Tower of Dove

Chapter 15: The Robin Child

Tower of Dove Chapter 15: The Robin Child

The next days were spent in darkness. When Lilyana wasn’t sleeping, she was lying on the floor, buried beneath her blankets and staring at the floral patterns until her eyes burned, desperately trying not to think. The light shining through her window in the day had begun to bother her stinging eyes so much that she’d put up a curtain to keep all but a minimal amount of light out.

At night, darkness consumed.

When she slept, she dreamt of awful things that shook her awake once again. Hiero lying in a pool of blood, Posy falling through red clouds, Amethyst setting fields on fire as black birds screeched and rose from the smoke. And caskets, swarms of white caskets marching around the village accompanied by the somber song of the guards. The fear of what those white caskets held inside sent cold chills through her body and every time, she woke screaming.

She lost track of time. She could have been living like this for two days or a year, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. She ignored the food that the servants brought her. When Miette had tried to come and see her, she’d refused to open the door and when Calanthe had unlocked it herself, Lilyana had screamed at the most vile, hateful words she could muster and threw things until her mother ran from the room crying. Lilyana didn’t feel an ounce of regret for it. No, she felt quite far from regret. She felt empty.

There were few ways to occupy her time, being stuck in her house—she didn’t know what to do, but thinking of her sister and love were not options. She just had too much time. It was plenty of time to spend alone. All alone.

She ended up tearing the clothes from her closet and throwing them around the room, tearing the fabric and screaming all the while. She broke the windows and flooded her bathroom, doing anything, anything, to keep from thinking of Hiero and Posy.

She had to hope that they’d come back. If she thought about them, she’d convince herself that they wouldn’t.

She tipped her bookcase and the crash shook the floor. Her eyes moved towards her door, but no one came. They didn’t bother anymore. Not even Ms. Corine. She looked around her room, feeling even emptier than she had before. She set to cleaning it up.

How long had she spent in darkness by now? She didn’t know. For a while, she forgot how blue the sky looked and how a breeze felt against her cheeks. She wondered if she’d ever remember. Then, as she picked her dozens of books from the floor, the daisy fell out of one of music books.

She froze, her eyes unmoving from the white flower. She faintly felt Hiero’s fingertips brushing along her cheek as he tucked the daisy behind her ear and the sudden, sharp pang that wretched her chest was so intense that she dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands. She missed him. She missed him so much.

The bath was still running, she realized in between the sharp stabs of chest pains. She didn’t move to turn it off and let the water run until it seeped out and flooded her wooden floor. She let it soak against her knees and climb up the ends of her pink dress.

The darkness continued.

The moon was the best light that Posy could have had, and she was thankful for its fullness as it lit her way through the dark forest. The sound of her shoes crunching against the floor was accompanied by the soft hoots of owls, the hum of chirping crickets, and the occasional scuttle of a small animal as it hurried through the forest shrubbery. Sometimes shadows would jump out at her, but she wasn’t alarmed. The forest never hurt her. Only people had done that.

She had no idea what time it was, but she guessed shortly after dinnertime. She’d left at three in the morning two days ago, but she still hadn’t reached the Robin. How had Hiero been able to travel so quickly? She sighed and pressed on, the weight of her backpack seeming much heavier than it had before and her jeans feeling suffocating and tight. She’d never worn jeans before the day she’d left, and she hated how restricting they felt. She missed her frilly dresses, and by now her hair had become so unmanageable and dirty that she’d been forced to tie it back in a single braid down her back.