A spy who took advantage of Reave's desperation.
The cave has been amplifying everything said between us, and now it makes the quiet that settles between our words feel just as vast, large and heavy enough to suffocate.
“So you think he deserved to die?” Mal asks, barely above a whisper.
When I don't reply, he grabs my jaw and drags my gaze to his.
“Answer me.”
I swallow hard. He already knows the answer. He can read me well enough that there’s no point in lying.
“Yes,” I say.
He was always slow to anger, and that much hasn't changed; the silence between us stretches so, so unbearably long as fury creeps its way into his expression, moving like the shadow of night choking out the last threads of daylight. I close my eyes as his grip turns tighter, willing myself not to flinch when I sense him lifting his knife toward my face.
“Ruined,” he mutters as he drags the knife slowly upward, tapping it against the scars around my eye. “Just like your face.” Another horrible, weighted silence, and then: “I'm assuming this happened on that last fateful night we spent together?”
I try to turn away again, but he presses the flat of the blade firmly against my cheek, forcing me to hold his gaze.
“It's hard to look at, isn't it?” His eyes have turned disturbingly cold and vacant. “Hard to remember what happened back then. What we once were, and all that wecould have already become, if only you'd embraced your divine bond the way I expected you to. The way the gods expected you to.”
His thumb grazes over my scars, as if cataloging them. As if trying to see if there’s anything worth salvaging.
Ruined.
I don't know why it's this word that’s finally managed to slide under my skin and stay there. It's not a revelation. It's not news to me that I was ruined that night, so many parts of myself lost and left behind in the ashes.
And yet, hearing him say the word is what finally makes the tears well up in my eyes, and I quickly lose the battle to keep them in.
Malachi's fingers trail over my cheeks, catching a few teardrops as they fall. “Luckily, it's not too late to right some of these wrongs. And I still want to help you do that, Owyn.”
My voice shakes, but I manage to get the words out: “You only want to use me.”
“Guide you,” he gently corrects.
“I don't want yourguidance.”
“You will, once you realize you need me as much as I need you. Mouren is a cursed, false kingdom. You know this, regardless of what lies its king has forced you to believe. You're too smart to not realize this truth. And I think youalsoknow that you could never reach the full potential of your bond and its power among the tainted grounds of that place. You belong in a proper divine kingdom with a proper king. With someone who can keep you from turning your back on what you're truly meant to be.”
I say nothing.
“We're going to change this broken world. Isn't that what you've always wanted to do?”
He knows it is. Of course he knows. Because how many times did we talk about it? How many nights did we sit together on the brick wall that surrounded his house, watching the stars over Halvgate and making promises about how we were going to build a different future together? We were going to be proof that Mouren couldn’t destroy everything. We were going to find a way to make our suffering worth it, and we were going to make something beautiful among the ashes. He made me believe that.
But it was nevermethat he believed in.
Never me that he loved.
It was only my god-touched destiny he wanted to share?—
No.
Not share.
Steal.
“Never mind the rest,” he says, and suddenly he's using that softer, idealistic tone that made me fall for him, once upon a time. “All will eventually be as we planned it, for better or worse.”
