The Exalted

by Kaitlyn Sage Patterson

  “I don’t owe you anything, Quill,” I snapped, and turned to stalk down the deck away from him.

  “You don’t, do you? When did you become such a coward?”

  I froze at the accusation, furious and gutted in the same moment.

  “Even when you were pushing me away, afraid that you’d hurt me when you finally snapped, you were braver for it. Why go back to the same defensive walls you worked so hard to pull down? What are you so afraid of?”

  I whirled on him.

  “Afraid?” I seethed. “I’ve crossed oceans and won battles with the deadliest fighters in the world. I’ve killed people in cold blood and sent them hurtling into the same violent fury I’ve spent my entire life waiting to descend on me. You’ve every right to call me armloads of names, Quill Whippleston, but the one thing I’m not is afraid.”

  “What is it, then?” he insisted. “We were in love. We were planning a life together. What changed?”

  I gaped at him, astonished. “Didn’t you hear me? I am responsible for inflicting on others the same horrors I feared for myself. You saw what I did on that farm. You know what I’m capable of. You deserve better than me—someone who isn’t so broken. You deserve someone who can stand by your side at supper parties and charm the owners of foreign enterprises. You deserve more than me.”

  The shock on Quill’s face was as real as if I’d punched him in the gut.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice too soft to stand against the shrill wail of the wind whipping all around us. “I loved you. I love you still, but I’m a shell of the person I was when we first met, and you deserved more than me even then.”

  “You don’t get to just decide that, Vi!” Quill exclaimed. “Don’t I get a say in who stands beside me? In who I choose to love? With whom I spend my time? My life?” He shook his head, looking exasperated. “I love you. Pain and flaws and bruises and all. I love you.”

  “How?” I cried. “How could you love someone like me?”

  Tears cut like ice picks down my cheeks, and all I wanted was to fall into his arms, but I couldn’t let myself burden him that way. It wouldn’t be right. And I knew in my heart that even if his arms were the only shelter I wanted, I had to find another way to make myself whole. On my own.

  “Quill,” I said, heartbreak picking its way into my every word. “You may get a say in who stands beside you, but so do I. And as much as it isn’t what I expected, as much as it isn’t what we planned, you and I don’t make sense anymore. I don’t think we’ll ever make sense again. I don’t think we can. I don’t deserve to be loved.”

  “Obedience Violet Abernathy.” Quill shook his head and stepped toward me.

  I took a step back, chest heaving with barely contained sobs.

  “When are you going to learn that I don’t love you because of what you’ve done or not done?” he asked gently. “I love you because of who you are. Again and again, you sacrifice yourself for the greater good. Again and again, you make the most difficult choice, even when there are options that would hurt you less. All because you believe in the causes and people you champion.” He came to stand beside me, and this time, I didn’t move away. “I’m not afraid of the things you’ve done.”

  I so desperately wanted everything he said to be true—to believe it myself. But I knew in my heart that I was making the right choice. “Your being afraid or not doesn’t matter, Quill,” I whispered. “It’s a question of fit. We don’t fit anymore.”

  Quill sighed and closed his hands around the railing. “Do you forget that I was there, too? I made hard choices that day. I fought beside you. I lost pieces of myself, as well. What makes your actions so much more unforgivable than mine?”

  I wanted him to be right. I wanted to see myself the way he saw me—strong and worthy and capable. But my wanting and his believing wouldn’t make it true. It wouldn’t make me into something I wasn’t. He was a hero, the best person I knew. And I was nothing.

  I put my hand over his and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Quill.”

  Before he could try once more to argue with me further, I fled back to the rooms I shared with Curlin. She looked up from the book propped open on her lap and raised her eyebrows at me.

  “You look a right mess. Who’d you tussle with this time?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, pulling the thick down blanket off the bed.

