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“If I forget you, let my right hand be forgotten,” her mouth was saying. “Add more also, if aught but death part me and thee.”
And, unsteadily: “Griddle.”
It was a deep feeling; like liquid swelling up from the gut and enveloping each and every organ in a heaviness that couldn’t be shaken. Like dark blood trickling down the inside of her brain, filling her eyes and ears and mouth. It was like the deepest stab of a rapier- the one that she knew was currently embedded in her body's torso.
It was a hollowness- a dust-filled cavity of emptiness that could not be filled. It felt like everything and nothing all at once as Harrow felt the loss.
She’d known she was missing something; there had been more than enough hints, but one half of her existence was lost, and she didn’t know where it was. Harrow hadn’t ever really existed without Gideon somewhere in her life. Whether they were fighting, hurting each other, or truly understanding for the first time, surrounded by saltwater, she had always been there. Gideon had always been in her life.
Infuriating, strong, stupid, funny, foolish and deeply loyal in a way Harrow had never truly understood. Gideon wasn’t one of the Ninth, she had never been. But perhaps, for a time, for longer than either knew—she had been Harrow’s.
Tears ran down her eyes as she pressed her face into the dark robes she was covered in, and they wouldn’t stop. There was no way to assuage them. She cried like she hadn’t cried since before she could remember, and the sobs wracked their way through her body, dislodging the heavy liquid and the blood trickles, making them pool and build on each other like she would drown from the inside.
She wasn’t aware of anyone else present in that decaying room of the house that had ruined everything.
She was a Lyctor—one of God’s chosen, but at what cost?
Harrow didn’t know what love was, not really. She ‘loved’ the Body, but that was devotion. She had ‘loved’ God, but that was worship. She had ‘hated’ Gideon, but perhaps that was where she had gone wrong.
Perhaps the hatred had always been something else; had always been love’s own twin. She had altered her very psyche to remove the reason for her life as it was now, in the hope of preserving it, and it had backfired in a way she didn’t understand.
She knew, deep down, that she would see Gideon again. There was something tiny about that feeling—about life—that told Harrow to not give up. She couldn’t give up yet.
She would once again feel those arms pull her under, like the heavy liquid that was coating all her organs. She would hear the whispered mocking through the blood that trickled down into her ears, and she would let Gideon pull out the sword that had worked its way steadily towards her heart.
It all came back to hatred, in the end. Hatred that wasn’t hatred.
Hatred that was love.
She only stopped weeping when her body had physically exhausted itself.
Harrowhark looked around her, and the bloody rawness of her throat made her guttural as she asked curtly: “What have I done?”