Still, that evening, when I ate dinner with Sammerin, he looked at me in a way that told me he saw hints of what I refused to show.
“You look tired,” he said. Coming from him, it sounded soothing rather than somewhat insulting. He did have a gift for that.
“So do you.”
He let out a small chuckle. “I don’t doubt it.”
“Are you worried about Moth?”
“Max will protect him. From all that he can.”
From all that he can. We both understood what that meant. It was one thing to protect Moth from magic and steel, to protect him from wounds and opened flesh. But Sammerin and I, we both knew that war cut deeper than that.
I watched Sammerin silently swirl his wine. When I had first met him, his calm had seemed utterly impenetrable. But now, I could see the uncertainty he did not voice, collecting on his silence like fog on glass.
“Sometimes I’m afraid that none of this will ever end,” I murmured.
He paused before answering. “Sometimes I am too.” He set down his glass, eyes drawn to the table. “But I fought to become a healer because I wanted to fix things. Even though my abilities are… so well-suited to destruction.”
Well suited to destruction. I thought of the way my flesh looked when Sammerin was healing it, muscle and sinew and flesh weaving together as if of its own volition. And I thought of the way my body had felt under his power, when I lost control of Reshaye, back at the slavers’ hub in Threll.
He did what he had to do, and I was glad for it. But I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t see the darkness inherent in such a power. And perhaps Sammerin shouldered that just as I shouldered the darkness of the power in me.
“The human body is a magnificent machine, you know,” he said, as if to himself. “All of the muscles and veins and nerves all are in perfect sync. It’s so easy to disrupt that. I’m only a passable fighter, but I had the highest kill count in my division. I was efficient. They didn’t want to let that go.”
He said the word with a subtle sneer of disgust over his nose, and a chill ran down my spine. “How did you get out?”
“They needed me for Max, when he got Reshaye. Still, they expected me to be a warrior, not a healer. Max pushed for it, back then. Told them that he needed a healer and it might as well be me, since he was saddled with me anyway.” A small smile. “His words, of course.”
I smiled. Of course.
“It is hard to imagine you as anything but a healer,” I said. “You are so well-suited to it.”
“The truth, Tisaanah, is that healing is a fight.” And only now did his eyes flick up to meet mine, something a little sharper, a little harsher, beneath their deep calm. “Sometimes, you need to act on nothing but gut feeling. And sometimes, no matter what you do, you lose the battle. Healing is more difficult than killing in every way. But that’s how it always is. I’ve walked both roads. Destroying is easy. Creating is hard.”
He leaned back and took a long drag from his pipe. When he spoke again, smoke slipped from his lips. “But worth it,” he said. “Always worth it.”
I was given a room in the guest wing of the house. It didn’t reek of death the way the main living quarters did, nor did it arouse Reshaye’s memories quite as much. But still, as I lay there in the dark, Max’s absence ached in my bones. I was so accustomed to losing those I loved. I didn’t expect the loneliness to eat at me like this, with razored teeth and ravenous bites.
Reshaye curled around my pain like smoke caressing the rim of a pipe. I felt it pick up my sadness and examine it, curious.
Any other circumstances, and I would have pulled that emotion away. But now, I was tired.
Do you know this feeling?
{I know sadness.}
Not sadness. More like…
What was it? I let it see the memory of leaving Serel behind, the way that I had craved his company in the minutes since. The still-seeping wound of the loss of my mother, even though that had been so many years that my memory lost the details of her features.
{Grief,} Reshaye murmured.
I was surprised, that it understood grief. I suppose it is grief, in a way. To mourn an absence of someone.
{I felt that for Maxantarius. Before you came.}
I suppressed my revulsion. I wanted to say, What right did you have to mourn him, to miss him? After everything you did to him? But I carefully hid those thoughts, tucked away beneath a shroud, far away from Reshaye’s reach.
Instead I asked, What about before that?
{There is nothing before that.}
What about the other people who carried you?
{Before Maxantarius, there was only white and white and white. There were others. But now, they are nothing more than shattered windows into other lives.}
The smell of the sea. A woman peering into a mirror, drawing copper hair back from her face. The taste of raspberries.
And before?
{Before what?}
Before you were with others. Is this what you always were?
Silence. A mournful emptiness. {I do not think so,} it whispered. {Perhaps once I was something. But I do not remember what. And maybe I have never been anything but the discarded remains of others.}
Hands through the fields. Again and again. Gold beneath the sun. A sheet of glossy black, and a reflection within it with a face that would never come into focus, no matter how Reshaye clawed at the memory.
It felt almost… human. That sadness.
What do you want, Reshaye?
It seemed silly, now, that it had taken me so long to ask. Perhaps I thought I knew what Reshaye wanted — love, or its dark, twisted version of it. Unyielding loyalty, with no demands.
There was a long pause. I felt it grapple with this question.
{I want a story.}
A story?
