew with each step, the dust filling the air so heavily I could barely breathe.
I didn’t care.
I needed to find it.
“Wynifred?” Thom’s voice drifted from behind me in a wall of worry that froze me in place, my hands hovering over the lid of a heavy, wooden chest I didn’t remember.
I tried not to let his tone dig into me, tried not to let the deep concern that lined his face bring about the confusion I had been fighting.
It did, anyway.
It did because it was the same calm face he had always had with the same calm eyes I had fallen in love with all those years ago. The look pulled at my heart, the broken shard completely raw and jagged after losing Talon, the shards trying so hard to place themselves back together. The emotion only grew the more that I was around him.
I pressed my lips together in an attempt to keep the emotion inside and went back to digging through the belongings I had hidden in the back of the room.
“What are you looking for?” Thom tried again, the soft sound of his footsteps echoing around me as he moved closer.
“Her blanket,” I said, knowing I didn’t have to elaborate.
Thom said nothing. I only heard the sharp intake of his breath before he walked beside me, walking right up to an old trunk that had been hidden in the back, the top lifting before he had even reached it.
“I had the other one on my bed in the cave in Italy,” Thom said as he lifted the old blanket from the trunk, the heavy woven fibers as bright as the day the travelers had given them to her. The nomads had doted over her hair and the way her internal flame glowed. “To always keep her close. Keep you close.”
His voice was soft as it rolled into me. I collapsed into him, and his arms enfolded around me as he covered us with the old blanket, wrapping the edges around us and trapping us together.
“I know it’s hard,” Thom whispered, “but I will help you through this.”
“I thought I had it all figured out. I knew who I was when I ran from Edmund, but now there are friends who don’t know who I am, and my heart feels torn in two.”
“Can I fix it?” His hand moved up my back as he held me against him. The question was a deep rumble of sincerity that I had always known from him. The question, the motion, was almost like stepping back in time.