Her gaze flicks at it, back to me.
“Places for people to find solace from the beasts plaguing the continent.”
She frowns, shaking her head. “I don’t—”
“I set her up in a house I thought wassafe. But I was wrong.”
So fucking wrong.
Tears puddle her eyes as she watches me—unblinking.
Unbreathing.
“I found her that night bearing a wound from a Vruk.”
Save her, Rhordyn. Please.
I’m trying …
“I-I don’t understand—”
“I failed her. Failed to keep hersafe.Then I put my sword through her heart.”
A sound slips past Orlaith’s lips—bruised and raw. She blinks, and tears shred down her cheeks, melding with the rain slicking my shirt to her trembling frame.
“I killed your mother, Orlaith.Me.”
Iknow the crushing weight of grief. It hammers you down until you’re so flattened you hardly resemble yourself. You barely function, yet you’re cursed to exist. Happy for people to walk all over you so long as it means you don’t have to stand up and peer at your reflection in their eyes.
But if grief is crushing, this is theopposite.
It’s the antidote.
I didn’t kill my mother.
My face crumbles, eyes squeezing shut, chest shaking with the force of my silent sobs. I let that captive breath chafe my insides, tossed around by the relentless quake of my chest as I reach within and lift my dome.
Tip it to the side.
Observe in quiet wonder as the seeds of relief I’d tucked beneath take root, then sprout, curling around my ribs, climbing my vertebrae. Little buds swell, their skins splitting four ways, releasing clusters of butter-yellow petals—packing my insides with the color of sunshine. With comfortingwarmthand a fluttery blow of love.
Ofunderstanding.
Heaving a shuddered exhale, I open my eyes, wounded by the bruised silver stare that’s stuck to me. Looking at me like he’s begging for punishment.
My heart splits.
Guilt …
The festering wound you ignore until you’re battleworn, teetering between life and death. Trying to lift yourself off the ground and find a reason to live again.
But he doesn’t belong on that battlefield. He can’t hold himself accountable for what unraveled that night.
I don’t belong on that battlefield either.
My darkness didn’t kill her … It wasn’t an all-consuming, uncontrollable beast. Meaning there is hope—beautiful, untetheredhope.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and Rhordyn’s brow buckles.
