Chapter 92: First Direct Meeting
>>Ariston (During the War)
The water was cold, but it didn’t bite. Not anymore. I’d grown used to the chill, almost welcomed it. It numbed the places I didn’t want to feel.
I stood hips-deep in the pond, the full moon hanging heavy above me like a secret. It filtered down through the canopy in wide, silver beams, dusting the clearing in a kind of quiet magic. The stream that fed the pond trickled gently around me, and for once—just for this moment—there was no sound of war. No clash of steel. No barked orders.
Just the forest. Just the moon. Just me.
It wasn’t much, but the temporary peace meant a lot to me.
I dipped my hands into the water and brought them up to my bare chest, scrubbing at the black blood that had dried against my skin. It clung to me like tar, sticky and stubborn, streaked across my arms, caught in the crooks of my elbows, crusted beneath my fingernails. I didn’t even remember which monster it had belonged to. It didn’t matter. They all bled the same in the end.
I dipped my hands again, rubbing harder this time, watching the dark water ripple out from me like a stain. It wouldn’t come off. Not easily.
I hated this.
Not just the blood—
The hiding.
I glanced down at my own body, at the parts I’d always kept covered. The ones that made me a walking contradiction in the eyes of the world. I sank a little deeper into the water, until it touched the bottom of my ribs. Out here, I didn’t have to bind, didn’t have to tuck and tighten and adjust. Out here, I could just be—even if only for a few stolen minutes before someone started shouting my name.