by Tara Brown
He listened like he was processing and then nodded. “Sound advice. Do you think you have reached a place you cannot come back from?”
“I have, and I have accepted my fate. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but I have. There is no going back, and forward will be the fight of my life but my cause is worthy. The end of me is worth it, if it is also the end of Roland and his father. So yes, I will go to my end, I will meet my fate, and I will save my family.”
His gaze narrowed. “What about your people?”
“That will have to wait. I must free my family first. I must kill Roland and his father. And if I need an army to do it I will find one.” I narrowed my gaze to match his. “Just not by marrying. I will find one the way a man does, negotiations and guarantees. I will be as my father was, if that is the role I have to play. If I can leave one of my brothers as a noble and worthy king, I will.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his lips softly. “And if I can live out my life in a simple fashion, then I will let that be my end.”
He smiled, kissing me again. “Perhaps the end of you and everything you once stood for isn’t so bad. Maybe it means a fresh start at the end of this journey.”
I smiled, not saying anything. While that was a possibility, I suspected it meant what the man who had told it to me believed: the anger and hatred in revenge would own you and consume you, and eventually it would be all that was left.
He was my teacher and the bravest man I ever knew.
He was also the wisest, apart from my father.
Together their words of wisdom still echoed in my mind, next to the images of the millions of places I might have gone.
Because no matter what else, I had gone too far to ever come back.
The days of distracting myself with boys and drinking and fights were over. I wasn't a guard in a palace. I wasn't a girl in an inn. I wasn't anyone who had the luxury to pretend she was anything but the person who would save her family. And the stain of the horrors I’d seen and the crimes I’d committed were etched into my soul permanently. I would never be free of this—this path that was leading me back home. I was making the path, carving it from blood and flesh.
It was time I owned who I was and honored who had raised me.
I glanced into the blue eyes of the man in front of me and wondered what his role in all of it would be. I wanted him to be mine and I his, but I felt it in the air around us just as he did—the world had different plans for us.
I snuggled into him and let the moment we had be enough, just as he had told me to.
We had the moments we were in, and from there all our choices would impact everyone else.
And for the moment I was in, I was grateful.
The End