Castle of Bitter Thorn by Kay L Moody

Author:Kay L Moody
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Marten Press

TWENTY-ONE

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TEARS OF GRIEF DIDN’T feel the same as tears of pain. Though grief held pain, it was nothing like being sliced with a sword. Of the two, grief hurt worse. It came in a shadow wrapped in ice. It nibbled at defenses until there was nothing left to do except welcome it with open arms.

And then it would crush those arms. Destroy them. It would crumble everything that kept it away from the heart and then it would crush that too.

By the time the second phase of testing ended, Elora already had single tears streaming down her cheeks. Brannick opened a door that led back to Bitter Thorn Castle immediately. When her boots hit the stone hallways, her single tears had turned to waterfalls.

She sprinted to her room, trying desperately to keep herself from collapsing.

Her room offered no relief.

She curled into a tight ball, letting out a wail that could wilt flowers.

The wail offered no relief.

Her arms wrapped over her legs, pulling her knees tight to her chest. Rocking her body back and forth, she tried to release the pain through her tears.

No relief came.

The more she cried the more it hurt. Grief didn’t care that it tore her insides apart. It didn’t care that she wasn’t strong enough to deal with such things. It just charged ahead, splitting down every defense she had built.

She had never asked her father why he was so fascinated with Chloe’s poems about Faerie. She had never asked her mother why she wanted to move to the country.

And those were only things she knew she had failed to ask about. What about her name? Why had they chosen to name her Elora? Maybe there had been no special reason for it, but what if there had been? Now she would never know.

Tears continued to fall, no matter how she tried to stop them. It seemed her ability to block emotions had vanished when she chose to let them in. But if she had known it would hurt so much, maybe she wouldn’t have tried so hard.

Because now her chest ached. Stabbing pain shot through her head. Her arms strained under the pressure she tensed them with.

But she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t even breathe.

It wasn’t just sobs that escaped her. Whimpers and wails came out too.

It was too much.

Her mind raced to quiet evenings in her cottage with the blue shutters. Her mother taught harp to the youngest sister, Grace, while Chloe recited long poems in her bedroom. Elora and her father sat in the kitchen while he taught her to properly sharpen a sword.

And that was only one evening. Their lives had been good. Happy. And now her parents were gone. Her sisters were grief-stricken, and they relied on Elora to take care of them. She had left them money and clothes, but what about their pain?

If she couldn’t even manage her own pain, how could she take care of theirs? How could any of them move on after something so tragic?

She wanted to hide the grief away.

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