Fine. It wasn’t as if I needed her forgiveness. Or anyone else’s.
“What happened to them?” I asked. “To my dragons?”
I had heard they had all been destroyed. Again. Yet deep in my heart, a persistent hope lingered. A hope that some of the powerful creatures might have survived, hidden in the fiery mountains and arid deserts of the south.
Baradaz stepped closer to the bed, her mouth a thin line. “The Council judged them too dangerous to let them roam free.”
I had suspected it when I heard the rumors. The confirmation still sent a surprisingly sharp pain through me. Strange. Shouldn’t I be accustomed to loss by now?
“They destroyed them,” I said, my emotions tightly controlled. “All of them?”
“Yes.”
“You adored those creatures. Didn’t you at least try to…”
My hands clenched the blanket that covered me. It wasn’t like Baradaz to be so unfeeling. She had been cold to me before, after my first imprisonment, and certainly during the war. But there had always been fire beneath the ice, a spark of anger and desperation, perhaps even hate, that I could stir into a storm with a few provoking words. Not this cursed indifference that stole all warmth from her.
“I was no longer a member of the King’s Council when the decision was made.”
“Oh, my brother barred you from the Council during the war?” I cried out. “Lyr, Aramaz has proven to be an even bigger fool than I always believed. You are one of the most powerful of the Ten. Losing your support could have cost him his victory.”
“You can hardly blame him for not trusting me any longer.” Baradaz shrugged. “He still won the war, so his decisions cannot all have been foolish.”
“He won the war because I was betrayed. Because you and Masir tricked me,” I spat, anger rising inside me. How could she be so damn unaffected when her every word effortlessly tore open all my old wounds?
“It must be disheartening that even one of your most devoted followers thought you were taking things too far.” Cold satisfaction glinted in her eyes. “Hecame to me to plot your downfall, did you know that?”
Oh, I had forgotten. Forgotten that wounding each other was effortless when you knew each other’s every weakness. I preferred not to imagine that particular conversation between the two beings in this world I once trusted the most—the two I had wounded the most in the name of my ambitions.
“You want to discuss the unfortunate necessities of war now?” I asked, my voice turning harsh. Attack had always been my best defense. Even toward her. Perhaps most of all toward her.
Baradaz appeared unimpressed as she prepared new bandages on the table next to me. “A sad necessity of war is to show no mercy to one’s enemies,” she said.
“Do you consider me your enemy, then?” I shot back, half expecting her power to spark up in answer to my deliberate provocation.
Her magic stayed oddly dormant, though, and she replied with a blank expression on her face. “Have you ever been anything other than an enemy to me?”
She had given up on me. On us. It was clear in her indifferent tone, in the way she turned away from me to gather the healing supplies, her back rigid. After years of clinging to a fragile, impossible hope that we could be more than a regrettable mistake—a faded stain in both our histories, only kept alive by desperate encounters that left us both reeling—she had finally moved on.
Unfortunately, I had not. But then, I had always been a stubborn bastard.
Without thinking, I extended my arm toward her, hesitating just before making contact, aware that she would probably reject my touch. My hand hovered awkwardly in the air between us.
“You are not my enemy,” I said, my voice raspy and strained. “You have never been my enemy.”
It was the truth. Even in the depths of my madness, when I had imagined setting all of Lyrheim ablaze, when I had wanted to drown the entire world in Chaos and Darkness, my urge for destruction had never included her. I had only desired to make her see that I was right. That together we could create something worthwhile out of the ashes. That together we could be glorious.
“That is hardly a comfort.” Baradaz’s attention shifted back to me, her gaze flicking to my outstretched hand. “Not being your enemy cost me everything.”
Another truth, this one even less welcome than the reminder of my impossible dreams. Resting my hand back on the pillow next to me filled me with a profound sense of defeat, surpassing even the most devastating losses I had endured on the battlefield.
“So that’s what happened? Aramaz waited until he was victorious and then branded you a traitor?” The accusation against my brother was nearly instinctual. But then, hewasthe one to blame for her current circumstances. Along with me. I wasn’t delusional enough to forget that.
A wry twist of her mouth in answer. “As you said, the war was won. My presence was no longer required.”
Odd choice of words. I sensed a story there. A rift.
“No, you were needed one last time. To punish me.” If I pushed just a little more, she would tell me what I wanted to know.
