Nobody does.
“Yourkindneeds sunlight to survive,” she growls, forcing me to look.
Tosee.
My mouth falls open, heart vaulting.
She knows what I am.
“You … How—”
“It’s why Rhordyn had you housed in the northern tower all these years. It got the most of it.”
“Hetoldyou?”
“Because I can betrusted,” she declares. “Because I’m anally,not an enemy.”
My vision goes hazy.
Rhordyn trusted Zali with my hidden identity. Trusted Baze.
Didn’t trust me.
I was so mad at Baze for knowing. For keeping it from me. Was so mad at Rhordyn for the same that I let it rot my perception of him. Let all that mad boil into a thick, potent, deadly poison.
Now I’m seeing it from a different angle—one absent of the hurt and heartbreak and those feelings of betrayal that bubbled to the surface the moment he unlatched the necklace from around my neck.
A question bulbs in my chest, roots curling around my ribs as the shoot begins to spike up my throat—
What am Imissing?
Zali looks at the ground, seeming to consider, then at me. “Are youcertainyou got him in the heart?”
The words stake through me, jerking me back to the now, and I flinch at the memory of how it felt to wield that talon as it slid through his chest.
The underside of my tongue prickles with the urge to vomit again.
“Yes,” I force through the bars of my teeth.
“Was he wearing anything around his neck?” she asks, her voice lifted with something akin to hope. “A rope of some sort?”
A vision flashes in my mind’s eye—of Rhordyn. Bleeding. Battling for air his lungs wouldn’t pull. Of a leather thread draped around his neck, tethered to something hidden beneath his shirt.
I shove the image away, heart bouncing around in a rib cage that suddenly feels too small.
Too tight.
“Yes.”
Her face pales, and she curses, eyes swirling pools of pained calculation. “What now?” she croaks, crucifying me with a glassy stare.
“What do you mean?”
“Ocruth is yours.”
The words slide through me like a sword, stopping my heart’s ferocious rally.
My mouth opens, closes, opens again. “N-no …”
