Ishouldgive him space. He clearly wants to be alone right now, but he left the door wide open.
Breathe. One. Two. Three. Four. Exhale.
I took a step toward the door. His tall silhouette disappeared into the ocean before I decided against all rational thought and followed him out.
His clothes were discarded across the sand, and I didn’t let myself second guess my actions as I slowly undressed and walked into the oncoming current.
It was calm tonight. The waves slowly lapping at my stomach as I met him out in the water. His back was to me and I could see the scars across his skin—some old, but a lot of them were new.
The fresh scars, the ones still open and scabbed over, were because of me. In the few weeks I’d been in Viven, I was the cause of his pain, and the guilt carved into me like I was the one who held the spiked whip, flaying his skin open.
I was terrified that whenever Dahes came to collect me, the scarsacross Hael’s back would seem like nothing in comparison to whatever he had planned.
“I killed them.”
His words drew my attention away from his marred skin. He was still looking out across the horizon, the two suns almost fully set now, and I could just glimpse the gray Ferro moon start to peek through the clouds, knowing the other five would slowly start to rise.
“What?” I breathed, not sure if I heard him right.
He took a long swig from the bottle before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
I took another step forward, standing beside him, the waves now cresting over my breasts.
If Hael noticed I was naked, he didn’t react, just kept staring out across the water.
“I killed them all.”
“Who did you kill, Hael?”
He turned to look at me then, and my heart stopped. Those eyes—it was the most beautiful color I’d ever seen. The pale brown was mixed with specks of gold, reflecting off what was left of the suns’ rays. The color matching perfectly to the necklace he seemed to never take off. It was the first time I truly got to glimpse it and it looked more gaudy than I originally thought. A circular pendant dangled from the chain with a single‘H’engraved onto the gold. There was a nagging part in the back of my mind telling me to ask him about it, to see if it had meaning. Maybe someone important gave it to him. Maybe it was the key to my hunt because there was no way I could tell Dahes it wasme, but I pushed the thought away as soon as it came, my gaze drifting back to his eyes.
“Twelve riders had the Nullus bond.” He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to. I knew exactly what he meant—Elion made him kill them.
“It’s not your fault.”
He shrugged before taking another long sip from the bottle, not flinching as the bitter liquid went down. I watched his throat bob, my eyes trailing over his lips before lingering on the thick scar down hisneck. It didn’t stop until it reached his chest, the mangled skin trailed down in a vertical line past his collarbone, nearly touching the end of his ribs.
He held the bottle out to me. I stared at it for a moment, questioning if I should do this. But I knew I was fucked whenever Dahes decided to drag me back to Moriann, what difference did it make if I was drunk while it happened?
I took the bottle, taking a long sip, before nearly gagging as it slid down my throat and burned my stomach.
“It’s disgusting,” I whined, instantly passing the bottle back to him.
He smiled—barely—just a soft upward tilt of his lips, but it was better than nothing. His fingers lingered over mine as he grabbed it from me. I watched the muscles in his arm flex before dragging the bottle back up to his lips, taking a long pull, not flinching in the slightest.
“I’m sorry about the riders,” I said after a moment.
“Me too.” He took another swig of the mead. “I never wanted to be the Drakin Leader,” he admitted as he let out a bitter laugh, then drank more from the bottle. “I didn’t make my first kill until after I won the Vargothi.”
That shocked me, but I tried not to show it. I watched so much death during the tournament that I had no idea how he managed to not only survive, but win without killing anyone.
He must have sensed the question I wasn’t asking. “I wasn’t a saint. It’s impossible to be in the army without shedding blood. We’re bred for it. Even children have a blade thrust into their hand the moment they can hold one. But I had never killed anyone before. I swore to the Moons I wouldn’t. It was the one thing I lived by, the one thing Elion couldn’t force me to do. But despite trying to throw the tournament, I won, and he named me their leader after it.” He took another long sip before passing me the bottle. “Now, I don’t have a fucking choice. I’ve killed so many people that I swear one day it’s going to kill me.”
I hadn’t realized a single tear slipped down my cheek until his fingers grazed my skin, wiping it away. I cleared my throat, trying torecover, and took a longer sip from the mead, this time managing to not gag after it.
Everything he said—it felt so raw, so uncomfortably familiar. It was like he was holding a mirror up, forcing me to see myself, and I couldn’t look away.
“I hate him,” Hael said into the silence.
