He took another step away from the church, then another. And he refused to look back. He headed toward the trees, toward isolation. He felt driven to embrace it, driven to experience this moment of honesty. The first moment of honesty in his entire life.
He kept walking, the air around him darkening as the trees thickened.
He had always run into the crowd in moments like this. When the howling emptiness inside him became too much, he let it get swallowed up by people, things. But here he could do nothing but let it expand. Admit that Zara was right.
He’d been happy when his mother was gone because it meant no more trying. No more pain. No more failure in any way that mattered.
But Kairos had still demanded of him, and so he’d tried to rid himself of his brother too, though it hadn’t worked. And all the while he’d told himself it was because he was every bit as evil as his mother had said.
Debauched. A mistake.
He was still just a boy locked in his room. Away from everything. No matter how many women he touched, no matter how many parties he went to...no one ever really reached him.
Until Zara.
And he’d betrayed her. Now he was alone again and there was no denying it. No covering it up.
Every year of isolation was catching up to him now, rolling over him in great, crashing waves. Years of it, threatening to suffocate him if he didn’t relieve some of the pressure.
You could just go out into the woods and scream to make yourself feel better.
Another bit of wisdom from Zara. Feral wisdom. She was filled with it. She was nothing more than a tiny woman who had been raised just this side of civilized. And yet she had taught him everything.
Now he was in the exact place she had found herself years ago. Hurting. Lonely. Dying inside with no way to heal himself.
He had nothing to lose. No image to maintain. He had just been jilted in front of his entire country. He had been left by the only woman who had ever loved him. The only woman he had ever loved in return. And he was responsible. It was his fault. His fear had destroyed everything.
Because he had let it grow inside him, unidentified, ignored. He had pretended it wasn’t there and like a malignant disease it had grown, thrived, as he had allowed it to. He had told himself his relief at his mother being gone made him terrible. Wrong.
He had simply been afraid. Admitting that was the hardest thing, admitting he was weak.
He’d imagined himself invulnerable. As long as he believed he feared nothing, as long as he believed he didn’t care, it must be true. But it was a lie. It had always been a lie. It was his caring for his mother, her disdain for him that had made it a burden. If he’d never cared, it would not have felt so heavy.
He did care. And he had failed. Now it all rested on him.
He wanted to rail against it. He wanted to scream as Zara said she did when she came to the woods alone.
“Did you feel better?”
“Not really. But I could breathe.”
The thought of doing that would have been impossible only a few hours ago. Because he was buried so deep inside himself, and screaming into the emptiness was letting it free. Letting that uncontrolled boy who had cared, but had failed, out to try again. He had buried that boy. That boy who had been wrong, perpetually, to those who should have loved him simply for breathing.
He had grown into a man who had felt nothing for far too long. Who had been paralyzed in the end when he was offered the world.
A man who couldn’t breathe.
He did his best to take a gasp of air, something, anything to fill his lungs. And then he shouted into the emptiness. Not words, just pain. Forcing it out of his body the best he could, clearing room so that he could breathe again. He wanted to be rid of the fear. Of everything he had allowed to stand in his way.
He had broken his own life. He could no longer blame anyone else. The one who held everyone at a distance. Who tried to prove to himself that the love he was offered was false. He had tested his mother. She had failed. She had failed and he had been glad because her love was so heavy.
He shouted again, the sound rough and raw in the silence. But when he was finished, he found that he could breathe again. Just for a moment it felt as if Zara was with him.
He wanted her to be. He realized that with blinding clarity as the sound of his voice faded into a distant echo. He wanted her to be with him so that neither of them would be alone again. But she could have anyone. Any future she wanted. She didn’t have to make a life with him.