{A story is the thing that proves something existed between life and death. I have lingered in-between for so long. I want…} It groped for the right word, reaching and failing. {I want something that is real. And I want life, or death, but not this nothingness between.}
I blinked back my surprise. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but it wasn’t for Reshaye to wish for death. But then, wouldn’t I, if I lived as it did?
We have work to do, I murmured. We will need to show them all what we’re capable of. And we will need to do it very carefully. But if you help me, Reshaye, I will find a way to give you a story. And I will find a way to give you death.
{Why should I listen to you? You have betrayed me many times.}
In the sparring ring. Max’s hands on my body. The way I had shut it out in the Mikov estate.
I cannot prove my truth to you. You will just have to trust me.
{Trust,} Reshaye spat, with an ugly laugh. {How humans treasure such things. To believe in something without reason.}
Or you will fight me, and I will win. Just as I won when we were in Threll.
Though sometimes I did wonder — did I win? Or did I do what Reshaye, or some part of it, had wanted me to do?
A long silence.
Your choice, I said, then drew the curtains of my mind up tight.
I had a choice, too.
It wasn’t my choice to fight Zeryth’s war, true. But just because I couldn’t control everything didn’t mean I couldn’t control anything.
I would win. And I would win quickly. I had spent my life stealing little fragments of power from the gluttonous hands of the Threllian Lords. I knew how to manipulate scraps into something more.
I was made for this.
Chapter Ten
Aefe
“What are you doing here?”
I awoke to a scraggly voice, sandpaper over my throbbing headache.
I forced my eyelids open. My neck hurt. My cheek rested against black silk, and I was wrenched awkwardly over at the waist, face pressed to the edge of a bed. My memories, clouded by last night’s alcohol, were a smear.
An old healer woman looked down at me with dis
dain.
“You should not be here.”
“I asked her to stay.”
The words came from beside me, smooth even through the rasp of disuse. I forced myself to sit up more. I looked at my hand — a hand that was still resting over delicate, long fingers. And then I followed that hand to an arm, and a shoulder, and a face… and a pair of green eyes that peered down at me before turning back to the healer.
The Stoneheld man.
The memories came back all at once. Embarrassment flooded me. I jerked my hand away and pushed from the bed.
“I’m sorry, I—”
But the healer was only looking at the Stoneheld, eyes round. “Forgive me. We did not expect you to wake so soon. The Teirna wished to see you as soon as you rose. Let me send word.” She gave her a colder stare. “Your father will not be pleased you are here. I recommend you leave before he arrives.”
I looked away.
She hurried off, leaving the Stoneheld and I in awkward silence. With significant effort, I stood.
“I apologize,” I said.
“You shouldn’t,” he replied. He was giving me an odd look. “Your father, the healer said.”
I winced. Sometimes — most times — it was easier if they did not know.
“Then,” he asked, “am I addressing the—”
“No. The Teirness is my sister.” I spoke too quickly. “I will leave you,” I said, and began to turn away.
“Wait. What is your name?”
I paused. Turned. His voice was so raspy that I had not noticed before, but he had a Stoneheld accent, giving the words a strange, melodic texture.
“Aefe,” I said. “Aefe Ei’Allaugh.”
“Aefe,” he repeated, slowly, as if my name was wine he was rolling over his tongue. His eyes were ringed with darkness, his gaze tired, but somehow that only made his stare more intense. I felt like I was being seen — being examined — more carefully than anyone had in a very, very long time.
A shiver ran up my spine. I could not tell whether I found it intriguing or uncomfortable.
“And what is yours?” I asked.
“Caduan Iero,” he said.
Iero. I did not know the surname, but then, it had been such a long time since I had needed to know the court structures of other houses, let alone one as small as the House of Stone.
“I’m glad we got the chance to meet, Caduan Iero,” I said, quietly. “For a time I wasn’t sure we would.”
Something I could not read flickered across his face.
“Stay,” he said.
“My father would prefer if I did not.”
“But I would prefer if you did. You were the one who brought me here. And you should hear why.” And then he added, “Please.”
I hesitated.
I was already dreading the look on my father’s face when he found me here, and the way he would react if I had to explain why. But there was something in Caduan’s face, something buried beneath his odd, impassive mannerisms, that held a mirror up to my worst fears.
Nothing sadder, than to be so alone.
I sat down beside the bed.
“Fine,” I said.
My father did not come alone. Siobhan was with him, and so was Klein, the Sidnee master of war and spycraft. All three of them gave me odd looks when they entered the room to find me already here. Siobhan, a carefully hidden glance of confusion. Klein, a not-at-all hidden stare of pure distaste (which, as always, I gladly returned). And my father, a barely-visible pause with slightly narrowed eyes. It lasted less than a second, and yet that disapproval sank to the bottom of my stomach like a stone.
If Caduan saw any of it, he did not show it. And similarly, he showed no signs of pain, even though I was certain that he was in agony — the agony of his ripped apart body, and the agony of his utter, sudden aloneness. My father, Klein, and Siobhan all offered their solemn condolences, and Caduan barely reacted.
“We are deeply saddened by what has happened to the House of Stone, Caduan Iero,” my father said. “It is the utmost tragedy, and we will never allow it to happen to another House.”