  I flopped onto the couch and flung the blanket over both our legs. Glaring, Curlin put down the book she’d been reading and poured me a cup of tea. I doctored it with an abundance of cream and sugar and plucked half of a sandwich off the plate Curlin’d balanced on the back of the couch. Curlin pretended to go back to reading but kept glancing up at me. When I unthinkingly reached for the other half of her sandwich, Curlin slapped my hand away with her novel.

  “Forget it. You come in here and disrupt my perfectly nice afternoon with your sighing and tearstained face, and now you’re trying to steal my food, as well? Either tell me what’s going on with you or get out.”

  “It’s nothing,” I lied.

  “Then for the love of all that’s good in the world, go get your own food and stop bothering me.”

  I bit my lip. “It’s just that...well, I’ve broken things off with Quill. I think.”

  “You think?” Curlin asked. “How do you not know for sure? You’d think it’d be quite obvious.”

  “I didn’t exactly plan it!” I said defensively. “He’s just got no idea who I am anymore. No one does, really. I feel like the weight of everything that’s happened these last few months is haunting me. It’s turned me into someone different, someone I didn’t expect.”

  Curlin’s brows knit together. “And that’s a bad thing? Why not figure out who you could be with him after all this is over?”

  “If he really saw me, he’d think I was a monster,” I said, gloom filling me. “And the worst part is that it’s not just Quill I’m worried about. It’s Bo. I’ve no idea what I’m going to tell Bo.”

  I paused, remembering how wonderful it had felt to see him again yesterday—how bittersweet, when I’d realized that I’d eventually have to tell him the truth about myself. “How will I face him once he learns everything I’ve done?” I whispered.

  Curlin rolled her eyes. “If you’re a monster, then so am I, and I’m fair certain that’s not true for either of us. You inhaled more than a little of that philomena smoke, Vi. Don’t you think that might have something to do with how you’re feeling?”

  I shook my head. “No. You know how that feels. It’s rage and fury and overwhelming contempt. That’s not what I feel right now. I’m just looking at myself, at the things I’ve done, and acknowledging who I’ve become.”

  Curlin sighed. “You’ve lived through trauma—not just what we endured when we were brats, but everything these last few weeks. What you’re feeling is real, sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. Your mind is twisting itself in knots, trying to explain away the things you’ve seen. The things you’ve done. But you’re shouldering blame where you shouldn’t. Someday you’re going to have to address it.”

  I sniffed, not wanting to believe her, but hearing the truth in her words regardless. Everything I did felt bad; everything I thought felt wrong. The only comfort I could find was in blaming myself.

  “I’ve been there with you for every step of it. I know the things you’ve done, and no matter how you’re beating yourself up about it, none of it is as bad as you think. Quill, too. You act like he wasn’t there, but he’s seen all you’ve done and been there beside you the whole time.” She shook her head in disbelief. “We all see you, and I, for one, don’t think you’re a monster. As for how you’ll tell Bo, why not practice? Tell me.”

  I looked at her, considering, and reached for her sandwich again. She smacked my hand away, laughing.

  “Go on, then,” she said. “Convince me tha
t you’re a monster, and I’ll give you the rest of my sandwich.”

  So I told her everything. I laid bare every moment that haunted me, every detail of the battles I’d fought, every memory I wished so desperately was just a dream. I held nothing back. From Lei’s death to the Shriven’s screams as the poison in the still twisted their thoughts to violence... I told Curlin my every sin.

  When I finished, the tea gone cold in my hands, I sat beneath her unflinching gaze until she nodded and rose.

  “See?” she asked. “That wasn’t so very bad, was it?”

  “It wasn’t a walk through the park,” I snapped.

  “But it’s done, and I’m not even shocked. If Bo is, come get me. I’ve done all that and worse.”

  I gaped at her, unable to find anything else to say. She shrugged and said, “Now, I’m going to go get us some food. You need to put something more than my snack in your belly before you go save your brother from his bride.”

