“I—” he said again. The words felt heavy, yet there they sat, right within his grasp. Memories of the house fire and his mother’s burnt body flitted in his mind.
“I was an orphan,” he said finally. “My parents were both dead, and I had no one else. The streets of Ravence aren’t kind to urchins. The Arohassin seemed kinder. At least they had hot food and a bed.”
“So you joined because you were hungry?” she asked, though her voice was curious rather than judgmental.
He shot her a look. “Hungry, lonely, scared, angry. I didn’t know who they really were, not at first. They gave us odd jobs like deliver a holopod to someone or keep watch on some corner. It took my mind off things,” he said, and he saw the ghosts flicker.
“Samson told me about the training they gave you,” she said. “About the prisoners.”
When he said nothing, she continued. “He told me you shot your man, and he didn’t. He said it changed you.”
“They knew what I was,” Yassen said bitterly. Unlike the other recruits, Yassen could walk through Jantar without raising an eyebrow. So, they sent him abroad. Ordered him to stake out certain Ravani officials conducting business in the neighboring kingdom. Eventually, the corner watches had evolved into tracking a man in a crowd and reporting his whereabouts. Hot food turned into money if he could find a traitor. A warm bed twisted into long sermons about power and the decaying foundation of divine rule. At first Yassen had regarded those sermons with aloofness, listening only because he was forced to. But when they had placed a gun in his hand… He remembered lying beneath neverwood bushes with his father. Stilling his breath. Watching dew form on the tips of grass as they waited for the stag. “Akaros said if we didn’t shoot, he would kill us.”
With his left arm, he pulled his gun from his waistband and set it on the table. The silver barrel glinted.
“They taught us how to shut off parts of ourselves, to lock emotions in a room and leave them there. I didn’t care what I did. I just wanted to forget the pain of losing my family.”
“And you felt no remorse?”
“I did. All the time. It made me hate myself,” he said. He did not know why he was talking so much. Maybe it was the whiskey, but he could feel a growing pressure in his chest, an urge to let it all tumble out. The house of emotions he had built was crumbling as if sucked in by quicksand. “So I worked harder. I trained, I fought, I meditated. I even let Akaros starve me just so I could block out the world. And they loved me for it. I became the best because I refused to give in to regret. Nothing fazed me. Fear passed through me but could not linger. I was master of myself.
“Akaros told Sam and me that we were different—more alert than the others, cleverer. I don’t know if that was true, but it worked. I felt I finally had someone who saw me. Who taught me—I thought—to be strong.”
“So why did you leave with me?”
Yassen stopped, staring at her. He felt the air leave his chest.
The memory came back to him, slowly, painfully. The Verani king screaming. The flame leaping onto his arm, tearing through his flesh. It was as if the heat of the sun was trapped within his body, ensnaring him with fiery red whips.
The Arohassin had found him floating far out at sea. For three weeks, he slipped in and out of consciousness, and the memory of his recovery had blurred around the edges. But the fire. Yassen could not forget it.
“When I got burned, it was as if something beat all the fog and numbness out of me until only I remained. No training, no walls, just me. And I couldn’t face myself.” He looked down at his arm. It had become a constant reminder of that night. “But then I met you. Saw the way you fought against the gold caps. Against your father. Even me, right now, for those fucking mines. And I know you would do it again, if it meant you could help Ravence have a fighting chance.”
He paused and met her gaze.
“You showed me what it’s like to live for something more. Beyond myself, my desires. That’s why I took that oath for you. Because I,” he said, his breath catching in his chest as she leaned closer.
Because I would live for you.
“I’ve never felt like I’ve fit in,” he said, voice soft. He had never said this to anyone, but here before Elena, he felt as if he could tell her his truth. “In Ravence, I was the strange, foreign-eyed orphan. In Jantar, I was the boy with an accent. With the Arohassin, I was constantly moving. Changing identities. But in the desert, you saw me for what I was. And I see you for what you are. You make me feel like, for once, I belong somewhere. Even if it’s by your side. Trying to get you somewhere safe.”
“It’s funny,” she said, “because when I’m withyou, I feel safe.”
Elena carefully uncurled his fingers so his palm lay flat. He glanced at her. There were specks of gold in her eyes. A trick of the light maybe, or a quality of a Ravani royal.
“You’re free now,” she said. “Yet you remain here with me. Surely, you will find some forgiveness for yourself, Yassen.”
Free.What an awful word. Yassen had resented it because he had never known it, not truly, yet now the soft light in the cabin and the song of the mountain larks told him otherwise.
Their chorus spread through the morning sky, filling the treetops with joy.
They sang three notes.
No danger—just expanse.
CHAPTER 41
ELENA