Caduan barely looked at him. “Did you go?” he asked. “Did you see?”
“We did,” Siobhan said, quietly.
“There is nothing left.”
“There is not.”
“You told me it was humans,” I murmured. “But I thought… that cannot be.”
Could it?
That question hung in the air, heavy and pungent.
We all looked at Caduan, waiting, but he stared past us, to the far wall of the room — as if he could see through it, to the horizon beyond.
“Did you know,” he said, “that there are no creatures in the world more sensitive to the circumstances around them than the Stoneheld Atrivez butterfly?”
My father’s brow furrowed. “Pardon?”
“They are one of only a very small number of Fey-dwelling creatures that have an inherent sensitivity to magic. Trace amounts, but enough to anticipate things that go beyond the typical senses of an insect. As a result, they are difficult to kill. They have an explosive population in Atecco, because few predators can catch them. The faintest, distant hint of danger, and they just fly away.”
And only then did that mossy stare turn back to us. “That morning, they all left. Thousands of them, shooting into the sky like steam over the lake. Do you know what ten thousand butterfly wings sound like?”
He spoke so calmly. But I looked down to the sheets, and saw that his hands were clenched around them.
His words from the night before, ragged and delirious, curled through my memory. It sounded like rain.
“Rain,” I whispered.
And some grotesque version of a smile twitched at one corner of his mouth as he lowered his chin. “Exactly like it. It was beautiful.”
I could almost hear it. Picture it.
The smile disappeared.
“Not at all like,” he said, “what came after. There was nothing beautiful about that. Thousands of human soldiers descended on Atecco. I did not see them arrive. I was on the edge of the city, working in the archives, when I heard the screaming, the shouting. I looked out the windows, and it was already happening. They were everywhere. Many were magic users.”
A brief pause. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Most did not escape,” he said, at last. “There were too many. I gathered those of us who had and led them here. We could not stay, and we would not have survived any longer.”
“But humans are so much weaker than us,” Klein said. “How?”
Caduan let out a ghost of a scoff. “‘Weaker.’ That isn’t how nature works. Even the strongest predators have their enemies. And when the numbers are three to one…”
“Three to one?” Siobhan gasped.
“Is that a surprise? The human lifespan is a fraction of ours, yes, and perhaps their bodies are physically weaker. But while a Fey would be lucky to produce one or perhaps two children over the course of five hundred years, humans reproduce frequently and easily. And they, too, have access to magic once again.” His eyes darkened. “We sat here while humans conquered mountains and deserts and seas, rid some of the most inhospitable environments in the world of their most dangerous forces. And yet… we think that we’re too powerful for them.”
“Because we are,” Klein said, forcefully. “The tragedy of the Stoneheld will not be repeated. I swear this to you. They surprised your House. But they will not surprise us, nor any other.”
Caduan gave him a hard stare. “Hubris is not comforting to me. I’m not sure why you thought it would be.”
He said this as if it were simply a matter of fact — and perhaps it was. We could comfort ourselves with our promises of vengeance and swift action. But what would that mean to Caduan? What would that mean for everything his people had already lost?
Nothing.
I thought of all those houses, standing alone in the rain, reduced now to little more than piles of cold brick.
�
��You can stay here.” The words left my lips before I even knew I was speaking. “For as long as you need it. You and the remaining Stoneheld have a home here, if you— if you want it.”
My cheeks began burning by the end of that sentence. I could feel three sets of eyes drilling into my face. I’d just made an offer that wasn’t mine to give. The House of Obsidian was staunchly separatist, and though we weren’t on bad terms with the House of Stone, they were not among our allies, either.
I carefully avoided my father’s stare, meeting only Caduan’s.
Once again, it seemed that he had no idea that I had committed a faux pas. Instead, the faintest glimpse of... something... flickered behind his expression.
“Thank you,” he said. “That is very kind.”
“Of course you, and the other of your kin, may stay here as long as you wish,” my father said. I blinked in surprise — even considering my inappropriate offer, it would be rare for my father to give indefinite shelter so easily.
“My kin,” Caduan repeated, quietly, as if to himself.
“There are eighteen others, all in the infirmary. Most are not yet conscious, but you may visit them as soon as you're well enough to walk.”
Caduan went a shade paler, the line between his brows deepening.
My father said, “I have been told that you are in line for the Stone Crown.”
Caduan’s gaze snapped to me, then slid back to his hands. “Thirteenth. Barely in line at all.”
“It appears that is not true anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter who stands at the dais of a nation that no longer exists. Ghosts and rubble do not need to be led.”
“There are eighteen souls in this infirmary that need a king more than ever.”
Caduan visibly flinched, as if the title stung.
“It never should have been me,” he said.
“Perhaps not,” my father said. “But it is.”
There was a long silence. And when Caduan finally lifted his chin, when his gaze finally met mine again, I saw it harden with a reluctant, unspoken decision — the kind that sent a chill running up my spine.
Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2) Page 8