When he was done, Elena poured him another cup and offered him another spiced flatbread. He ate, silently, under her watchful gaze.
The sun sank behind the mountain, and darkness crept from the corners of the room. Elena rose and touched the panel beside the door. One by one, the lights in the cabin lit up.
Finally, Yassen found the strength to speak.
“Nothing has changed in here,” he said, his voice frail. “Yet everything has.”
“The living need to change,” Elena said as she sat back down. “Only the dead can remain untouched.”
Yassen gave a dry laugh. “I think I’ve changed too much.”
“Maybe.” She reached forward and gently took his injured arm, resting his hand in her lap. Slowly, she traced the lines in his palm, the bruises that ringed his wrist. Her touch was warm, light. “But you’re still Yassen Knight. That has not changed. And you’re alive, despite everything.”
“Elena,” he whispered.
She met his gaze. “You told me that if I keep living, then Ravence cannot truly die. You’re the same. You carry your family with you, their stories. As long as you keep breathing, they live.”
She was right, he knew she was. But it felt so strange to be back in this home after spending so many suns away from it. After all he had done.
Yet, Yassen recognized parts of himself in the inscription in the mantel, in the frayed corners of his favorite blue blanket, in the teacup he had chipped on the kitchen counter. They brought back memories, and within each memory, a story.
If a man’s life was just a tapestry of the characters he donned, his was the most unusual of all. He had been a boy who was forced to grow up quickly, an assassin who sold out his brethren without batting an eye. He was a traitor who turned on his country, and a servant who saved his queen. These stories were all a part of him.
Theywerehim.
Perhaps, then, the man he wanted to be was still here, still within him.
Waiting.
Later, when Elena retired to the bedroom and he lay on the sofa, awake, Yassen remembered a story his father had told him.
It was the story of Goromount, the fabled traveler who crossed the Ahi Sea after his home had been destroyed by the gods. Goromount traveled using the stars. He followed them without knowing where they would lead him.
“Why?” Yassen had asked his father. “What if they just led him to another ruined land?”
“Belief, Yassen,” his father had said. “He believed that though the gods were savage in their fury, they were also kind in their mercy. And that if they destroyed all the land and all its creatures, then the gods would have no one to worship them. They would truly be forgotten.”
At first, Yassen had not understood the story, but now, as he stared up at the ceiling, listening to the creaks in the floorboards and the whistle of the wind, he understood some of it. Goromount had lost almost everything, but he had gathered the pieces that remained and traveled in search of a home to make them whole again.
Yassen wondered if Goromount, when he built a new shelter on a foreign soil, had created it in the image of his homeland. Or had he looked at his surroundings and declared them free of the past? Something entirely new—a fireplace free of inscriptions.
A low, mournful sound drifted through the cabin. Yassen sat up, his hand reaching for the gun on the table. He listened, his muscles tensed. The noise came again.
He stood and followed it to the end of the hall. His bare toes curled against the cold wood. The sound came from behind the closed bedroom door, and he then realized it was Elena. She was sobbing.
Yassen moved to open the door but then hesitated. Maybe he should leave her be. Maybe she wouldn’t like it if he saw her cry. But Yassen remembered how he had felt the nights soon after he became an orphan. The rawness in his throat. The crushing loneliness in his heart.
Finally, he knocked on the door. “Elena?”
The noise stopped. He pressed his ear against the dark wood, listening. She did not reply, but she also did not tell him to leave.
He cracked open the door and peeked in. She was lying on her side, her back to him. She did not turn as he sat down on the edge of the bed. He felt her grief; it was as palpable in the dark as a thick, humid night. And he also knew he could not alleviate it. It was a pain that only the bearer could hold, a pain that only the bearer could endure.
The sheets rustled as Elena slid her hand across the bed, her face still turned away.
Without saying a word, he took her hand and squeezed. Her fingers curled in his.
He would stay here all night.
