“Will you continue to keep watch over me? Has whatever driven you to keep your promise after my parents died been severed now that Fenix is dead?”
He doesn’t answer but glances my way.
“Kalan?”
“Did you see Fenix die?” he asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “I was unconscious. But…” I stop short of admitting to him that the visions and memories of what happened also came to me. I saw Crimson’s fight. I saw her stab him before Aten pulled the knife free from his chest. He couldn’t have survived it.
“How did you mend after you fought in the training ring when you were injured?”
“The Usher,” I answer, and let the rest of the thought play out in my mind.
No.
My injuries weren’t like his. Crimson wouldn’t have left any doubt. She’d have gone for the kill. There’s no question. The Usher was weakened, too. He wouldn’t have the power to heal that great an injury. I force my mind back to how it felt—that mass of magic I opened myself up to. Convincing myself I’d taken from him. But doubt remains.
“I am a Shepherd, Ever. My word to your mother, to swear to see you safe, swearing on everything I deem sacred, including the forest, formed an oath, if you want to call it that. I was tied to you and your brother, from that moment on.”
“So?” Defiance snaps my jaw at him.
“So, I’d know if he were dead. Just like I knew every time you or Fenix were injured. Not just in the ring in Nehandun, but back with Lyle. In Estereah and Kirrasia.”
I let the weight of the words sink in. The enormity and impossibility of what they mean. Both for Kalan and for us.
“No.”
He doesn’t answer, as if he can’t say the words aloud for fear of what they will mean.
“No.” I shake my head. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you make sure Ten finished him?” My teeth grind down as I spit the angry words at him.
“I’d never wish death on him. On either of you.” His voice rises as he does, standing and pacing in front of the small fire, towering over the gentle flames, his shadow building behind him, distorting him into a huge beast of a man.
I stand to meet him. “He tortured us, Kalan. He tortured me.”
“And I hate him for that. But that’s all he’s known, nobody was there to teach him differently. I wasn’t there to teach him differently. And like it or not, I have watched you both for twenty years. A pain ringing out, as if the very ground and earth were whispering for me to do my duty when either of you was hurt or in pain.” He huffs out the words as he stands me down, and I consider them, turning them over in my mind to find the twist, the hidden lie, the subterfuge. But something in his grim expression, even in the flicker of flame, shows the sincerity of his words. There is no reason for him to make this up, to scare me like this.
“How?” I ask, oddly intrigued by the magic underlying his admission, and more content to ask this than what it means if Fenix is still alive.
“Your mother is my best guess. I never returned to Kirrasia after the battle that took their lives. There might be something in the histories, but I’ve not found anything in the books that the Usher liberated.” It feels like there’s more to his explanation, so I still my tongue and force it back behind my teeth. “You’ve heard the song in the trees. I’m given information in a similar way, but instead of on the wind, on the whispers, it’s through the ground, as if the roots of every tree, every plant, reach out to send a message—a pulsing, rising through my boots and vibrating in my chest.” He chortles at that, as if he can hear how silly it sounds.
But I have seen and learned in the last few months that there are plenty more ludicrous and unbelievable things in this world that are true.
“It terrified me the first time I felt it. I didn’t know what it was. There were visits to Fenix first, and then I felt you. So I visited Lyle after you’d been adventuring, had fallen, and had cut your knee. You were fine. Possibly the first accident you had.”
I think back, trying to remember, and a vague memory bubbles to the surface, rising as if commanded. There was no rule to the times he would stop by. But now, armed with this new information, maybe there was.
“I had to visit your brother significantly more than you.”
“So that’s why I know so little, because I was safe and looked after?” I shout. “Fenix was granted information and truth, while I was left in the dark?”
“You were safe. You were loved. And that was more than Fenix had for most of his life. I chose the wrong people to entrust him with, and that’s on me. He was different from the start, strong-willed and angry, and never stayed in one home for long. And then he fell into the clutches of the Usher. Don’t disregard what you had for what you feel is missing now.”
“Hey! What’s going on?” Ten’s voice silences what I’m sure would have turned into a verbal sparring match I was intent on winning. It doesn’t matter how much happens, how many new revelations there are—there are more lies.
More secrets.
But through this web, I can see a different view. As if it’s looking me in the face—what was kept from me in order to keep me safe.