  Without waiting for my response, she strode out of the room. As the door’s handle clicked into place, something inside me shattered. I put my face into a pillow and screamed. Howled. Cried until my cheeks and throat were raw. Not for the loss of Quill’s affection—I’d counted that gone since the moment I’d felt my blade slide into another person’s belly in the first battle with the Shriven.

  No. I cried for myself. For the futures I’d lost the moment I stepped into that fight.

  Each life I’d taken had taken something of me with it. Each swipe of my blade, each drop of blood, each splash of poison had nudged me further and further away from the girl who’d spent years cultivating pearls in the vain hope that they might one day buy her a quiet life by the sea.

  But that girl was dead. And after I wept my last tears for her, I dried my eyes and stared out at the waves. I was not the same girl who’d left Alskad all those many months before, but perhaps this new Vi was better, stronger. Perhaps I really was the person Quill saw when he looked at me.

  Perhaps I could become something great.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Bo

  In the days after my reunion with Vi, I found it nearly impossible to sleep at night. So, instead, I walked. I paced the city and watched as the shell pink-and-lavender light of early dawn was beginning to encroach on the deep navy of the night, pushing the darkness out of the way of the sun. The obsidian walls of the palace loomed over the city, its spires reaching up like birds taking flight into the sunrise. The guards, in the last hour of their nightlong watch, gave the cuff on my wrist—proof I was who I claimed to be—a lengthy assessment with tired eyes before waving me through a narrow door to the side of the portcullis.

  On the third night, still without any word from Vi, I trudged through the palace as the sun was rising, managing to avoid most of the servants, and when I finally made it to my chambers, I peeked through a crack in Swinton’s door to see that he was still sleeping. Relieved to find him safe, I shuffled into my bedroom, pulled my boots off and fell face-first into the cloud-soft warmth of my bed. There were mountains to move and an endless list of nearly impossible tasks ticking through my brain, but first, I had to sleep.

  A gentle hand on my shoulder and a kiss on my forehead pulled me, unwillingly, from the black depths of dreamless sleep. I shrugged the hand off and rolled to the other side of the bed, curling myself around a pillow. The bed shifted, and a weight dropped down beside me as I did my very best to push away the wakefulness creeping into my brain and dragging a headache along with it.

  “Go away,” I groaned.

  Someone lifted the down comforter, sending a shock of cold air down my body. I swatted at the weight on the side of the bed. Then stubble and soft lips brushed against my cheek, and I sat bolt upright, startled.

  To my utter shock, it was Swinton sitting on the edge of the bed, a giant grin on his face. I scrambled back and off the bed, eyes trained on him, heart pounding and hands fumbling for the club I’d leaned against the nightstand.

  Swinton raised an eyebrow. “Now, really, that seems excessive. Not even at my worst did I try to kill you, bully.”

  I gaped at him.

  “I thought you’d be happy to see me back to myself,” he mused, “but Still and Pem tell me you’ve gone and gotten yourself engaged to be married to that wretched bitch of a queen, so perhaps I was wrong in thinking you might’ve kept the torch burning for me for longer than a minute.”

  “How...?” I stuttered, not even sure what the right question might be.

  “We thought they was taking an awfully long time to find a cure for the temple’s poison when they’ve already got medicine what helps the dimmys,” Pem piped up. I glanced over my shoulder and found her and Still cross-legged on the floor with a platter of half-eaten pastries between them.

  “Plus, much as we liked Doctor Rutin,” she continued, “it didn’t make sense as she’d just be sticking Swinton with needles full of drugs to make him sleepy when all the other dimmys take a pill every day, talk to one of the scientists once a week and then go on with their lives. Happy as a sloth bear in a flower shop.”

  Still picked up the narrative. “So when we was in the labs looking at how the cure was coming, we come across some papers what said that they were nearly done with trials on a new drug for dimmys that was supposed to work a lot better than the old stuff.”

  “And ’cause it were made from a plant, like the poison...” Pem shrugged. “Me and Still, we figured, why not steal some for Swinton?”

