Caius had spent enough time alone—more than enough, quite frankly—to begin to catalog different types of silence. There were myriad varieties, each possessing unique qualities. A tormented silence had filled his most recent days, full of the echoes of his own screams and the memory of fresh suffering.
He had found no comfort in that silence. It had been a way to mark time, between one agony and the next, as he waited. Waited for his sister’s madness to abate—an unlikely scenario, he knew, but one he could not stop hoping for, as if the very act of hope had become intrinsic to his survival. Waited for Tanith to return, pale skin marred by blackened veins, crimson eyes stained dark with corruption. A heavy coil of dread wound its way around him as he remembered the silence that heralded her return. Even the quiet murmur of the guards outside his door had died, voices hidden like woodland creatures waiting for a predator to pass by.
That silence had invariably been followed by the most exquisite pain imaginable. The feeling of his power—something he’d always believed was uniquely his, a notion proved tragically incorrect—being leached from his body like blood being drawn from a vein. But unlike freshly drawn blood, his power—that ineffable force that connected him to the in-between—did not want to leave his body. Tanith drew it out against its will, if it could be said to have one. The magic knew Caius. His body was its home. It had always been there, coursing through him like a subtle current. But Tanith—or whatever force was staring out of her eyes—had found a way to break the tether holding Caius and his magic together using brute force and enthusiastic beatings. Every second of separation was a study in torment. Every moment of silence between one leaching and the next was almost as bad. Tanith had waited for the well within Caius to refill itself, slowly, painfully, before returning to take more and more until he was sure it would run dry, leaving nothing for her to steal.
The silence that surrounded him now held none of the promise of malice to which he had become accustomed. There was a softness to this silence. Not to say that it was free of pain; it wasn’t. A steady ache lingered in his bones, the kind so deeply rooted it felt as though it would be there forever, and his throat felt raw and shredded from screaming. His memory of the hours after his rescue was a patchwork mess of images and sensations, but he remembered the most salient points: Dorian bursting through the door, Echo and Jasper hot on his heels, all of them looking more than a little worse for wear; the feeling of hands on him, not the phantom touches his dreams tormented him with, but hands made of flesh and bone; the searing flare of Echo’s magic burning the tainted blood from his body.
There was a safety to the silence. The quiet was not complete. Caius could hear branches scraping against glass—there was a window in the room. That alone was enough to make him want to succumb to a paroxysm of joy; more than anything else it signaled his freedom from the wretched ruin in which Tanith had ensconced him. Outside, little nocturnal animals chittered among themselves. In the distance, an owl hooted, followed by the flap of wings, as if the bird had spotted a succulent mouse upon which to descend.
Within the room, the silence was punctuated by the soft sound of someone breathing. Caius turned his head to the side as far as he was able, which was not very far considering the violent protest of pain that sang through his muscles. Even in the dim moonlight that came through that blessed window, Caius was able to make out a familiar head of messy brown hair. Echo’s chest rose and fell with steady breaths; she was asleep. Her heroics had probably exhausted her as much as they had him. A blanket was tucked up under her chin, held close in a white-knuckled grip. She was curled in on herself, and her limbs twitched under the covers. An unintelligible noise escaped her lips. Caius couldn’t understand the words she spoke in her slumber, but he didn’t need to. Her distress was clear enough. She was in the thrall of some nightmare, held captive by her own desperate need for rest.
He tried to speak her name, to call out to her, but his voice was little more than a suggestion of a whisper. The metallic taste of blood lingered at the back of his throat. He’d screamed himself hoarse enough to make himself bleed. There was a glass of water on the nightstand, but the thought of reaching for it and holding it steady enough to drink from was laughable. Despite his body’s vociferous protests, Caius rolled onto his side, his muscles spasming in pain. An alarm clock also sat on the nightstand; with one clumsy hand, he knocked it over, the little bell on top clattering as the clock hit the floor.
Echo awoke with a start. She pushed away the blankets, untangling herself from her cocoon in a blind panic. Her gaze darted around the room, looking for the source of the noise. When her eyes alighted on Caius, his hand still dangling limply off the edge of the bed, she froze.
“Wake up,” he managed to croak.
It took Echo a few moments to gather her wits. Caius watched as she shook off the remnants of her dream like a fly-stung horse. She attempted to sort out the tangle of her hair but gave up after a few aborted strokes of her fingers through it. It seemed to dawn on her that Caius being conscious was nothing short of a minor miracle. Echo got to her feet and approached his bed slowly, as though wary of spooking him.
Caius attempted to sit up—to greet her while horizontal seemed astonishingly rude considering he owed her his life—but his head barely made it an inch off the pillow before he collapsed, driven back to the mattress by a racking cough and a wave of pain. Echo hurried to him, taking the glass of water from his bedside table and holding it to his lips. Caius felt ridiculous, like a helpless child, but the moment the water touched his dry lips, the relief was great enough to wash away his feelings of inadequacy.
Echo brushed hair off his forehead, her skin cool against his. He desperately wanted to pretend that he hadn’t arched into it like a touch-starved cat, but he had. Shameful, he thought, not feeling an ounce of shame.
“Are you all right?” Echo’s voice was a welcome change to the silence. He’d heard it in his head countless times during his captivity, but now he was appalled that he had ever mistaken those fever dreams for anything but. There was a roundness to her voice, a softness, that no hallucination could replicate. This was real. She was real.
He had to try twice before the words came out, but eventually he managed to say, “I’m fine.”
Echo frowned. “You don’t look fine.”
Now that his throat had been marginally soothed, words came easier to Caius, even if they did scratch on the way out. “Couldn’t even let me have that small lie to spare my dignity?”