Page 30 of Empress of Ruin
Because whenever I’m not fucking her or playing with her, I’m working. That hasn’t left much room for conversation.
This is the drawback with being emotionally stunted, I think. I don’t quite comprehend the mental impact of things the waysome others would. Were our positions reversed and she issued that threat to me, I’d understand that a certain course of action is blocked off for me unless I want to face unspeakable consequences, and find another way forward.
Lyra’s always done the same, no matter what challenge I’d set before her.
“Tell me about your time abroad.” Maybe there’s a piece to the story I’m missing. Where did her fiery spirit go?
“Not much to tell.” Her tone is flat. “You already know where I was. I moved from place to place a lot. Spent too much money doing so. Boring stuff.”
“Remind me, what was your first stop?”
“Mexico.”
“Whereabouts?” It’s a large country, and not a terrifically safe one for a young, beautiful American woman.
She rattles off a rural city. It takes me a few beats to recall it. “Where did you stay?” I ask curiously. I’m not sure there are many tourist spots in that area, and even if there are—
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, to me. Start talking.”Or elselingers in the air.
“If you must know, a hospital.”
The fuck?
“What?”
She eats a miniscule bite of her salmon, taking her sweet time chewing. “A hospital,” she repeats slowly, as if speaking to a toddler.
I blink. “Why?” Were there some sort of complications after she miscarried? Was she sick?
“Sepsis.”
Oh,fuck.
The mere thought of her in a run-down hospital, where she didn’t speak the language, in an unsafe area, bedridden withsepsis…
“Lyra, why the fuck didn’t youcall me?” I could’ve gotten her the best care on the planet in a flash.
“Are you kidding me?” A spark returns to her eyes. “You’re really asking me why I didn’t call you… when you were thereason I ran?I don’t know, let’s see. You filmed a sex tape of me during one of the most terrifying nights of my life and used it to blackmail me into having more sex with you. At the end of our eight-week arrangement, you knocked me up, theninformedme that we were going to get married. The sex tape leaked. I miscarried and briefly contemplated jumping out of a window to escape the humiliation. Instead, I found the strength to get away from a country where I was now famous for all the wrong reasons and started getting a fever. Which got worse and worse as I traveled, until I landed—delirious and half-dead—in a place so remote nobody would know about me. I wasgratefulto be in that hospital, where a doctor told me in broken English that there was a 50% chance I’d die, over being anywhere withyou.That’swhy I didn’t fucking call.”
She pants in the aftermath of her rant, while I stare at her, picturing it. Her skin, pale and clammy. Her eyes, dim and flickering with lifelessness. Some unclean hospital room in a barely-civilized city in a dangerous country.
A deep sadness slowly creeps through my chest. While I was losing my mind and threatening murder left and right, Lyra was fighting for her life.
Perhaps a sizeable donation to the hospital where she stayed is in order.
“You should’ve reached out to me,” I press.
“I would rather have died,” she replies harshly. She stands up from her seat, tossing her napkin on her plate. “I’m going to bed.”
I watch her go, lost in thought. The niggling sense of grief—what webothlost—creeps up on me. I try not to let it completelyovertake me, because I have things to do. A future to look toward, not a past to dwell on.
That doesn’t make it easy, however.
Locke’s earlier words come back to haunt me.
Have you bothered asking what made her believe that there was no version of staying with you that wouldn’t destroy her?