  I gritted my teeth. “What if it had made him worse? What if it had killed him?”

  Pem made a face. “But it didn’t, did it?”

  “We read all the notes about it and everything first,” Still added. “This one didn’t kill no one. Plant just made everyone a lot happier for a while. Seemed to give folks a chance to fix what was broken inside them for themselves. One of the doctors wrote... What was it, Pem?”

  Pem pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and read in a dry monotone. “‘The effects of the plant seem to allow the patient to see and repair broken neural pathways rather than rerouting and masking them like drugs of the past. Studies show great improvements among the diminished, and the potential for other afflictions is nearly endless.’”

  “They were right,” Swinton said. “I feel better than I have in a very, very long time. Since Noriava poisoned me, I don’t even know how much time has passed—I’ve been in a haze. I’ve either been so angry that nothing made sense, or I’ve been too tired to do anything but sleep. I’ve never felt hatred like that. Never felt anger so blazing that it made me insensible. I was too mad to be scared. Too furious to do anything but seethe.”

  “And now?” I ventured. The bed was still between us. My fingers were white-knuckled around the club, waiting for him to lunge at me.

  And then he smiled, in that charming, irresistible way only Swinton could. All the terror and tension of these last few weeks melted away, and I was left with tears pricking the corners of my eyes. Until this moment, I hadn’t realized just how desperate I’d been to see that smile again.

  “It’s really you,” I said, voice choked with emotion.

  “Yes, it really is,” Swinton said softly. “And now, I would very much like to kiss you. After that, I suppose we can tackle the issue of your engagement.”

  He opened his arms and I leaped across the bed toward him, wrapping him in a ferocious embrace that held all of the misery of the last few weeks and the joy of seeing him restored to me. Then, to the groans of mock dismay from the twins, I kissed him. And despite everything—despite the exhaustion and horror and endless worry—for a moment, everything melted away. It was just his lips and mine. His arms around me, and the exhausting, gripping fear finally loosening its grasp on me.

  When we eventually came up for air, Swinton grinned at me and took my hands in his, a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

&nbs
p; “Seems to me that we have some scheming to do, my dear.”

  * * *

  In the waning light of the evening, while I endured another agonizing supper with Noriava and her court, Pem and Still snuck Curlin, Vi and Quill past the changing guard and into my room, where they would hide until Doctor Rutin finished her nightly visit with Swinton.

  “How has he been?” I asked, as she walked back from supper by my side.

  Doctor Rutin pursed her lips. “He’s had a difficult day. He didn’t require sedation, but it was a near thing. I hope to begin seeing continuous improvement in the very near future.”

  I furrowed my brows, feigning a look of concern. “You’ve been saying that since the beginning, but I’ve yet to see any real improvement. When he’s not sedated, he’s raving. Whatever you’re doing, let’s double it.”

  “That wouldn’t be prudent,” Doctor Rutin said. “Give it time, Your Majesty. I have a great deal of experience treating cases like Swinton’s. I swear to you that this will work in time.”

  The guards swept open the doors with respectful bows. Inside, Pem and Still were stationed outside Swinton’s door, absorbed in an enormous book laid open on the floor between them.

  “He’s sleeping,” Pem said, without so much as a greeting.

  I eyed her warily. I needed her to act normal, so that Doctor Rutin wouldn’t think anything was amiss. Not that I expected her to pay much attention to the girls, but I also couldn’t afford to be too careful. She was likely a spy for Noriava, after all.

  “I’ll just go in and check on him,” Doctor Rutin said, setting her bag on the floor next to the girls as she went to unlock the door.

  Still propped herself up on her elbows and winked at me.

  “I’ll join you,” I said. “Perhaps there’s something stronger we could try with Swinton?”

  Doctor Rutin slid open the bolts, her eyes fixed in the middle distance as if in thought. “I’ll speak to my colleagues tomorrow and see if they have anything they might recommend.”