Chapter 215: A Pain So Deep

Alaric:

While the potion worked, I stood and surveyed the room again. Honestly, it was impressive how much destruction one man could accomplish when he had enough alcohol, money, and emotional baggage at his disposal.

With a few carefully chosen spells, I sent the empty bottles into the rubbish bin, gathered the broken glass, straightened the furniture, and forced the curtains open to let fresh air circulate through the room. The worst of the mess disappeared within minutes, leaving the place looking considerably less like the aftermath of a war.

I then pulled out my phone and sent two messages. Mrs. Greymark responded almost immediately, and the relief in her words was so obvious that I felt a small pinch of guilt for not having found him sooner. She thanked me repeatedly and asked me to make certain Kairo returned to the academy safely. I promised I would take him there first thing tomorrow, which was the best I could offer considering the new term began in two days and we had already wasted the last six days of the holiday searching for a man who apparently had no interest in being found.

Reign’s reply arrived shortly afterward. Take good care of him. Four simple words. No questions, no insults, no demand to know what had happened. Just a quiet request that told me more than I wanted to know.

Reign was worried about Kairo. Of course he was. We might have been a collection of arrogant, stubborn idiots who routinely made each other’s lives difficult, but we had been friends for too long to abandon one another when things became ugly. What I couldn’t understand was why Reign had been keeping his distance instead of speaking to Kairo himself. He was aware of the situation. I was almost certain of it. But whatever was going on, it had apparently become complicated enough that even Reign Valemont, who usually preferred to confront problems head-on, had decided to stand back and avoid it.

It took approximately ten minutes for the hangover potion to do its job. Kairo stirred, groaned, and slowly dragged himself upright, pressing his back against the side of the bed. For a moment, he simply sat there with his eyes closed, breathing carefully as though the movement alone hurt. Then he opened his eyes and looked around the room, his gaze finally settling on me.

"Alaric?" His voice was hoarse, barely more than a whisper.

"In the flesh." I leaned against the wall with my arms crossed. "Though after the amount of alcohol you have consumed, I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought I was a hallucination."

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. Instead, something in his face crumpled, so suddenly and completely that I barely had time to react before he bent forward, drawing his knees toward his chest and burying his face between his arms. Then he started crying. Not the quiet, controlled kind of crying that people allowed themselves when they thought nobody was watching, but the kind that came from somewhere deep, somewhere that had been hurting for so long that the body had finally decided it could no longer contain it. His shoulders shook, and every attempt he made to suppress the sounds only seemed to make them worse.

I stood frozen for a moment, completely unprepared for the sight of my friend falling apart in front of me. Then I crossed the space and lowered myself onto the floor beside him. I didn’t tell him to stop. I didn’t tell him everything would be fine, because I had no idea whether it would be. I simply wrapped one arm around his shoulders and pulled him closer, allowing him to lean against me while he cried.

We had spent years mocking each other for showing weakness, but there was nothing weak about the pain I heard in those broken breaths. And there was certainly nothing I could say that would make it disappear.

I don’t know how long we sat there. The sunlight moved across the floor, the hotel grew quieter, and eventually Kairo’s sobs began to fade into exhausted breaths. He didn’t lift his head immediately. He remained curled against his knees, his fingers gripping the fabric of his trousers as though he needed something to hold onto.

I kept my arm around him, staring at the wall opposite us and wondering how the hell we had allowed things to reach this point. I had noticed the changes in him weeks ago. The distracted silences, the way his attention always seemed to drift toward Elara whenever she entered a room, the carefully maintained distance that became more obvious every time he tried to pretend she meant nothing to him.

I had watched him hanging out with Aria Cross at the academy, knowing perfectly well that there was more to the situation than he wanted anyone to believe. I had watched Elara ignore him like some plague. And at the welcoming party, I had seen enough to know that whatever conversation had taken place between them afterward had only made things worse.

I had kept my mouth shut because I thought Kairo would eventually sort himself out. We all had our own complications with Elara, and I had assumed his were no different. Sitting beside him now, listening to the uneven rhythm of his breathing, I realized how badly I had underestimated the damage he was doing to himself.

Finally, I turned my head and asked the question I had been carrying for a while now. "Why are you doing this to yourself, Kairo?"

He lifted his face slightly, his eyes red and exhausted. "Doing what?" he asked, although we both knew he understood perfectly well.

I tightened my arm around his shoulders. "Don’t do that. Not with me. You know exactly what I’m talking about."

His gaze dropped to the floor, and for a long moment, he said nothing. Then he let out a hollow little laugh that contained no amusement whatsoever. "Do you really need to ask me that?" His voice was quiet, almost painfully so. "You, of all people, should understand my decision better than anyone."

The words settled between us, and I felt something twist in my chest. He was right. I did understand. Perhaps that was why I had been avoiding the conversation for so long.

Silence stretched between us as we stared at nothing in particular, both of us lost in thoughts we had spent far too much time trying to suppress. Eventually, I exhaled slowly and said, "It’s hard to be with her, isn’t it?" Kairo’s fingers tightened around his knees. I continued before he could answer, my voice quieter now. "But it’s even harder to be without her."

He closed his eyes, and the expression on his face was enough to tell me I had struck the truth. "So perhaps," I added carefully, "instead of choosing which kind of pain you are willing to live with, you should find another way. Something that doesn’t require you to destroy yourself just to protect everyone else."

Kairo lifted his head sharply and stared at me, confusion breaking through his exhaustion. "Another way?" he repeated. "What other way is there, Alaric? If I stay away from her, I’m miserable. If I get close to her, I risk making things worse. And if I tell her the truth, I could destroy something I have no right to destroy."

He swallowed, looking away again. "Do you honestly think there’s a way for me to be with her without hurting everyone involved?"