There should have been a sense of victory. Should have been a sense of relief. There wasn't.
There was only an odd numbness.
It was almost as if I'd given all there was to give and there was nothing—absolutely nothing—left inside of me. I raised my re-formed, bloody hand and, as if from a great distance, watched the bits of flesh and blood dribble toward my elbow.
Then, without warning, my stomach heaved and I threw up. The pain hit seconds later, and I was shaking and crying and wanting nothing more than to just let it all go. The pain, the horror, the guilt, and the expectations of others, just let it all wash away and become someone else's problem.
Can't, Amaya said sharply. Finished not.
Isn't it? I wondered. I closed my eyes and fought the wash of weakness in my body, and yet I could not deny the allure of ending it all here and now. Why not let fate take whatever course she'd decided to take and no longer fight it?
Everyone would be better off without me. Everyone. No one could hold them hostage against my behavior; no one could kidnap and rape them, and—perhaps best of all—there would be no one to find the remaining keys and threaten the very safety of the world.
That alone was worth one life.
That alone was certainly worth my life.
Everyone not safe, Amaya said. I not. The life within not.
A life that might well be Lucian's. God, he'd murdered my mother—how on earth was I to survive looking at his child every day and being reminded of his deed? How was that fair to the child? Or to me?
I couldn't. I wouldn't.
The death I'd seen so long ago wasn't the truth. I wasn't going to die in an automotive accident. I was going to die here, underground, all alone except for a nagging sword.
My arms collapsed underneath me, and I fell face-first onto the stone. For several minutes I simply lay there, my breathing becoming more and more labored and my life leaking out through various wounds in not-so-slow rivers.
And wondered, just for an instant, where Azriel was.