The Beastkeeper's Redemption

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Five

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

Izzy glanced at the old clock that hung above the mantel in the dining room. Dust clung to the faded wood and the glass that covered the face, but the time was easy enough to discern despite all this and the dark gloom in the chamber.

Dawn would soon lighten the sky outside the window behind her.

Kaede had not returned.

A promised hour had turned into two, then three, and when the seventh hour arrived, Izzy began to allow the feelings of abandonment enter her consciousness. There they continued to swirl and coalesce in varying degrees of bitterness and turmoil until she felt so wretched she thought she may very well be ill.

She swiped her fingers absently over a raised grain of wood in the table she was sitting at, scratching at the indentation with a nail as she averted her gaze from the clock that seemed all too happy to reveal an unwelcome truth to her.

Kaede wouldn't return.

The silence in the chamber was thick, settling heavily around her with a pervading sense of dread and forlornness. Even the pixies were quiet, wrapped together in tiny limbs as they dozed on a napkin at the other end of the table.

Her thoughts were erratic and consistent, the pain of his non-return sitting heavily against her sternum as if a hot rod of iron were sitting directly above her heart.

Why had he not returned?

Why make such heartfelt declarations if one never intended to deliver them?

She struggled to make sense of it and the more she churned over her thoughts and feelings, the more sense of desolation she began to feel. With a sigh, Izzy stood, weariness seeping into her limbs. She hadn't slept and she doubted she would be able to, but she wouldn't like Cassie to venture downstairs and discover her older sister in a state of worry and anguish.

If the men of her acquaintance were so intent on abandoning her, then she would plaster a nonchalant expression on her face and push her shoulders back as if their betrayals meant very little to her in the first place. As a thespian, such a feat should be easy for her- after all, she had managed to convince those around her that she had been none other than nondescript Miss Tiffany Cotton for over a fortnight.

This shouldn't be that difficult.

But she felt her lips pull tight, a strain taking root at her temples to mimic the throbbing pain of her heart, and the itching burn of the mark that circled her arm making it impossible to ignore the impact Kaede C'lainn had on her.

Perhaps, she mused, if he had offered her an explanation, her heart would be more accepting of his leaving her.

But there had been none.

He had left on the premise that he would return.

And he hadn't.

Tears pricked her eyes and constricted her throat with a fierce burn, but she repressed them with every ounce of strength she had left in her body- which wasn't that much.

Her bedchamber was as quiet and still as the dining room downstairs. Solemnity hung in every corner. This room in particular only served to jolt memories of lovemaking and intimacy that flooded the front of her mind relentlessly.

If she thought she was made of stronger stuff, she was proven wholly wrong when her knees buckled and she sank to the floorboards. A tremulous breath left her, whooshing from her lungs in great, heaving sighs as she sought to calm her fraying composure.